Jun 18

The Guardian has a longer, but interesting article on the end of the CDC moratorium. I recommend reading it

Unpaid rent is a large problem. The article of course looks at this from the renter perspective, but the $50-100B of unpaid rent currently has only impacted owners due to the moratoriums.

In mid-May, 7.49 million US adults said they were not current on rent or mortgage payments and had slight or no confidence they could make next month’s payment, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

So far, the eviction moratorium has kept many of these families housed. There were 1.55m fewer eviction cases last year than would be filed in a typical year, according to an estimate by the Eviction Lab.

Without the moratorium, they will need access to the $46.55bn in rental assistance allocated by the government to help renters and landlords – though its distribution got off to a slow start.

The Guardian

The federal aid favors rural states, with few renters over urban areas. The taxpayers’ money should be distributed where the need is, not on political lines. This is a point that Heiner and I agree with Peter Hepburn of the Eviction Lab. We all need to urge Congress to fix this.

And Hepburn has found that because of the way the assistance is being allocated, more money will be available in small, rural states than in larger, urban states.

Black and Latino renters, particularly women, are disproportionately at risk of eviction and face more uncertainty as the moratorium expires.

“It was a series of omissions and mistakes that taken jointly result in a really inefficient and inequitable distribution of this money,” Hepburn said. “I don’t know that that was done with any sort of intent to disadvantage communities of color but I think it inevitably does.”

Geographically the evictions crisis will also be unevenly distributed.

In Wyoming, households can collect more than $5,167 in rental aid, while in New York’s expensive renter markets, households will have access to $766, according to his analysis.

Mar 07

The article linked below is so wrongly anti-housing provider. If the rent is paid, the need for free legal representation disappears in most cases. Discriminatory housing policies are not those of the property owners. We want our houses full as that is the only way we make money. Instead, for the most part, discriminatory housing policies were created years ago through government programs. But now, we are being made the scapegoat by the very governmental bodies that created this mess. 

Redlining of mortgages and insurance, leading to housing segregation or worse? These were federal government-mandated rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

But articles like the one below try to paint property owners and managers as the causation. The truth is housing and renters must succeed for the other to succeed as well. We are two sides of the same coin. There are those who profit from encouraging conflict between owners and renters. This harms both residents and housing providers alike.

Contrary to the conclusion of the article, rental assistance is the solution. If the U.S. enacted a FoodShare for Housing program, where people below a certain threshold would receive portable housing vouchers, this would change many urban American problems. Multiple studies show the costs of such a program to the taxpayer are less than what we now pay for intervention when renters fail. 

Addressing extreme housing precarity requires more than rental assistance; it requires an overhaul of the system and redress of the longstanding discriminatory housing policies that led to this moment.

https://theappeal.org/the-lab/explainers/the-american-eviction-crisis-explained/
Dec 22


https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/12/22/landlords-tenants-say-rent-assistance-needed-part-eviction-ban/3932908001/

“I  don’t think a landlord should be expected to shoulder the burden of taking care of a property for several months or a year,” when a tenant stops paying rent, said Dawn Anastasi, a landlord who owns 18 properties on the northwest side of Milwaukee. “It’s not the tenant’s fault, but it’s not the landlord’s fault either.”

Even with the rent assistance, landlords will be left holding the bag for much of the unpaid rent, predicted Tim Ballering, treasurer of the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin.

“The unpaid rent will never be paid, let’s be honest about that,” Ballering said, noting that even when a tenant is evicted the landlord seldom collects the past due rent. 

As a result, Ballering, who is also a landlord, predicted a spike in the number of local landlords who sell their properties to large absentee rental companies.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Ballering asked. “That depends on your views. Do you think that the small American farmer being driven out by large corporate farmers is a good thing?”

Heiner Giese, attorney for the association, said the $25 billion in rent assistance will be helpful though he agreed it would likely only last a couple of months.

Giese noted that the federal bill will allow landlords to file for rent assistance, unlike other rent assistance programs that require the tenant to apply

Giese, who is also a landlord, said he has seen cases where tenants signed the required CDC declaration that protected them from eviction but then did not apply for any rent assistance.

“They would just say he’s going to evict me anyway, so screw it,” Giese said.

Dec 20

How do landlords think unemployed people will pay rent?:

…an average of 8% of renters don’t pay rent in normal times. During the coronavirus crisis to date, that share has gone up to 15 to 20% of renters not paying.

