The Cost of Biden's Eviction Moratorium - One Landlord's Story ｜ Ep. 143
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Summary
The Biden administration extended the eviction moratorium even though it was out of legal authority to do so. And now what? Where do the landlords go? How do they pay their mortgages? And what message does this send to the renters who are managing to pay their rent, who are working extra hours, and who are managed to honor their responsibilities? Today we hear from two landlords: an actual landlord and the President of a landlord association in Washington state.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, the eviction moratorium.
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The Biden administration basically admitted that it overstepped its legal bounds. It knew it was
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doing it, but it was just trying to buy additional time for tenants who are facing eviction for
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nonpayment of rent while the legal process plays out again. They know that the Supreme Court is not
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likely to uphold this extension of the moratorium. And yet, thanks to the activism of people like
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Cori Bush, this St. Louis congresswoman who's been sleeping out in front of the Capitol four nights
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in a row trying to prove what it's like to be homeless. OK, they they bend. They bent. The
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Biden administration told the CDC to do it. And the CDC extended the moratorium, even though it was out
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of legal authority to do it. And now what about these landlords? Where do they go? How do they
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pay their mortgages? How would you do it if you were relying on your tenants rent payment every
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month? And let's not pretend this is March 2020. It's not. It's it's August now, 2021. And there's
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been a whole lot of taxpayer money given to people who are suffering, tenants who are suffering. Some of
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the states haven't dispersed it. But why should the landlords have to suck that up? Right. Like,
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what's the matter with the states and what message does this send to the renters who are managing to
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pay their rent, who are working extra hours and who are managing to honor their responsibilities?
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Today, we're going to have two landlords on. One is an actual landlord and one represents landlords.
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He's the president of a landlord association up in Washington state. And wait until you hear this
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guy, Adam's story, a landlord. Wait until you hear what happened to him as a result of this
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moratorium. We'll get into it in one minute. First, this. Adam, you're the actual landlord and
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Daniel, you are the you're you represent a landlord's association. So you represent a bunch
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of landlords. Correct. Yes. I'm the president of the Landlord Association of the Inland Northwest.
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OK. And you guys are out in Spokane, Washington. Yep. Yep. All right. I don't know anything about
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Washington state. So what part of the state is that? Is that like politically speaking,
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is that a dem area, a Republican area? Yeah, it's Spokane is a different color
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rather than the red or the blue. It's very hazy right now. All the wildfire smoke.
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It's a little more conservative, I think, than the west side, a lot more conservative. We don't
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actively try to make bad policies, which kind of just accidentally make them over here.
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Right. Well, it's happening right now. So let me start back with with you, Adam. Your your family
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has how many houses? They have three rentals in Spokane area. And are they big houses,
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small houses? What are they like? They're three bedroom, two bathroom, like a condo type of thing
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or a standalone house? There's a standalone house. OK. And why did they start buying up these
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properties? Why did they have those three properties? Well, the property, the depot out
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in Cheney, we they bought when me and my brother were going to Eastern at the time. So we lived there
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at one point. So, yeah, they just bought it as an investment, I believe. So as an investment. And
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prior to the eviction moratorium, had you ever had a problem with a tenant, you know, who didn't pay the
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rent, needed to be evicted, that kind of thing? We've had, you know, late payments here and there,
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but nothing like this. No. OK. Never, never where you have to actually kick the person out.
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No. And but before the eviction moratorium, and I'll ask you this, Daniel, it was relatively easy
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to kick somebody out if you needed to as a landlord. Yes. Yeah. There was a pretty clear,
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established process that everyone that it's been the same process for forever. So the eviction
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moratorium kind of just just changed everything with regards to Washington state landlord tenant
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law. What was it was basically you had to give 20 or 30 days notice and then the person had to go
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if they were in arrears, if they weren't paying. Right. Yeah. You'd give them a pay or vacate
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notice. You know, you'd hire your your lawyer to and they'd hire a process server, you know,
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and you'd mail it to them and post it on their door and try to give it to them and, you know,
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let them know they have, you know, three days to pay or vacate or 14 days to pay or vacate.
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And now you can't even really serve those notices. Right. So then so when the pandemic
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started and we went into quarantine and everybody was told to stay at home and they were shutting
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down businesses and so on, and we had that emergency eviction moratorium saying for a number of
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reasons, you can't can't kick people out. A, we need people to stay at home. B, we're taking away
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jobs. The government is basically taking away jobs left and right. Thanks to this quarantine.
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How did you guys feel about the eviction moratorium then? As a, as a landlord association? I mean,
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I think it was just kind of a strange time. Uh, I remember that time pretty vividly where,
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you know, I, I can give quite a bit of grace right at the start of, you know, what could have been,
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I don't know. I don't want to say it wasn't super, super serious, but it kind of seemed like it was
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going to be the end of the world. I thought that would be a faster process than like the end of
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the world we're currently experiencing. Um, so yeah, at the time it was pretty shocking, but it
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was like, okay, well, they're going to do this for, you know, uh, our first moratorium, I believe was
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about 48 days. And so it's like, well, that's a month and a half. We'll get back to normal.
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And then here we are. No, there's no normal as we're all experiencing. So Adam, did your tenants,
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and I know we're talking about the property out in, um, Cheney, Washington at just outside Spokane.
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So did your tenants who were in there, um, at the beginning of this eviction moratorium,
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were they paying their rent at the beginning? Um, no, they were not paying rent. And had they
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been paying rent prior to the announcement of the eviction moratorium? Um, they had stopped paying
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right around a couple of months, um, prior to the moratorium, right around, right around that time.
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So this is a nightmare for you because you had tenants who were, were already flouting
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their rental obligations. And then the government swooped in to give them a big, a big pass.
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Yeah. So they were assisted through a government program. So, um, and it was working. And even if
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they were falling behind the program assisted them, um, and then the moratorium started, um,
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and that's when things, you know, they were not only not paying rent. Well, they were not only not
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paying rent now. Um, it seemed like now all responsibility for the tenant was gone. So they
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started destroying the property, um, becoming a nuisance to the community. Uh, there's 27 police
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reports just in the time that they were there. Oh my gosh. So let's back up and talk about who moved
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in because your heart was in the right place when you initially rented this property, uh, to, I think
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it was a couple, right? It was at least one guy. I mean, he was a veteran and you wanted to help him
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and all for all good reasons. Can you just give us a little bit of background? Yeah. So I've known
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Daniel for 10 plus years. He's one of my best friends. He was working with a government organization
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that houses veterans. Um, and my, um, me and my parents attended a, a seminar that they were putting
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on. Um, and you know, we have a special place in our hearts for veterans. Uh, they serve the country
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and they deserve, you know, support. So, um, you know, and this, this program, uh, said they would do
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just that. And, you know, as far as us being landlords, it was, you know, a little more secure
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because they were getting support and it seemed like a win-win, you know, uh, a good for everybody.
