All those air quotes sound mostly like the kind of thing that people who want to can just claim without too much effort, or threaten to claim they did when threatened with eviction, or when taken to court to be evicted. Meanwhile they’re threatening criminal penalties for breaking the rule. So effectively, anyone who doesn’t want to leave and is willing to break the social contract to stay, is going to be untouchable—the fight is ugly enough to begin with, this gives a credible threat to make it much worse.
If we think it is good public policy to keep such people in their homes, and we decided to pay their rent for them because this was a taking of private property, and ideally take over that debt in some form for later collection if the person recovers their income, that seems like a plausible thing to consider. Seizing the property outright, not so much.
Also, I don’t buy that property in general is in such low demand. The argument presumes that people have little demand for slash ability to pay for apartments/houses (house), and thus there’s a huge overhang of supply, and evictions make things worse. But what I’m seeing in the charts is that house prizes are up in many/most places, not down, with places that are exceptions places that actually are worse places to live for now (e.g. NY/SF).
I think that’s about as far as I’ll go with this. I agree that there’s a reasonable argument to be made to provide some eviction protections, or more than already exist. But we both agree, I think, that the CDC doing it is in no way appropriate. I would say blatantly unconstitutional, sets a really horrible precedent, violates the basic concept of rule of law, etc etc. You want to do this, you pass an act of congress.
Housing prices are only partially controlled by supply and demand for HOUSING. They have been financialized into speculative assets to a ridiculous extreme that is highly destructive to their primary function. The price is driven up by investors which have access to huge amounts of freshly created money loaned into existence, such that as long as there is the expectation that the price can go up, speculative demand is almost literally infinite and prices are driven above the ability of those who need housing and lack access to that sort of financing to pay. The situation is highly untenable in the long term.
I agree the housing market is deeply broken in many places, but would explain this purely in supply and demand terms. There is large demand, and laws severely restrict supply. Thus, prices go up. We expect additional restrictions on supply, so prices are expected to go up more, so they go up now, expectations set in, and so on. Then in part to protect those expectations, restrictions are increased.
If we ban/tax renting that won’t solve the problem, that will force renters to buy instead, and destroy the ability of the poor (who don’t hit a lottery where they’re given a house for free) to find places to live even more than we already do. This is already happening of course. Rent control is known to be the best way to destroy a city’s housing stock short of aerial bombing—and eviction bans are the most extreme form of rent control.
The solution is obvious. Get rid of the restrictions on building more housing and on how one rents out housing, and supply will increase, as will expected future supply, driving prices down to not much more than cost of construction. To help more, also work to make us able to build things cheaper.
(OK, tagging out on further discussions here to avoid getting into politics and things that have nothing to do with Covid-19)
All those air quotes sound mostly like the kind of thing that people who want to can just claim without too much effort, or threaten to claim they did when threatened with eviction, or when taken to court to be evicted. Meanwhile they’re threatening criminal penalties for breaking the rule. So effectively, anyone who doesn’t want to leave and is willing to break the social contract to stay, is going to be untouchable—the fight is ugly enough to begin with, this gives a credible threat to make it much worse.
If we think it is good public policy to keep such people in their homes, and we decided to pay their rent for them because this was a taking of private property, and ideally take over that debt in some form for later collection if the person recovers their income, that seems like a plausible thing to consider. Seizing the property outright, not so much.
Also, I don’t buy that property in general is in such low demand. The argument presumes that people have little demand for slash ability to pay for apartments/houses (house), and thus there’s a huge overhang of supply, and evictions make things worse. But what I’m seeing in the charts is that house prizes are up in many/most places, not down, with places that are exceptions places that actually are worse places to live for now (e.g. NY/SF).
I think that’s about as far as I’ll go with this. I agree that there’s a reasonable argument to be made to provide some eviction protections, or more than already exist. But we both agree, I think, that the CDC doing it is in no way appropriate. I would say blatantly unconstitutional, sets a really horrible precedent, violates the basic concept of rule of law, etc etc. You want to do this, you pass an act of congress.
Housing prices are only partially controlled by supply and demand for HOUSING. They have been financialized into speculative assets to a ridiculous extreme that is highly destructive to their primary function. The price is driven up by investors which have access to huge amounts of freshly created money loaned into existence, such that as long as there is the expectation that the price can go up, speculative demand is almost literally infinite and prices are driven above the ability of those who need housing and lack access to that sort of financing to pay. The situation is highly untenable in the long term.
I agree the housing market is deeply broken in many places, but would explain this purely in supply and demand terms. There is large demand, and laws severely restrict supply. Thus, prices go up. We expect additional restrictions on supply, so prices are expected to go up more, so they go up now, expectations set in, and so on. Then in part to protect those expectations, restrictions are increased.
If we ban/tax renting that won’t solve the problem, that will force renters to buy instead, and destroy the ability of the poor (who don’t hit a lottery where they’re given a house for free) to find places to live even more than we already do. This is already happening of course. Rent control is known to be the best way to destroy a city’s housing stock short of aerial bombing—and eviction bans are the most extreme form of rent control.
The solution is obvious. Get rid of the restrictions on building more housing and on how one rents out housing, and supply will increase, as will expected future supply, driving prices down to not much more than cost of construction. To help more, also work to make us able to build things cheaper.
(OK, tagging out on further discussions here to avoid getting into politics and things that have nothing to do with Covid-19)