“But generally, I think we need a better approach instead of just pitting owners versus tenants,” he says. Both the tenants and landlords need some larger, holistic fix from the government that acknowledges that there just isn’t as much money flowing through the system as there should be.

Nearly 12 million renters will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent and utilities by January, Moody’s Analytics warns. Last month, 9 million renters said they were behind on rent, according to a Census Bureau survey.   

The over $70 Billion in unpaid rent, as reported by Moody’s will cripple many housing providers and will cause a housing crisis that will impact both tenants and municipalities for years, if not decades.  In May of 2020 Milwaukee property values finally recovered from the 2008 Great Recession. 

Less than 2.5% of rent judgments are paid in Milwaukee County five years after the eviction.  And eviction judgments represent only a small fraction of the unpaid rent.  In surveying owners, we see on a high end 42% of their lost rent is included in eviction judgments, with most owners reporting less than 10%.  Some owners never pursue money judgments. So the million dollars a month in eviction judgments represent somewhere between $28.5 million to $100 million a year in money that should go into housing but does not.  I peg the number at least to be $48 Million a year in lost rent in one county.  This is just insane. 

The right answer is for the government to step up to the plate and create a portable housing voucher to cover a portion, to all, of the rent /housing costs for people below a certain income, similar to food stamps.

Instead, the government pits tenants against landlords in a zero-sum game where one must lose for the other to win. In the end, this makes housing more expensive or limits choices.

This has been a problem long before COVID. In 1991 I was interviewed by the New York Times on evictions. I asked the reporter, “On $574 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school, and still pay your rent?” Nothing has changed much since then. $574 was the AFDC (now W2) payment amount. Twenty years later in an NYT interview, my comment was basically the same:

“On $673 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school and still pay your rent?” Mr. Ballering said.” 
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19evict.html 

Some suggest canceling mortgages and rents, thinking that this equivalent and will prevent the economic failure of housing.  Sadly, it will not.

The average mortgage payment is 36-39% of gross income. The average owner earns 7-9% of gross income for their investment of capital, financial risks, and physical efforts.  If you stop mortgage and rent payments, as well as prevent owners from being paid for their investment and efforts, there is still 52-57% of gross rent that is needed to cover other operating costs such as sewer, water, property taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc.

In Milwaukee, for most properties, the City takes a far bigger cut of the rent in property taxes, and sewer/water bills, than the owner gets to keep.

If you read the Brookings report, you will see this plus the “local economic multiplier” effect of wages and other monies expended by owners.

The Census Bureau reported in 2018 that, on average, every unit generates almost $1,200 in wages. Those wages, the property tax money, etc, circulate throughout the community many times over.

Here’s what scholars believe will happen if there is a moratorium without rental assistance; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3641859 It goes into the economic impact on housing and the cost borne by other current and future tenants. It is an informative read.

Sep 08

Year to date evictions are down 28%.  August evictions are down down 37%.

In fact if you exclude the moratorium months of March, April and May, Milwaukee evictions are still down over 6%.

 Yet rent collections are off 8-16%, showing owners are working with tenants in unprecedented ways.

Milwaukee County Evictions
Aug 30

Matt Desmond’s op-ed piece in today’s NYT is a prime example of the over-emphasizing of relative differences in eviction filings:

In the last week of July, eviction filings were 109 percent above average levels in Milwaukee.” 
— https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-evictions-superspreader.html

If one narrows the range enough, picking and choosing that which fits their predefined scenario, one can use otherwise factual data to say anything. 

A more accurate reflection of what is happening in the Milwaukee rental market is eviction filings are down by 26.6% YTD through 07/31/2020, despite an anecdotal 8-12% greater than normal non-payment. Rent has always been the financial elasticity in the “C” market, be it Christmas gifts, car repairs, or job loss.

If too many owners fail because they cannot collect enough rent to cover expenses, housing opportunities will only become more restricted and expensive. Municipalities will also fail as they “eat” three to four times more rent dollars in property taxes and municipal utilities than typical owners receive for their efforts and return on investment. 