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So we were really excited about it. And so, yeah, that's how we initially, you know, started the
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process. And can you give us the first name of the tenant just so we have a name to work with for the
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show? Yeah. Thomas. Thomas. Okay. So Thomas moves in and, and it's no accident. He moved in. You guys
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both thought it would be a good idea. Help a veteran. Also, there's a government assistance program
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that helps veterans pay their rent. So that's good. Your heart was in the right place. The
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government and taxpayer funds were in the right place to help our veterans coming back from fighting
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get back on their feet. Okay. Yeah. It seems like a great thing. Yeah. And what, and just on a larger
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level, Daniel, how, how do veterans normally do when they come back from fighting and they get this
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government assistance, they move into rental properties. Are they a reliable risk normally or?
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Yeah. Yeah. No, they absolutely are. And this, so this program that I, I was working with
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is called the supportive services for veteran families program. And what that program is,
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it's for veterans and their families that are currently experiencing homelessness or at immediate
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risk of experiencing homelessness. And so it's not just, um, it's not, you know, it's not just your,
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uh, you know, somebody, you know, takes their boots off and, you know, isn't in the military anymore.
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And then they, they transitioned to this program that this program is specifically for, um, you know,
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people that are sometimes chronically homeless, you know, that have been experiencing homelessness
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for a long time up to, you know, you might be homeless tomorrow. You should, and there, it's
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really a fantastic program overall. Was that the story with Thomas? Was he down and out?
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Absolutely. Yes. Uh, he, you know, just kind of the way things worked is, um, without giving,
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you know, too much, uh, personal info. Um, he was one of those people, I'll just say that I feel like
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our country owes, um, for, for what they've done and the things that they've given up. And so it was
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pretty special to even be able to work, uh, to work with him and his, uh, his family. Cause it was
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actually a large, it was a large family. Um, and so they were on, but they had some barriers,
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you know, they had some rental, uh, barriers that are really hard to overcome. Um, credit,
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that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Uh, a lot of things like that, uh, you know, just,
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they were kind of just, uh, they were going to need a special touch. And so what I did was I worked
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very closely with them. And, um, after Adam and his parents came to one of the, you know, I would
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put on events for landlords in the community to talk about our program and they, you know,
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they came out to it. Um, and, uh, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty touching, you know, that
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this is my buddy, you know, we have a great friendship. I don't mix, I keep work at work.
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Um, but specifically I, I brought them because they needed to, you know, I needed to house this
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family. So Thomas was married with kids. Yeah. So they move in. And as I understand it,
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you had a very good relationship in the beginning, Adam, with the tenant. Yeah. Um, you know, we,
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yeah, we did. Um, Daniel even went out there and, you know, gave the guy guitar lessons. We,
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we reached out and said, if you guys need anything else, you know, clothes, um, you know, we have a,
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we have a big family. So if the kids need, you know, need any clothes or anything, let us know.
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And, you know, we dropped rent from what we were initially charging 1400 to 12. We, we wanted it
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to work for them. It, you know, it was, it seemed like a good thing to do and yeah, we wanted it to
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work. So. And by the way, Daniel, you tell me, but this is this, the beginning of this story
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underscores why we need mom and pop landlords. Absolutely. There was no way for, uh, a lot of families
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in programs like this. It's not just exclusive to programs like the SSVF program, but, or it could
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apply to the section A program or lots of other types of programs. Um, you will not pass a rental
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criteria that especially large landlords have, you know, as a policy, uh, smaller, like, you know,
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and it's just no, and you can appeal some of those things, but usually it's no.
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Yeah. You need a reasonable human who has the power to bend the rules on the other side. I have
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been on both sides of this as somebody who used to have absolutely no money coming out of school,
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having put myself through. And I w I would look at people who wouldn't help me and say,
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but this is why there's a human being in your position, you know, who can use reason and kindness
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and heart to make decisions. When you're dealing with a corporate landlord, there's no reason and
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there's no heart. So it's great to have the atoms of the world. It's because, and it's because
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those big landlords get sued and that's when they make those, you know, if you give one person the
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deal and the next person finds out about it, they're like, Hey, wait a minute. Why didn't I
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get a deal? And so the small landlords, as we see Walmart and CVS and Starbucks and all these banks
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take over the nation, Amazon, it's just nice to be reminded that like mom and pop operations are
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important and they're important for a number of reasons. And this is just one, you know, hand to hand
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deals can be made and judgment exercise where it ought to be. Now that that is not undermined by
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how this story ended because not every risk pans out, you know, for, I'm sure for every Thomas and
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it did not work out with Thomas, which is where we're going. Um, you've got a lot of other guys,
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gals, veterans in particular who live up to their obligations, who take the fresh start and make,
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make a go of it. One of the reasons you're on is because the fact that this guy didn't,
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it has made news and underscores the position you were put in by your federal government.
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Okay. So Adam, back to you. So things were going great. Daniel's going over there,
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giving Thomas free guitar lessons. You've lowered the rent. You guys are helping him out.
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And then, um, couple payments missed and you get the eviction moratorium. So
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were you, did you guys owe a mortgage on this property? Was it met? Was it a matter of if I
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don't get the rent, I can't pay my mortgage? Um, yeah, I mean, it's my, my dad got laid off during
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the coronavirus. So this is his main source of income. This is, you know, my mom and dad,
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my mom's retired. Dad didn't have a job. So it was, this is their retirement. So yeah,
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they, they heavily depend on the money. Um, every month, you know, it's, it's, it's,
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So even though he owns these three houses, he's not swimming in money. This is not a rich man.
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No, no, absolutely not. Okay. Uh, well that makes sense. I mean, even in New York,
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it's the same thing. A lot of renters, uh, and landlords in New York city and the landlords,
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even though they own these beautiful buildings that they need your money to pay their, their
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mortgage. That's how they pay these expensive mortgages. Yeah. You know, my, a business,
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my dad's a, my dad's an everyday guy. Like our, our other rentals are, you know, families that have
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been in there for five, six, seven years. So it's, and you know, they keep the rent affordable
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and because for them, they would rather have it, you know, tenants in there, there are happy. And
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it, you know, it all works. This, you know, there's, it can be stressful if you really, you know,
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get into it. So, um, well, and by the way, on your other properties, did the tenants stop paying
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their rents or do they continue paying throughout the moratorium? They continued paying. Okay. So this
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tenant was given a gift, Thomas, and what happened? So how did you first realize that this is getting
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bad? This is, this is about even more than not paying rent. Um, it was the police reports that
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we were getting, you know, like I said, there was 27, uh, calls to the cops within the time they were
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there. Um, and so it was becoming, you know, a nuisance community. Um, and then that on top of
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unpaid rent, we weren't really sure what we could do. We didn't know what our options were. Um,
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you know, the moratorium was so new, nobody really knew. Uh, we contact the lawyer. Um,
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it just didn't seem like anybody really had any answers, you know, and we couldn't really afford
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our lawyer at the time. It was, you know, it's like make a quick phone call, you know,
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gets quick answers kind of thing. Cause, um, and it was difficult cause you know, they,
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the tenants had a free lawyer. So we knew our, you know, our backs were kind of against the wall.
