The Megyn Kelly Show - The Cost of Biden's Eviction Moratorium - One Landlord's Story ｜ Ep. 143

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.880 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, the eviction moratorium. 0.99

00:00:17.760 The Biden administration basically admitted that it overstepped its legal bounds. It knew it was

00:00:23.280 doing it, but it was just trying to buy additional time for tenants who are facing eviction for

00:00:29.520 nonpayment of rent while the legal process plays out again. They know that the Supreme Court is not

00:00:36.440 likely to uphold this extension of the moratorium. And yet, thanks to the activism of people like

00:00:42.300 Cori Bush, this St. Louis congresswoman who's been sleeping out in front of the Capitol four nights 1.00

00:00:46.920 in a row trying to prove what it's like to be homeless. OK, they they bend. They bent. The

00:00:53.760 Biden administration told the CDC to do it. And the CDC extended the moratorium, even though it was out

00:00:57.640 of legal authority to do it. And now what about these landlords? Where do they go? How do they

00:01:03.060 pay their mortgages? How would you do it if you were relying on your tenants rent payment every

00:01:08.040 month? And let's not pretend this is March 2020. It's not. It's it's August now, 2021. And there's

00:01:15.000 been a whole lot of taxpayer money given to people who are suffering, tenants who are suffering. Some of

00:01:21.120 the states haven't dispersed it. But why should the landlords have to suck that up? Right. Like,

00:01:25.220 what's the matter with the states and what message does this send to the renters who are managing to

00:01:30.940 pay their rent, who are working extra hours and who are managing to honor their responsibilities?

00:01:36.820 Today, we're going to have two landlords on. One is an actual landlord and one represents landlords.

00:01:40.860 He's the president of a landlord association up in Washington state. And wait until you hear this

00:01:45.920 guy, Adam's story, a landlord. Wait until you hear what happened to him as a result of this

00:01:51.280 moratorium. We'll get into it in one minute. First, this. Adam, you're the actual landlord and

00:02:02.460 Daniel, you are the you're you represent a landlord's association. So you represent a bunch

00:02:07.340 of landlords. Correct. Yes. I'm the president of the Landlord Association of the Inland Northwest.

00:02:13.560 OK. And you guys are out in Spokane, Washington. Yep. Yep. All right. I don't know anything about

00:02:18.820 Washington state. So what part of the state is that? Is that like politically speaking,

00:02:22.680 is that a dem area, a Republican area? Yeah, it's Spokane is a different color

00:02:29.540 rather than the red or the blue. It's very hazy right now. All the wildfire smoke.

00:02:37.640 It's a little more conservative, I think, than the west side, a lot more conservative. We don't

00:02:43.360 actively try to make bad policies, which kind of just accidentally make them over here.

00:02:49.780 Right. Well, it's happening right now. So let me start back with with you, Adam. Your your family

00:02:56.520 has how many houses? They have three rentals in Spokane area. And are they big houses,

00:03:02.880 small houses? What are they like? They're three bedroom, two bathroom, like a condo type of thing

00:03:08.240 or a standalone house? There's a standalone house. OK. And why did they start buying up these

00:03:14.240 properties? Why did they have those three properties? Well, the property, the depot out

00:03:18.700 in Cheney, we they bought when me and my brother were going to Eastern at the time. So we lived there

00:03:24.420 at one point. So, yeah, they just bought it as an investment, I believe. So as an investment. And

00:03:29.640 prior to the eviction moratorium, had you ever had a problem with a tenant, you know, who didn't pay the

00:03:35.480 rent, needed to be evicted, that kind of thing? We've had, you know, late payments here and there,

00:03:39.960 but nothing like this. No. OK. Never, never where you have to actually kick the person out.

00:03:45.700 No. And but before the eviction moratorium, and I'll ask you this, Daniel, it was relatively easy

00:03:51.060 to kick somebody out if you needed to as a landlord. Yes. Yeah. There was a pretty clear,

00:03:55.420 established process that everyone that it's been the same process for forever. So the eviction

00:04:03.200 moratorium kind of just just changed everything with regards to Washington state landlord tenant

00:04:08.940 law. What was it was basically you had to give 20 or 30 days notice and then the person had to go

00:04:15.760 if they were in arrears, if they weren't paying. Right. Yeah. You'd give them a pay or vacate

00:04:19.720 notice. You know, you'd hire your your lawyer to and they'd hire a process server, you know,

00:04:24.820 and you'd mail it to them and post it on their door and try to give it to them and, you know,

00:04:29.320 let them know they have, you know, three days to pay or vacate or 14 days to pay or vacate.

