Over at National Review, Ryan Mills has written an informative piece on the real-life consequences of President Joe Biden’s illegal eviction moratorium. Mills interviewed several independent landlords who shared how financially devastating the moratorium has been.
One landlord in Rochester, New York, Raj Sookram, said about half of the tenants that live in his 13 rental properties have stopped paying rent. One man hasn’t paid him in 20 months and now owes him more than $20,000. Any attempt to extract payment from these tenants has been met with resistance from the city, he said. Even without rent, he still has to pay his mortgages and expenses, so he’s had to take out loans and work another job to feed his family.
Another landlord in Brooklyn, Lincoln Eccles, said the city forces him to keep providing services to his tenants even though many of them have stopped paying rent. One woman owes him more than $40,000, he said. And on top of the service fees he’s expected to cover, Eccles also faces a hefty tax bill that he isn’t sure he’ll be able to pay.
“If the local government turns around and is this vindictive, aggressive monster, and comes after me, they could topple me over,” Eccles said. “And they’ll do that to a bunch of us smaller owners where we’re struggling, and all we have enough is to keep the lights on.”
Mills’s story reminded me of another one published last month in the New York Times. It focused on Vanie Mangal, a property owner who rents out her basement and first-floor apartments in Queens, New York, as a side gig. Some of her tenants became extremely abusive toward her this past year, yelling, cursing, and spitting at her. One of them keyed her car and dumped her packages in the garbage. They also stopped paying rent and owed her more than $36,000. The only way she could get them to move out was by seeking out a restraining order from the police, which led to a warrant for the tenants’ arrest.
This is the reality facing many property owners, thanks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium. Despite what the leftists who support the moratorium might say, the vast majority of landlords are not mega-corporations or billionaires. They’re average people earning an average income. The National Association of Realtors found last year that middle-class people manage 41% of the country’s rental properties, often doing the work and maintenance themselves.
One cannot read these stories and then take seriously Biden’s claim that the moratorium serves a good cause. These rental properties are the landlords’ livelihood, and the government is forcibly depriving them of it. The courts must strike down the eviction moratorium — this time for good.