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So it was, yeah, it was, it was. And why did the tenant have a free lawyer? Uh, the Northwest
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justice project, um, is the Washington, uh, free lawyers for tenants. And so this isn't about his
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status as a veteran. This is about the eviction moratorium. Not only will they stop the landlords
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from throwing you out. If you don't pay your rent, they'll pay for your lawyer. If the landlord
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does get to the point where he needs to take action. Yeah. And that, and that organization
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existed before, um, the moratorium and it's, uh, I guess I think it would be labeled housing justice,
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uh, or a housing justice organization. And, and they have a good use because sometimes,
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you know, there is bad actors that are landlords or, you know, there's a business dispute and it's worth,
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you know, it's, it's really cool when somebody that's very low income can be represented. Um,
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however, uh, not from the moratorium, but actually from, uh, some of the legislation that's passed
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in Washington, um, things like the Northwest justice project that's made to kind of help the little guy
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has kind of turned into, um, a behemoth that helps all tenants avoid any eviction.
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Up in one minute, what Adam actually found in that house when he got back inside and a note,
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it was horrifying. It's a word of caution to all landlords whose heart may be in the right place
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about the power of government when connected with bad actors. That's in one minute.
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What kind of police reports are being filed, Adam? What, what were they alleged to have done?
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Um, domestic violence, drug use, it was just constant, you know, and it was, you know,
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an everyday thing. So we don't really know what was going on in there other than it was within,
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you know, a year and a half, there was 27 police reports and they were in there, uh, what five
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months after that, which there was several more. Do you ever show up at the door and knock on the
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door and just say, Hey Thomas, what's going on? I mean, yeah, we tried, it would either be no response.
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Um, the one time that I did, you know, put a notice up, uh, there was a woman there and she,
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uh, she didn't even know who they were, who the tenants were Thomas. What? She, they had been gone.
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Yeah. For months, two months. I'm not quite sure how long they're gone for, but yeah,
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she didn't even know who they were. So now you've got squatters in there. Yeah.
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So the, the, you, I don't know what you do about them. Are there, are squatters covered
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by the eviction moratorium? Kind of. Yeah. Yes. Yes, they can be. And Washington, uh, you know,
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we have a bunch of crazy liberal policies before the moratorium too. Um, so don't, let's get,
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let's give us our fair due here. We've been doing it the wrong way for a long time.
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Yeah. It's not all the federal government. Yeah. Cause there's several States who have their own
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eviction moratorium on top of the federal one and whichever one is more strict is the one the
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landlords found by. Yep. So exactly. Exactly. All right. So Adam, so you, when I imagine there was
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a point at which you were just looking at the end date of this moratorium thinking, just get me to
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that end date. Just get, let's just get there. And then I can get these folks out. Whoever's in there
00:19:36.280
now. Yeah. Um, but it was so unclear when the end date was going to be. So what did you think? I mean,
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like, what, what were you waiting for? What date? Uh, we didn't really know every, you know,
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everything was so uncertain. It seemed like nobody had an answer for any of our questions. Um, and it
00:19:51.320
seemed like, uh, because the moratorium, it was everybody's hands were tied. You know, we, the
00:19:56.280
cops tried to, you know, did a lot for us. They tried to, they tried really hard and yeah, I just,
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there was nothing we could do because the moratorium. So I didn't really know what to think. I pretty
00:20:06.260
much was thinking we're going to lose our house. Hmm. I mean, at that point,
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that could have been a blessing. I mean, losing the house means it's now the bank's problem. I,
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I just, I'm thinking how long can this go on where you've got squatters inside who may be
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committing criminal acts you over whom you have no control, but might have to whom you may have
00:20:26.720
potential liability. I mean, it goes on and on. I would think as a landlord, it might be a blessing
00:20:31.200
to have the, the, the bank take over. I mean, I mean, certainly they were in, they were in this
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position where, you know, if this is a really hard part of being a landlord is a lot of times
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people that are landlords are older and you have to do, you know, estate planning and, you know,
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some asset planning on how, if you're going to exit the rental industry so that you don't pay too
00:20:53.920
many tax. Right. And so all of a sudden, right. You know, when Adam's father's retiring, um,
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and then, you know, he picked up a side gig and then, you know, COVID happened. Um, and the whole
00:21:08.040
goal of his retirement was, you know, it was, it was stress and it was time for, you know, dad to be
00:21:12.140
home a little bit more, like kind of like from the doctor type of a deal. And all of a sudden
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there's this very stressful situation. And so the first thought is, well, maybe we should just sell
00:21:22.860
the, the unit. And, um, you are, you are allowed to do that in, um, under the moratorium, you can
00:21:30.800
give a 60 day notice of intent to sell. Yeah. And it was, uh, I think 11 months after that notice that
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they finally got out. Wow. When you, when you give the 60 day notice, do they have to get out within
00:21:45.200
the 60 days, technically? Unless there's, uh, there is a certain amount of judicial discretion.
00:21:54.220
So, you know, if you, uh, get the right judge, uh, maybe not. Um, but realistically you could
00:21:59.800
never sell the property with such tenants inside. Right. I mean, no, I mean, we couldn't even,
00:22:04.400
we couldn't even show the, uh, the house they had, you know, they had spike strips on the driveway.
00:22:09.180
It wasn't, it wasn't a house. Yeah. It wasn't a house you want to approach. I mean, it's,
00:22:13.800
it's guns drawn when you're approaching that house. It's, and I didn't really realize,
00:22:18.960
I didn't realize how dangerous it was until perhaps after the fact, but you know, yeah,
00:22:25.080
it wasn't, you don't go knock on the door and say, you know, how are you doing? It's.
00:22:30.260
And was the house in a good area? I don't mean, what kind of neighborhood is it? I mean,
00:22:35.200
Cheney is considered one of the, it's a great town. Yeah. That's where I grew up as a kid,
00:22:40.180
which is why I wanted to house them out there. Cause I never, I never once. That's how, you
00:22:46.120
know, that's how I cared about those people. And I'm like, you know, if they need to get safe,
00:22:50.300
you know, this, this person's done a lot, let's get them into, uh, you know, Cheney has like the
00:22:55.280
state patrol, the Spokane County sheriffs, the Cheney police department and Easter Washington
00:22:59.300
universities police. I'm like, you guys are going to be safe here. No more of the worries of,
00:23:03.660
you know, sleeping in your car, worried that your stuff's going to get ripped off.
00:23:08.000
Your kids are going to get to go to school and it's going to, you know, they're going to,
00:23:11.140
they're going to have a new life, a new, a new change.
00:23:15.600
So finally you get into court and does the judge side with you in terms of the eviction?
00:23:22.300
So not the first time. Yeah, correct. Not the first time it was, uh, the second time.
00:23:27.860
First, you were told no, because of the eviction moratorium.
00:23:29.940
Yeah, correct. Okay. And so what finally got the judge to change their mind?