00:04:34.640 And now you can't even really serve those notices. Right. So then so when the pandemic

00:04:40.940 started and we went into quarantine and everybody was told to stay at home and they were shutting

00:04:44.620 down businesses and so on, and we had that emergency eviction moratorium saying for a number of

00:04:50.980 reasons, you can't can't kick people out. A, we need people to stay at home. B, we're taking away

00:04:55.620 jobs. The government is basically taking away jobs left and right. Thanks to this quarantine.

00:04:59.580 How did you guys feel about the eviction moratorium then? As a, as a landlord association? I mean,

00:05:05.420 I think it was just kind of a strange time. Uh, I remember that time pretty vividly where,

00:05:10.620 you know, I, I can give quite a bit of grace right at the start of, you know, what could have been,

00:05:16.720 I don't know. I don't want to say it wasn't super, super serious, but it kind of seemed like it was

00:05:22.160 going to be the end of the world. I thought that would be a faster process than like the end of

00:05:26.780 the world we're currently experiencing. Um, so yeah, at the time it was pretty shocking, but it

00:05:32.940 was like, okay, well, they're going to do this for, you know, uh, our first moratorium, I believe was

00:05:37.140 about 48 days. And so it's like, well, that's a month and a half. We'll get back to normal.

00:05:42.620 And then here we are. No, there's no normal as we're all experiencing. So Adam, did your tenants,

00:05:47.920 and I know we're talking about the property out in, um, Cheney, Washington at just outside Spokane.

00:05:53.040 So did your tenants who were in there, um, at the beginning of this eviction moratorium,

00:05:58.560 were they paying their rent at the beginning? Um, no, they were not paying rent. And had they

00:06:04.660 been paying rent prior to the announcement of the eviction moratorium? Um, they had stopped paying

00:06:10.160 right around a couple of months, um, prior to the moratorium, right around, right around that time.

00:06:16.140 So this is a nightmare for you because you had tenants who were, were already flouting

00:06:20.860 their rental obligations. And then the government swooped in to give them a big, a big pass.

00:06:28.260 Yeah. So they were assisted through a government program. So, um, and it was working. And even if

00:06:33.580 they were falling behind the program assisted them, um, and then the moratorium started, um,

00:06:43.360 and that's when things, you know, they were not only not paying rent. Well, they were not only not

00:06:49.020 paying rent now. Um, it seemed like now all responsibility for the tenant was gone. So they

00:06:55.460 started destroying the property, um, becoming a nuisance to the community. Uh, there's 27 police

00:07:01.280 reports just in the time that they were there. Oh my gosh. So let's back up and talk about who moved

00:07:07.940 in because your heart was in the right place when you initially rented this property, uh, to, I think

00:07:13.800 it was a couple, right? It was at least one guy. I mean, he was a veteran and you wanted to help him

00:07:18.500 and all for all good reasons. Can you just give us a little bit of background? Yeah. So I've known

00:07:24.620 Daniel for 10 plus years. He's one of my best friends. He was working with a government organization

00:07:28.900 that houses veterans. Um, and my, um, me and my parents attended a, a seminar that they were putting

00:07:36.620 on. Um, and you know, we have a special place in our hearts for veterans. Uh, they serve the country

00:07:42.000 and they deserve, you know, support. So, um, you know, and this, this program, uh, said they would do

00:07:48.860 just that. And, you know, as far as us being landlords, it was, you know, a little more secure

00:07:54.280 because they were getting support and it seemed like a win-win, you know, uh, a good for everybody.

00:07:59.080 So we were really excited about it. And so, yeah, that's how we initially, you know, started the

00:08:04.080 process. And can you give us the first name of the tenant just so we have a name to work with for the

00:08:08.880 show? Yeah. Thomas. Thomas. Okay. So Thomas moves in and, and it's no accident. He moved in. You guys

00:08:16.240 both thought it would be a good idea. Help a veteran. Also, there's a government assistance program

00:08:20.580 that helps veterans pay their rent. So that's good. Your heart was in the right place. The

00:08:25.780 government and taxpayer funds were in the right place to help our veterans coming back from fighting

00:08:30.220 get back on their feet. Okay. Yeah. It seems like a great thing. Yeah. And what, and just on a larger

00:08:35.460 level, Daniel, how, how do veterans normally do when they come back from fighting and they get this

00:08:39.380 government assistance, they move into rental properties. Are they a reliable risk normally or?