Many scholars are warning of such widespread failures in the rental market. One example: Tenant Rights, Eviction, and Rent Affordability (July 4, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3641859 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3641859

In national interviews dating back to 1991, I’ve pointed out the near impossibility of paying rent for those with limited income. While the older articles are not online, here is a NYT interview from a decade ago:

On $673 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school and still pay your rent?” Mr. Ballering said.” ($673 was the W2, welfare, cash benefit at the time)
— https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19evict.html

Sadly nothing has changed in these 30 years. 

I fully agree with Desmond’s statement buried near the end of the op-ed, “Eviction is not a solution to landlords’ fundamental problem of maintaining rental income. Rent relief is.”  I would have been pleased to see this as your closing call to action.

The COVID crisis presents an opportunity for housing advocates, whether from the tenant or property owner perspective, to jointly push for a long term solution, which Matt Desmondinitially advocated for; portable housing vouchers.

Aug 30

A published research paper that found:

“Our research shows that in order to keep rental housing affordable and sustainable for low-income families, lawmakers have to walk a fine line in determining what will benefit the tenant and what may ultimately be detrimental to them,” Shen said. “On the surface, strict landlord regulation sounds good for tenants, but our paper points out, the solution isn’t that simple. The research suggests that conventional thinking on the issue of more regulation may have the opposite effect on tenants.”

“Though advocating for tenant rights seems noble and the right thing to do, the resulting consequences could have a devastating impact on this vulnerable population,” Shen said. “Our research indicates that if landlords aren’t allowed to evict, rent will likely increase to compensate for their losses. The housing supply would diminish, though the demand would still exist. These landlords may choose alternative investments if owning property is no longer feasible. A reduced housing supply would mean less competition, which would drive up the cost of rent for everyone.

Coulson, N. Edward and Le, Thao and Shen, Lily, Tenant Rights, Eviction, and Rent Affordability (July 4, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3641859 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3641859
Aug 15

July saw Milwaukee evictions up less than 4% over last year, despite local owners reporting 8-18% less rent collected than normal.

Statewide, July evictions are down 10%

The big story is January through July saw statewide and Milwaukee evictions both down just under 27% over last year, again despite the industry suffering well above normal rent losses.

Aug 10

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/could-federal-investment-prevent-an-eviction-crisis

DESMOND: In June, cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee saw evictions spike 30 to 40 percent above normal level when moratoriums expired.

[Ignores a greater than 30% overall decrease in 2020 evictions Year to date through June 30th. – Tim]

DESMOND: And it also doesn’t solve the landlord’s financial problems. You know, eviction right now, though, is kind of the only tool we’ve given to landlords, right? We haven’t seen a serious investment in housing from the federal government.

[Agreed – Tim]

DESMOND: And so when you’re a landlord and you’re in a pinch, you kind of reach for that pink slip.

[No landlord wants or wins when there is an eviction, rather they generally never recover the money lost. An eviction is either failure to screen or the tenant met with circumstances afterward. – Tim]

DESMOND: You know, we need a national moratorium on evictions. We need to say, look, in this pandemic, the home is medicine. The home is safety. And we have to protect that. Americans deserve that level of protection. Property owners need to pay their bills, too. And so we don’t just need moratoriums. We also need rent relief.

[There is no need for a moratorium if proper need-based rent subsidies are in place. Agreed that property owners need to pay their bills. The outcome if they can’t is chronicled at https://bit.ly/MoratoriumImpact – Tim]

DESMOND: We need a serious investment from the federal government with the recognition that everyone needs a stable, affordable place to live in normal times and especially during this pandemic. That’s true.

[Agreed – Tim]

Aug 07

I encourage everyone to download and read the following published research paper

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3641859

“Our research shows that in order to keep rental housing affordable and sustainable for low-income families, lawmakers have to walk a fine line in determining what will benefit the tenant and what may ultimately be detrimental to them,” Shen said. “On the surface, strict landlord regulation sounds good for tenants, but our paper points out, the solution isn’t that simple. The research suggests that conventional thinking on the issue of more regulation may have the opposite effect on tenants.”

“Though advocating for tenant rights seems noble and the right thing to do, the resulting consequences could have a devastating impact on this vulnerable population,” Shen said.

“Our research indicates that if landlords aren’t allowed to evict, rent will likely increase to compensate for their losses. The housing supply would diminish, though the demand would still exist. These landlords may choose alternative investments if owning property is no longer feasible. A reduced housing supply would mean less competition, which would drive up the cost of rent for everyone.

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