00:23:36.760
I can give a little bit of info on, on the timeline. Um, sure. So as far as I can tell,
00:23:43.540
um, what, what happened was, you know, they, they served a 60 day notice, um, for the intent to sell
00:23:49.660
and, uh, the, the realtors couldn't access the property because they were being literally chased
00:23:56.300
away and screamed at, um, you know, by whoever was there. And this was during a time when the
00:24:04.500
courthouse and stuff was shut down due to whatever phase we were in. Right. Well, and she also claimed
00:24:10.700
that she had COVID three times, right? So people, the, yeah, the defendant kept claiming, right.
00:24:17.740
That they had COVID in what, at the time the courts were very, they didn't, there was no proof. Yeah.
00:24:22.700
No proofs required during the moratorium that you actually have COVID, but the courts were very
00:24:26.620
willing to, you know, push the date out, push the date out, push the date out. All the sudden concern
00:24:31.820
for landlords rights. I mean, zero, zero, zero, zero. Yeah. Correct. Um, so, so that's, so that's what
00:24:37.780
happened. Um, it kept getting pushed out and ultimately, uh, you know, Adam's family and, um,
00:24:44.820
their lawyer basically decided it, let's just start over with this process. Right. Let's give
00:24:50.040
another 60 day notice and let's, you know, take it from the top, take two. And, um, after shortly
00:24:57.980
after about, um, I don't know, maybe 20, 25 days after that notice was served, that's when there was
00:25:05.620
a major, um, uh, you know, uh, felony assault, um, at the, at the property. And I, I think that
00:25:14.580
that may have weighed, um, at this point in the police reports that the police are like,
00:25:19.520
we are at this house all the time. And I think that that kind of was the nail in, in the coffin
00:25:27.780
because they, you know, they didn't leave again after the second 60 day notice. Um, and so at that
00:25:35.420
point they could potentially be, um, actually evicted even under the governor's moratorium.
00:25:41.740
Mm-hmm. Right. It has to be, it has to be that egregious in order to get around it. They make it
00:25:47.580
so hard for the landlord. I mean, that standard of proof to get somebody out under this thing is
00:25:52.240
next to impossible. You kind of have to have a tenant like this in order to get around it. Um,
00:25:57.960
because the presumption is always with the tenant there, they're bending over backwards to help the
00:26:01.780
tenants. And this is even though we've given billions of dollars in relief to tenants. I mean,
00:26:07.420
the, the federal government understands that it put tenants in and landlords in a tough position
00:26:12.560
and has been giving up billions of dollars. And yet, I guess the complaint is that the states are
00:26:18.140
not getting that money to the tenants. Um, you know, you can make the argument either way. Cause
00:26:23.900
the, the, the truth is that the unemployment rate is extremely low right now. People are getting back
00:26:28.260
to work. The jobs report in July was better than it's been in years and a way better than they
00:26:33.360
expected it to be. And so, you know, there's a real question about why the tenants who aren't paying
00:26:37.280
their rent aren't paying it. Why aren't they working at this point? Well, it didn't say the
00:26:41.600
moratorium incentivizes bad behavior. You know, it's, it's not, you don't have to take responsibility
00:26:46.040
for, for yourself. It's in, and there's no, you know, there's no consequences. So it leaves no
00:26:51.760
recourse for the landlords at all. You know, this, they, these tenants were through a government
00:26:57.120
supported system and we had to get, you know, an expensive lawyer. And even with the police reports,
00:27:04.280
it took a long time to get them out. And then I think it was only really under extreme circumstances
00:27:10.880
that, you know, we were able to, and the damage is not over. It's the house is still, you know,
00:27:18.140
destroyed. Well, what happened, Adam, when you finally got them out, you got the order and you
00:27:23.280
finally got into the house. What'd you see? Yeah. So, you know, we, uh, we couldn't afford
00:27:27.920
clean, you know, a cleaning crew. So it was me and my father went out there, um, to our house and
00:27:33.240
it was atrocious. You know, it was, it was a nightmare. It was really disheartening. It was,
00:27:38.460
you know, um, garbage everywhere, you know, heroin needles, feces, broken windows, broken doors,
00:27:44.880
spray painted, you know, on the floor, spray painting, you know, cuss words. There was,
00:27:49.360
you know, it was like, it was devastating. You know, um, we had to clean everything out.
00:27:55.700
I mean, just the amount of garbage and dump, just the dump fee was upwards of four grand,
00:28:00.540
just in, just to go, just to dump the garbage. That's much stuff was in the house. So it was
00:28:06.820
devastating. I mean, it was something that we obviously, you know, we talked about it every
00:28:11.000
single day. It started to consume my dad, you know, it's how are we going to get this fixed?
00:28:15.360
What are we going to do? Is it worth selling? Um, and you know, it's, it's somebody who destroyed
00:28:21.120
your property, destroyed it's their income. It's their livelihood. So it was, it still is
00:28:26.880
something we're, you know, we're dealing with. It's, it's wrong. Right. Because it's not just
00:28:31.580
money. It, it tugs at your heartstrings. It's a, it's a constant stressor. And you know, I'm not
00:28:36.640
blaming the tenants. They, you know, they, I mean, in certain ways, but you know, they,
00:28:40.960
they had a rough past and they needed, you know, support and they needed a chance. I'm not so much
00:28:47.100
harping on them. They have troubles that they need to, you know, get through, but
00:28:50.620
it was really the system in place, the moratorium, um, with no plan or recourse, the landlords,
00:28:57.400
nothing you can do. Someone is blatantly destroying your property. And when's it going to stop? We didn't
00:29:05.440
know. Is it, is it over now? Bad behavior. Can you just, yeah. I mean, well, having no
00:29:12.380
responsibility for your actions incentivizes bad behavior. I mean, you know, and I, and now it's
00:29:17.040
not only, Oh, we're not going to pay rent. It's, we're going to break your stuff. You know, people
00:29:21.580
who otherwise wouldn't do such things when you, when you put something in such as a moratorium,
00:29:25.980
it what's the rules now you're not paying rent. There's no response. You know, there's no re there's
00:29:31.140
no consequence for not paying rent. It didn't, you know, people start doing, uh,
00:29:35.440
bad things, you know? And I mean, what, what would you say to the people who say, well,
00:29:40.640
you had two other rental rental properties where people didn't do that. So can't blame
00:29:45.120
the moratorium. It's just one guy on a bad path. One's enough. One out of three, it leaves us.
00:29:50.840
I mean, it doesn't sound like a good gamble to me. And quite frankly, it's not right. I mean,
00:29:56.840
it doesn't quite make a difference if, you know, these other tenants did it right. Well, these people
00:30:02.820
didn't and they're in the system completely failed us here. And you know, what if you had an apartment
00:30:08.260
complex or, you know, it's not just me that's getting, you know, affected by this. It's a big
00:30:13.280
deal. Well, of course, people who are paying the rent, you're looking around saying, why am I paying
00:30:18.640
my rent? A lot of people are looking around saying I'm paying my rent and what he's not paying his rent
00:30:23.860
and we're both living in a similar house. How's that fair? Well, you know, we were,
00:30:28.340
and we were scared that our other tenants would, you know, the whole coronavirus thing was new to
00:30:34.560
us. And it seemed like one of our houses was getting completely destroyed and it was a complete
00:30:39.180
nightmare. So yeah, every month, you know, we're wondering, like, I hope the other tenants like
00:30:43.040
don't do anything similar to this or, you know, and thank God they didn't. But is that a risk that
00:30:48.840
we should have to take? And correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, you'll probably know this better than I will,
00:30:54.260
but the assistance goes out to people who are making pretty good money. I mean, it was like
00:31:01.860
195,000 or near 200,000 bucks as a couple. Just under that, you're eligible. You can get the
00:31:10.980
advantage of the eviction moratorium. I mean, that's pretty good mint.