00:08:44.560 Yeah. Yeah. No, they absolutely are. And this, so this program that I, I was working with

00:08:49.100 is called the supportive services for veteran families program. And what that program is,

00:08:54.220 it's for veterans and their families that are currently experiencing homelessness or at immediate

00:09:00.020 risk of experiencing homelessness. And so it's not just, um, it's not, you know, it's not just your,

00:09:08.300 uh, you know, somebody, you know, takes their boots off and, you know, isn't in the military anymore.

00:09:13.040 And then they, they transitioned to this program that this program is specifically for, um, you know,

00:09:19.540 people that are sometimes chronically homeless, you know, that have been experiencing homelessness

00:09:23.520 for a long time up to, you know, you might be homeless tomorrow. You should, and there, it's

00:09:28.880 really a fantastic program overall. Was that the story with Thomas? Was he down and out?

00:09:34.540 Absolutely. Yes. Uh, he, you know, just kind of the way things worked is, um, without giving,

00:09:42.400 you know, too much, uh, personal info. Um, he was one of those people, I'll just say that I feel like

00:09:49.300 our country owes, um, for, for what they've done and the things that they've given up. And so it was

00:09:57.480 pretty special to even be able to work, uh, to work with him and his, uh, his family. Cause it was

00:10:01.980 actually a large, it was a large family. Um, and so they were on, but they had some barriers,

00:10:08.140 you know, they had some rental, uh, barriers that are really hard to overcome. Um, credit,

00:10:12.720 that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Uh, a lot of things like that, uh, you know, just,

00:10:21.800 they were kind of just, uh, they were going to need a special touch. And so what I did was I worked

00:10:26.640 very closely with them. And, um, after Adam and his parents came to one of the, you know, I would

00:10:35.220 put on events for landlords in the community to talk about our program and they, you know,

00:10:41.680 they came out to it. Um, and, uh, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty touching, you know, that

00:10:47.880 this is my buddy, you know, we have a great friendship. I don't mix, I keep work at work.

00:10:52.920 Um, but specifically I, I brought them because they needed to, you know, I needed to house this

00:10:58.120 family. So Thomas was married with kids. Yeah. So they move in. And as I understand it,

00:11:06.180 you had a very good relationship in the beginning, Adam, with the tenant. Yeah. Um, you know, we,

00:11:11.700 yeah, we did. Um, Daniel even went out there and, you know, gave the guy guitar lessons. We,

00:11:16.260 we reached out and said, if you guys need anything else, you know, clothes, um, you know, we have a,

00:11:20.860 we have a big family. So if the kids need, you know, need any clothes or anything, let us know.

00:11:25.420 And, you know, we dropped rent from what we were initially charging 1400 to 12. We, we wanted it

00:11:31.260 to work for them. It, you know, it was, it seemed like a good thing to do and yeah, we wanted it to

00:11:36.680 work. So. And by the way, Daniel, you tell me, but this is this, the beginning of this story

00:11:41.420 underscores why we need mom and pop landlords. Absolutely. There was no way for, uh, a lot of families

00:11:48.660 in programs like this. It's not just exclusive to programs like the SSVF program, but, or it could

00:11:53.900 apply to the section A program or lots of other types of programs. Um, you will not pass a rental

00:11:59.560 criteria that especially large landlords have, you know, as a policy, uh, smaller, like, you know,

00:12:07.200 and it's just no, and you can appeal some of those things, but usually it's no.