00:31:13.640
Right. And really what it's, what it's doing is it's created. There's no responsibility because
00:31:20.820
there's no consequences and, and consequences are a good thing. You know, when, when somebody's
00:31:26.480
doing something, you know, a bad behavior that not pro social behavior, it's good to have those
00:31:31.980
consequences because that's how people change. Yeah. Right. And these people, these people are
00:31:37.480
getting $600 a month. I mean, a week, a week from the government already, like as part of the code
00:31:42.240
relief. Right. And, and there's, you don't have to prove it. Maybe things have changed slightly in
00:31:48.900
the sense that if you get into court, maybe they'll bring up a little bit more what your actual economic
00:31:54.700
situation is. But for a very long time, you could not even ask if they had lost income. So, you know,
00:32:03.000
a lot of people were working from home and they, you know, that haven't paid rent. Their incomes didn't
00:32:10.040
go down. I know in this instance that their income did not change over the course. So they were still
00:32:15.540
getting whatever checks they'd been getting when they'd been paying the rent. It sounds like in this
00:32:19.500
case, they may have been diverting some of that to drugs. Not to rent. That's what, yeah. Yeah. I can say
00:32:24.680
that they weren't paying their rent with, with the money that they were receiving. Yeah. So what's
00:32:29.780
happening is I was paying for whatever they were doing in that house. You guys were paying for whatever
00:32:34.080
they were doing in that house. The people listening to this program, it's federal, federal money going
00:32:38.680
to folks to try and help them bridge this unemployment gap. Um, even though they can
00:32:44.460
earn quite a big salary and still get it. And then if they're not paying the rent, we're backing them
00:32:49.600
up again without doing much of an inquiry to see whether they're an appropriate candidate. It's just a
00:32:53.860
wide swath moratorium. It's not, it's really not individual. And even when you get in court from what
00:32:58.740
you're telling me, there's not much of an interest in probing the specific circumstances.
00:33:02.580
Yeah. I didn't help anybody in this case. Didn't help, you know, certainly didn't help us. And it
00:33:06.960
didn't, didn't help them either. In one second, I'm going to ask the guys about Cori Bush out there
00:33:12.200
pretending she's homeless by sleeping on the Capitol steps for a couple, few nights in a row,
00:33:16.140
as if this is somehow representative of what the homeless population experiences. Um, she says,
00:33:22.320
this is a matter of human dignity. Do the guys agree with that? And what's their response to her?
00:33:27.400
This is an interesting segment. Uh, we'll get to it in just a second, but first it's time for
00:33:31.820
another edition of from the archives, where we bring you some sound. We feel you must hear
00:33:35.960
from our growing library of podcasts today, we're going to bring you back to January of this year
00:33:40.760
and episode 50. Let me set the stage. This was one week after January 6th, Donald Trump had just
00:33:46.520
been kicked off of every social media platform. And in the episode, we talked to the CEO of Parler
00:33:52.700
whose app was being forced out of existence by big tech. And then we talked to the CEO of Substack,
00:33:58.260
which at the time was just starting to become a force in the independent media space.
00:34:02.400
Here's part of my conversation with the co-founder of Substack, Chris Best. People are scared. So I
00:34:09.680
think a place like Substack is probably looking good to folks who are worried they might get booted or
00:34:14.480
their platform might get, you know, attacked, but you're not immune from this. Are you, are you immune
00:34:20.120
to this, to this kind of crackdown? Cause you, you also have servers that you probably don't control.
00:34:24.240
No. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, that's part of why this stuff is worrying to me too. Like,
00:34:29.640
I don't think that we should be having people shut down people's servers and all that stuff.
00:34:33.240
I think that, that, that way lies madness to me. The more interesting question here though,
00:34:38.560
is not like, you know, yes, our present moment is crazy. Everyone's starting to kind of like
00:34:42.560
realize that things have gone off the rails, but things have been going off the rails like for some
00:34:47.560
time. And my, this is sort of the reason we started Substack. It's the reason we started this
00:34:54.560
company is I kind of feel like the place we're at now is a necessary consequence of the way that
00:35:01.720
like the internet and our reading habits and the incentive structure within media has been pushing
00:35:08.380
the whole discourse for the past sort of decade. Outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage, outrage,
00:35:17.020
right? You have all these things where like, you know, on, on social media, on these feeds that are
00:35:21.140
maximizing for engagement, you know, it's all about these takes, right? The people are fun. It doesn't
00:35:25.920
matter who says the take, as long as someone says the take, it's going to like take off and be great.
00:35:30.020
And that means that you get this kind of, you know, market for outrage, where even if you're,
00:35:34.860
even if you're an honest person and you don't want to take the, the, the cheap take, someone's
00:35:39.340
going to take it, right? So any incendiary take that can exist will eventually exist. The truth
00:35:45.400
gets devalued. We have this, it completely breaks our ability to like see our own society and
00:35:51.640
understand it, right? Because you're always seeing the craziest takes from everybody that you see as
00:35:56.080
your enemies. And you get this fun house mirror view of society where everybody that's not on my team
00:36:01.860
is completely crazy. It completely justifies whatever my team does. And if you, if enough
00:36:07.520
people believe that, if enough people, you know, even if you don't believe in what people say on
00:36:11.820
social media, people tend to believe that other people believe it. And then you get this effect
00:36:15.960
where that becomes a reality, right? It, it, people start to organize around these crazy lines where
00:36:23.800
whatever we do is justified, whatever they do is awful. Everything is in this complete fight to the
00:36:28.780
death. And then you get this, this group think, right? Where anybody that's critical of your own
00:36:35.660
tribe is, is lives in fear of being ostracized or being shut out.
00:36:41.480
What have we seen since? Well, Andrew Sullivan on this week, again, he has a Substack column.
00:36:46.820
It's crushing it as is Glenn Greenwald's and Matt Taibbi's. Barry Weiss joined Substack shortly after
00:36:52.380
that too. For now, the censorship fans are not going after Substack too hard. Although, you know,
00:36:57.480
it's coming because already they're saying like, Oh, it's not, it's not big journalism. You know,
00:37:01.440
there's no editor and so on. Oh, please. Um, like you can totally trust the New York times because
00:37:06.100
of its editors, right? I, let me tell you half the interviews I've ever given, you know, profile
00:37:10.640
pieces of me or about my journalism, the report is perfectly friendly. They do a perfectly nice job.
00:37:15.680
And then once the editor of these left-wing magazines gets his or her hands on it,
00:37:19.520
they turn it into a massive hit piece on you. So you can see the work of these left-wing
00:37:23.540
editors in these publications, even on my stupid profile levels, nevermind when it's something
00:37:28.440
about Trump or to the day's politics or, you know, general cultural issues that, you know,
00:37:33.700
these editors are on the left side of anyway, Substack is important. And the absence of an editor
00:37:39.040
is a good thing in my view, when you trust the journalist doing the writing.
00:37:42.960
So what's next podcasts. Hmm. Are they going to come after the censors going to come after us
00:37:48.600
already? We've seen some of that. Well, bring it, bring it because that's one good thing about the
00:37:52.460
serious show. We're going to be live. You can't censor it. It's going out there live. Good luck.
00:37:58.280
Anyway, for now, we're going to keep bringing you more highlights from the archives. And now
00:38:09.100
We've seen Cori Bush, um, out, she's sleeping night after night out in front of the Capitol
00:38:14.680
building. This is somehow going to represent what it's like for homeless people, um, with her $70,000
00:38:20.020
worth of security. But anyway, so she's, uh, she's railing about people like you who are opposed to
00:38:25.160
this extension, which, you know, Biden already said they couldn't do. He already said we checked
00:38:29.500
it four times, quadruple checked. And, uh, I guess on, on the quintuple check, they realized, oh,
00:38:36.020
maybe we could, it's all, it's all a sleight of hand. They can't do it. It's not lawful. They're
00:38:40.180
doing it anyway. They're trying to run out the clock until it gets back up to the Supreme court.
00:38:43.680
But here's Cori Bush trying to explain why this is necessary. Listen, when you sleep outside on
00:38:49.180
the ground, you are, um, open and you are vulnerable to all the elements. However, whatever
00:38:54.840
those elements are was cold last night and now it's super hot. We've still been here. I still
00:38:59.380
have on the same clothes I had on last night. I'm dirty. I'm, I'm dirty. I'm sticky. I'm sweaty. I
00:39:05.640
still have on what I had on last night. This is how people will have to live. If we don't do
00:39:09.740
something, 7 million people, 6 million, 11 million, how many ever it is, they deserve
00:39:14.480
their human dignity. What's your, what's your message for her? I don't know if it's that simple
00:39:19.700
of an answer, but simply just allowing tenants not pay rent. I mean, where's, where's the human
00:39:25.240
dignity for, for me, uh, cleaning up heroin, heroin needles and feces in my home that has unpaid
00:39:32.160
rent for over a year and it's destroyed. I just wonder what is she even suggesting, you know,
00:39:38.060
like I, I get, I get that she cosplayed, uh, for a couple of days and look, people that
00:39:45.880
have the lived experience of homelessness, it is terrible. She, she's not totally incorrect,
00:39:51.620
which is why this is why this issue is so important because we're kind of mixing a few
00:39:57.800
kind of key distinct things. One, if we're talking about actually helping people that are experiencing
00:40:04.080
homelessness or at risk of homelessness, we're talking about housing them. That's what, that's
00:40:09.860
the, the paradigm of these housing programs through HUD, um, or HUD funded programs. And just in general
00:40:16.140
for housing programs, it's called housing first. And what it means is, is when you have somebody
00:40:21.200
that's experiencing homelessness, like let's say you're sleeping in your car, it's impossible to go
00:40:25.760
get a job. It really kind of is too, you know, cause where do you brush your teeth? Where do you,
00:40:30.760
where do you wash your clothes? You do that at your home usually. And so I understand what she's,
00:40:35.820
what she's getting at. There's some truth there, but here's the thing. These policies are getting
00:40:41.440
rid of landlords like Adam and his family that would normally that would maybe, maybe they would rent
00:40:49.960
to this gal and her $70,000 worth of security sleeping, you know, on the steps, you know, maybe
00:40:56.360
she could pass the application process. And even if she didn't, maybe they would figure out how to make
00:41:02.160
it work, but she's, she's essentially stating like, Oh, well, housing's a human right, which I would
00:41:10.480
also potentially agree with that. Um, but what she's not talking about is what this means for your
00:41:19.600
property rights. And that's where this, this, it, the conversation has to, it has to shift because
00:41:25.840
we used to have property rights. I, I actually remember before the moratorium. It's a, it's a,
00:41:33.740
I remember before COVID it's the strangest thing. That was like 10 years ago. It feels like, right.
00:41:38.380
But we had a little bit more rights back then. And if you were to see, you know, the difference
00:41:43.780
between like Adam's demeanor, his family's demeanor, the stress that this puts on them, it went,
00:41:49.600
from being like, I'm sure glad that we have these units, um, you know, to, to supplement
00:41:54.940
our income as our parents are in retirement age. It went from that to, I really hope that
00:42:02.340
we don't lose everything. And so how, how can you even work with these programs? If, if the risk
00:42:09.900
is, well, we'll make, maybe, you know, maybe the unit's fucking destroyed. Okay. Or maybe,
00:42:18.960
maybe it's not, but, but this person saying, well, you know, I'm sleeping outside and it's
00:42:24.120
cold and stuff. And it's like, well, Hey, those are, those are kind of unrelated issues.
00:42:30.440
And you guys were already trying to solve the issue she's speaking about. You need willing
00:42:36.840
landlords like Adam who are, who will lower the rent, who will check on the tenant guys like you,
00:42:42.780
who will go give the guitar lessons and, and, you know, just take a risk on somebody who the black
00:42:48.800
rocks of the world will not. And, and her approach, which doesn't factor in landlords rights,
00:42:55.380
property rights, or the humanity of the landlords renting at all is a disincentive to them to help the
00:43:02.520
very people she claims to want to assist. Correct. Right. And you're, you're supposed to reward
00:43:08.640
good behavior. So these, these tenant advocates, I consider myself an affordable housing advocate
00:43:14.900
because I have a huge heart for, you know, people in rapid rehousing programs, people on section eight
00:43:20.800
vouchers, you know, there's also a type of voucher called HUD bash, which is section eight for
00:43:25.600
disabled veterans. There's a huge need for the services that they provide. But if you eliminate,
00:43:32.660
whether it's through increased taxes or increased regulation, massive, massive, like this has never
00:43:39.620
happened, this type of regulation to happen kind of all with a stroke of a pen to fundamentally change
00:43:46.240
the real estate market in the state that I, you know, in Washington state, they don't realize that,
00:43:52.820
well, there's, there's getting, there's going to be less and less and less rental homes for people to
00:43:59.840
rent to, um, spoke Spokane's not in the news for a lot of things. Usually we're in the news for like
00:44:05.320
a serial killer or something like that. Um, but we were recently, yeah, yeah, we got, we got some
00:44:12.480
cool stuff going on over here. Um, yeah, it's pretty exciting. Uh, we also have the hottest, uh, like
00:44:21.200
rental market in the United States. One of them, I know we were in the top five, uh, a month ago and
00:44:26.500
we were the number one for rent increases. Um, and the reason why that this is kind of happening
00:44:32.720
is the housing stocks going down because sink for, and this is specifically for single family,
00:44:39.720
uh, home, uh, landlords, right? Not apartment buildings, but single family homes like Adam's
00:44:45.560
parents have is you, when you sell that home, you're not selling it to another landlord.