00:12:11.640 Yeah. You need a reasonable human who has the power to bend the rules on the other side. I have

00:12:17.740 been on both sides of this as somebody who used to have absolutely no money coming out of school,

00:12:21.960 having put myself through. And I w I would look at people who wouldn't help me and say,

00:12:25.440 but this is why there's a human being in your position, you know, who can use reason and kindness

00:12:30.820 and heart to make decisions. When you're dealing with a corporate landlord, there's no reason and

00:12:35.840 there's no heart. So it's great to have the atoms of the world. It's because, and it's because

00:12:42.520 those big landlords get sued and that's when they make those, you know, if you give one person the

00:12:47.740 deal and the next person finds out about it, they're like, Hey, wait a minute. Why didn't I

00:12:51.840 get a deal? And so the small landlords, as we see Walmart and CVS and Starbucks and all these banks

00:13:00.180 take over the nation, Amazon, it's just nice to be reminded that like mom and pop operations are

00:13:06.480 important and they're important for a number of reasons. And this is just one, you know, hand to hand

00:13:10.860 deals can be made and judgment exercise where it ought to be. Now that that is not undermined by

00:13:17.140 how this story ended because not every risk pans out, you know, for, I'm sure for every Thomas and

00:13:22.680 it did not work out with Thomas, which is where we're going. Um, you've got a lot of other guys,

00:13:27.120 gals, veterans in particular who live up to their obligations, who take the fresh start and make,

00:13:32.440 make a go of it. One of the reasons you're on is because the fact that this guy didn't,

00:13:36.860 it has made news and underscores the position you were put in by your federal government.

00:13:40.860 Okay. So Adam, back to you. So things were going great. Daniel's going over there,

00:13:44.340 giving Thomas free guitar lessons. You've lowered the rent. You guys are helping him out.

00:13:48.360 And then, um, couple payments missed and you get the eviction moratorium. So

00:13:52.480 were you, did you guys owe a mortgage on this property? Was it met? Was it a matter of if I

00:13:57.940 don't get the rent, I can't pay my mortgage? Um, yeah, I mean, it's my, my dad got laid off during

00:14:04.840 the coronavirus. So this is his main source of income. This is, you know, my mom and dad,

00:14:10.560 my mom's retired. Dad didn't have a job. So it was, this is their retirement. So yeah,

00:14:14.980 they, they heavily depend on the money. Um, every month, you know, it's, it's, it's,

00:14:20.260 it's his business.

00:14:22.260 So even though he owns these three houses, he's not swimming in money. This is not a rich man.

00:14:26.780 No, no, absolutely not. Okay. Uh, well that makes sense. I mean, even in New York,

00:14:32.480 it's the same thing. A lot of renters, uh, and landlords in New York city and the landlords,

00:14:37.480 even though they own these beautiful buildings that they need your money to pay their, their

00:14:41.340 mortgage. That's how they pay these expensive mortgages. Yeah. You know, my, a business,

00:14:45.520 my dad's a, my dad's an everyday guy. Like our, our other rentals are, you know, families that have

00:14:52.160 been in there for five, six, seven years. So it's, and you know, they keep the rent affordable

00:14:56.920 and because for them, they would rather have it, you know, tenants in there, there are happy. And

00:15:03.020 it, you know, it all works. This, you know, there's, it can be stressful if you really, you know,

00:15:08.720 get into it. So, um, well, and by the way, on your other properties, did the tenants stop paying

00:15:13.760 their rents or do they continue paying throughout the moratorium? They continued paying. Okay. So this

00:15:21.640 tenant was given a gift, Thomas, and what happened? So how did you first realize that this is getting

00:15:28.400 bad? This is, this is about even more than not paying rent. Um, it was the police reports that

00:15:35.060 we were getting, you know, like I said, there was 27, uh, calls to the cops within the time they were

00:15:39.880 there. Um, and so it was becoming, you know, a nuisance community. Um, and then that on top of

00:15:47.820 unpaid rent, we weren't really sure what we could do. We didn't know what our options were. Um,

00:15:52.240 you know, the moratorium was so new, nobody really knew. Uh, we contact the lawyer. Um,

00:15:58.200 it just didn't seem like anybody really had any answers, you know, and we couldn't really afford

00:16:01.980 our lawyer at the time. It was, you know, it's like make a quick phone call, you know,

00:16:06.800 gets quick answers kind of thing. Cause, um, and it was difficult cause you know, they,

00:16:11.760 the tenants had a free lawyer. So we knew our, you know, our backs were kind of against the wall.