00:44:50.780
You're selling it to an owner occupier. And so that rental unit just goes away. There's one less home
00:44:58.840
for a family to move into. And it's not just affecting people that are experiencing homelessness.
00:45:05.200
It's affecting everyone that wants to rent. Yeah. That's why the rent's gone up so much because
00:45:11.380
guess what? These landlords see, you know what this risk, what's happening to my property rights
00:45:16.840
is not worth it to stay in this game. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cash out while you,
00:45:23.060
this is the highest, our house housing prices have ever been here.
00:45:26.540
My impression when I listen to these politicians talk about this issue is they treat all landlords
00:45:30.920
like they're, you know, money bags, you know, like you, you got more, we got money coming out of your
00:45:35.720
ears. And then on the other side, there's the poor tenants who you're, you know, you're like a
00:45:40.500
veteran. You're trying to push him out and he's down on his luck and the government screwed him over.
00:45:45.340
And, and you're sitting back there with four houses and screw you, right? Like that's how
00:45:50.660
the media covers this. That's how the people like Cori Bush talk about this. They've done a pretty
00:45:55.580
good job of demonizing the evil landlords. Well, it's not, that's not the case. Um, like I said,
00:46:01.720
you know, my parents are everyday people and every time they even, you know, bought a house,
00:46:05.220
it was a sacrifice to get the house. You know, it was a big deal. It wasn't like, Oh, we're just
00:46:09.960
going to buy, you know, it's years and years of savings to get a house. And then we fix it up.
00:46:15.340
You know, we, it's a long process and, you know, a lot of time, you know, if they're moving out and
00:46:22.040
you've got a couple months, a couple of weeks, you know, a little gap, sometimes you're breaking
00:46:26.160
even, you know, and my parents don't, we're not, they're not one of those, you know, landlords
00:46:30.160
that, but they keep the rent affordable. They want people in there that are, that everything's,
00:46:35.760
you know, kosher, it flows, it works. We don't, you know, it's good for everybody. Um, so we're,
00:46:41.660
you know, they're very reasonable in those terms. So it's, this is their income. My dad hasn't had
00:46:47.360
a steady job in 10, 15 years. So this is his source of income. The government says they're
00:46:53.520
supposed to pay you back, right? That they, the tenant, you can't throw them out, but eventually
00:46:57.200
they're supposed to pay back all that rent. What are the odds? I don't know. I don't know. Did
00:47:00.880
they even say that? Yeah. They say a lot of things. The government says lots of things,
00:47:05.820
even, even, uh, Joe Biden, you know, recently criticized the States for sending out the money
00:47:12.240
too slowly, which I mean, at that point, it means it's, I think we can confirm that the money's being
00:47:19.520
sent out too slowly and you have to kind of ask yourself why, um, this, this is, this is a good
00:47:24.700
example of why, because they, you know, let's talk about housing first again, real quick. So housing is
00:47:30.380
the most important thing in these people's lives, which is what, you know, uh, what'd you say her name
00:47:34.720
was, uh, the gal on steps. Yeah. So I guarantee she's a huge, guaranteed. She's a huge housing
00:47:42.720
first advocate guaranteed. She'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Um, you know, what they're not
00:47:49.760
really taking into consideration is, you know, housing first applies to a few different people
00:47:57.200
and we need housing first to apply to the landlords too. You're not supporting them.
00:48:03.020
Apparently there's supposed to be some money that they're going to get. Why isn't it getting to
00:48:07.100
them? It's because they only pay landlords and the tenants both, right? The, what the government
00:48:12.980
funds do is they fund these grants and the grants get picked up by nonprofits, right? That, that have
00:48:18.840
the ability to, or the capacity, um, to, to do the grant, you know, cause there's only so many
00:48:25.060
nonprofits. You're talking non, non moratorium stuff. Now you're talking about housing first and
00:48:29.480
other policies that are meant to get. No. So for this, for this cares act and American recovery act
00:48:34.800
funds, right there, uh, there's a ton of money for, for tenants and to potentially pay landlords
00:48:40.900
like Adam. Um, but the issue is one, it's hard to find organizations that have the ability to even do
00:48:46.860
that. And two, when you see these grants, they're hiring people for 16 to 18 bucks an hour to give
00:48:53.740
landlords, you know, to deal with these claims. And I just wonder like, okay, I thought housing was the
00:48:58.780
most important thing yet. You're going to require a master's degree to go work at a nonprofit for 16
00:49:04.900
bucks an hour. Like how, no wonder these jobs aren't getting filled. Well, so what's that? Did
00:49:09.200
you file a claim, Adam, that would reimburse you some of this money from the federal government,
00:49:13.280
from the, from the COVID relief cares act? We did. Um, we haven't seen any money.
00:49:18.740
Hmm. Do they say that they'll put that? I mean, on paper, is there a representation that you could get
00:49:23.620
all of it back? No, no, no, no, nobody's no. So what, what had happened was that we did have a,
00:49:31.920
uh, uh, uh, mitigation fund in Washington state through the department of commerce.
00:49:38.300
And here's the deal. It can pay up to $5,000, but if you take the money, you can do no further action
00:49:46.540
against the tenant, against anyone. And when you have the, yes. So it's a good deal, right? Which it is
00:49:53.220
a really good deal. If there's a lot less damage, it's a really good deal. You know, like let's say
00:49:57.320
there's a couple of broken, a broken door or a broken window. Yeah. Stuff happens, you know,
00:50:03.320
and that mitigation fund, I've personally helped landlords when I was working at social service
00:50:07.360
agencies fill out the paperwork, but you know, when COVID happens, what happens is these offices,
00:50:12.920
it kind of goes back to what I was just saying. These offices were shut down for in-person,
00:50:18.280
you know, people weren't at work due to the COVID restrictions. And so they made this
00:50:23.160
huge juggernaut of regulation and then sent everyone that would do anything home.
00:50:28.580
Yeah. Right. And so they're wondering like, well, why was it my claim process? It's because
00:50:33.140
there's no one in the office to process it. Even now? Well, now they're starting to be,
00:50:38.640
I mean, things are opening up quite a bit more. Um, I know that Washington, uh, you know,
00:50:44.520
we love shutting down here. So like, I'm sure this, uh, this fall we're going to, we're going to
00:50:50.160
probably, you know, we're, we're going to do it again. I bet. Um, if I, if I were to guess now,
00:50:54.280
I'm not, uh, I'm not a doctor or anything, but I, if I, if I know them, um, there's going to be a
00:51:00.280
reason, right? There's always a reason to extend the moratorium. The moratorium has been extended seven
00:51:04.160
times in Washington. There's always a reason to extend it. And what's so fantastic about the last
00:51:11.140
extension is they don't call it a moratorium anymore. They call it a bridge program.
00:51:15.920
And the reason why they had to do this was because, uh, you know, a lot of people are,
00:51:22.120
are getting vaxxed. Uh, we're at 70% in Washington. And so they, they didn't say we need to extend
00:51:28.580
the moratorium because of COVID. What Jay Inslee said was that we need to extend the moratorium
00:51:35.880
because we haven't put into place any of these, um, enforcers of these regulations that we've done.
00:51:43.760
We need more time to send out the grant money that we promised we would send out. We promise
00:51:47.680
we'll do it this time unless we have to extend it again. Yeah. Right. Right. Meanwhile, Adam and his
00:51:53.060
dad are living with the stress, wondering if they can pay the mortgage wondering, and by the way,
00:51:58.360
is there, um, is there, um, is there a corresponding order that the banks cannot foreclose on, on the
00:52:04.520
landlords? I think if you have certain types of loans, I believe like federally subsidized, um,
00:52:10.400
loans. I, I believe that that, that might be the case. Um, but there, I mean, you don't have to,
00:52:16.740
you have to keep paying your mortgage. Don't leave me now. We got more coming up in 60 seconds.
00:52:26.500
You go into the house. It's a, it's a mess. And I saw pictures of the house, um, that you gave our
00:52:31.740
producers and they're beautiful. It's beautiful. It's, it's a lovely, uh, home. And it was in great
00:52:37.140
shape when you delivered it to this tenant. And it is just sad. Now I saw the profanity and FU and
00:52:43.500
just vulgarity spray painted here, there and everywhere. And so now what do you do? Like,
00:52:49.600
what's, what's your future plan? My parents are, you know, trying to sell the property,
00:52:54.920
but they don't, they don't know what they're going to do. Uh, it's still, the house is still ruined.
00:52:59.480
We're getting it, you know, fixed up, but it's hard to get work out there. And,
00:53:02.920
you know, they're slow moving on the work, um, to be done out there. So we really don't know what
00:53:08.500
we're going to do. No one has an answer for us. So if, if, um, the Supreme court,
00:53:14.660
if the Supreme court doesn't take this case and scold the CDC for overstepping its bounds,
00:53:23.520
um, they'll, the plate, the thing will stay in place. The moratorium will likely stay in place.
00:53:29.220
If, even if the best case scenario is it gets resolved and the CDC can't extend it past,
00:53:35.060
I guess, the beginning of October. When you tell me, Daniel, what, what you think people ought to
00:53:39.400
be thinking about, because a lot of people out there are basically just thinking we need to help
00:53:43.140
people who we screwed over by taking away their jobs, tell them to stay inside. And, you know,
00:53:47.540
an economy that the, for whatever reason has been stalled in terms of the job front. And a lot of
00:53:51.920
people say it's because the unemployment checks are too big and people make more money on their couch.
00:53:55.500
But what do you want people to be thinking about as we watch this case work its way through the
00:53:59.420
legal system and the CDC, maybe finding the sex tuple look allows them to extend it even further
00:54:06.720
than October? I would say, uh, first, I mean, first of all, they're going to try to keep extending it
00:54:14.400
to quote Ronald Reagan. Um, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.
00:54:19.280
And I don't, I don't see what, you know, that's pretty rare for the government to give up power.
00:54:25.420
Like we, we still take our shoes off at the TSA. Right. Um, and so that's not going away. Um,
00:54:32.700
they're creating the infrastructure. Things are bad. And, and the reason why a lot of people don't
00:54:37.520
really talk about it, um, especially some of these larger landlords, like why are they out of the
00:54:42.300
conversation? Cause you would kind of figure you would kind of figure that their property rights
00:54:47.240
matter too. Right. Um, it's, it's because people don't want to affect, um, the values of the assets
00:54:54.300
in their portfolios, which is why you don't even hear it's like, well, how many people aren't paying
00:54:59.520
rent? Well, it's impossible to answer because if you have now a single family home, I'm, I'm a
00:55:05.500
capitalist. So I believe that if I see a home that I, you know, want to buy and you're selling it for a
00:55:10.480
certain price. And I think that's a good price. I think we've got a good deal, but with an apartment
00:55:14.860
building, let's say, you know, there's 10 units in a building and let's say four of them aren't
00:55:18.860
paying rent, but how much is the building worth? And, and that question, the, the disagreement on
00:55:26.320
the value of the assets between buyers and sellers is really fundamental to what could be coming.
00:55:33.160
Okay. Um, because these big apartments are businesses. They're not just property.
00:55:39.960
property. It's kind of like a property that it's a property that is a business with a single
00:55:44.440
family home. It's like a property that you're running a business on, but you could always just
00:55:48.840
sell it to a nice family, right? Well, why would you buy a bunch of properties if you know that
00:55:55.440
people aren't paying the rent and you can't kick them out? Well, aren't they going to find that out
00:55:59.080
eventually? I mean, when you, when you're buying a house, don't, don't you get to see who's paying
00:56:03.700
the rent and who's not if you're buying a property? Nobody wants to talk about, about this. Okay.
00:56:09.500
Because this is a multi multi-billion dollar, probably trillion dollar industry is we're
00:56:15.360
going to be changed. We've the, the regulation itself is going to, I don't care what Zillow says.
00:56:21.000
I disagree with their assessment of like, no, the property values are going way up, way, way up.
00:56:26.520
I'm like, Oh yeah. Well then how come the landlords don't have any money? Sounds like,
00:56:30.180
sounds like it's really going up. Sounds good. So you're, you're just betting on appreciation,
00:56:33.920
right? You're, you're, you're betting on appreciation to get you through not having
00:56:38.920
any income from your business. It's really dicey. And on a big level, you could see how this really
00:56:43.960
endangers banks and it's really dangerous. And they're just going to keep adding more regulation,
00:56:49.760
right? Like their, their answer is like, Oh, well, we don't like the last rule we made. So we're
00:56:54.040
going to make 10 more rules. And then before we even figure out how to do those, we'll make,
00:56:58.300
we'll make more rules and we'll make more rules. We don't even know.
00:57:01.000
And we'll flout our old, our old rules as well. Forget those initial rules,
00:57:05.300
even though they're still on the book, forget those rules. So there's no predictability for
00:57:08.380
the landlords. Yeah. We don't let those, as it turns out, those are bad rules.
00:57:11.640
Those are bad. Yeah, I know. And it's easy for people like me to report on it and people like
00:57:15.680
Cori Bush and Chuck Schumer to comment on it. And it's a lot less easy for guys like you who are
00:57:20.320
actually living it and having to deal with these edicts, um, to, to actually make, make sense of it and
00:57:26.380
abide by it and then handle the consequences. Look, I really, really appreciate
00:57:30.880
you guys coming on and telling your story. And I appreciate your effort to help people who are
00:57:35.220
hurting, you know, people who are homeless veterans who need help. Um, you know, I hope it's not a no
00:57:41.240
good deed goes unpunished situation. I hope it's, it turns into something where you can continue helping
00:57:45.520
and still paying your own bills and, you know, feeling like the system works, but man, it'll be
00:57:51.640
despite the government and not thanks to it. We'll continue to follow it guys. All the best to you
00:57:57.160
both. Thank you so much. Hey, pleasure talking with you.
00:58:03.880
You can find the Megan Kelly show on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the
00:58:08.580
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00:58:34.500
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