00:16:18.000 So it was, yeah, it was, it was. And why did the tenant have a free lawyer? Uh, the Northwest

00:16:24.840 justice project, um, is the Washington, uh, free lawyers for tenants. And so this isn't about his

00:16:33.440 status as a veteran. This is about the eviction moratorium. Not only will they stop the landlords

00:16:38.260 from throwing you out. If you don't pay your rent, they'll pay for your lawyer. If the landlord

00:16:42.380 does get to the point where he needs to take action. Yeah. And that, and that organization

00:16:47.760 existed before, um, the moratorium and it's, uh, I guess I think it would be labeled housing justice,

00:16:54.760 uh, or a housing justice organization. And, and they have a good use because sometimes,

00:17:00.800 you know, there is bad actors that are landlords or, you know, there's a business dispute and it's worth,

00:17:06.720 you know, it's, it's really cool when somebody that's very low income can be represented. Um,

00:17:12.600 however, uh, not from the moratorium, but actually from, uh, some of the legislation that's passed

00:17:17.680 in Washington, um, things like the Northwest justice project that's made to kind of help the little guy

00:17:23.880 has kind of turned into, um, a behemoth that helps all tenants avoid any eviction.

00:17:30.960 Up in one minute, what Adam actually found in that house when he got back inside and a note,

00:17:37.800 it was horrifying. It's a word of caution to all landlords whose heart may be in the right place

00:17:44.160 about the power of government when connected with bad actors. That's in one minute.

00:17:53.000 What kind of police reports are being filed, Adam? What, what were they alleged to have done?

00:17:57.520 Um, domestic violence, drug use, it was just constant, you know, and it was, you know,

00:18:03.340 an everyday thing. So we don't really know what was going on in there other than it was within,

00:18:09.900 you know, a year and a half, there was 27 police reports and they were in there, uh, what five

00:18:14.480 months after that, which there was several more. Do you ever show up at the door and knock on the

00:18:19.940 door and just say, Hey Thomas, what's going on? I mean, yeah, we tried, it would either be no response.

00:18:25.680 Um, the one time that I did, you know, put a notice up, uh, there was a woman there and she, 0.99

00:18:32.640 uh, she didn't even know who they were, who the tenants were Thomas. What? She, they had been gone.

00:18:40.280 Yeah. For months, two months. I'm not quite sure how long they're gone for, but yeah,

00:18:44.760 she didn't even know who they were. So now you've got squatters in there. Yeah.

00:18:48.880 So the, the, you, I don't know what you do about them. Are there, are squatters covered

00:18:53.780 by the eviction moratorium? Kind of. Yeah. Yes. Yes, they can be. And Washington, uh, you know,

00:19:02.200 we have a bunch of crazy liberal policies before the moratorium too. Um, so don't, let's get,

00:19:08.140 let's give us our fair due here. We've been doing it the wrong way for a long time.

00:19:11.500 Yeah. It's not all the federal government. Yeah. Cause there's several States who have their own

00:19:14.880 eviction moratorium on top of the federal one and whichever one is more strict is the one the

00:19:20.300 landlords found by. Yep. So exactly. Exactly. All right. So Adam, so you, when I imagine there was

00:19:27.560 a point at which you were just looking at the end date of this moratorium thinking, just get me to

00:19:31.760 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,

00:19:42.300 like, what, what were you waiting for? What date? Uh, we didn't really know every, you know,

00:19:46.160 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,

00:20:02.420 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,

00:20:11.060 that could have been a blessing. I mean, losing the house means it's now the bank's problem. I,

00:20:16.860 I just, I'm thinking how long can this go on where you've got squatters inside who may be

00:20:21.620 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

00:20:36.740 position where, you know, if this is a really hard part of being a landlord is a lot of times

00:20:43.060 people that are landlords are older and you have to do, you know, estate planning and, you know,

00:20:49.100 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,

00:21:02.800 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

00:21:17.320 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

00:21:40.080 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 0.97

00:37:28.440 about Trump or to the day's politics or, you know, general cultural issues that, you know, 0.93

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

00:38:02.880 back to our guests right after this.

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. 0.80

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 0.94

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 0.96

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, 0.99

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 0.96

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, 0.93

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.68

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

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00:58:34.500 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

00:58:41.220 The Megan Kelly show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with red seat ventures. 0.56

00:58:53.240 We appreciate you loving, Joe.

00:59:15.000 Thank you.

00:59:15.480 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 10, 2021

The Cost of Biden's Eviction Moratorium - One Landlord's Story ｜ Ep. 143

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