As an eviction crisis has seemed increasingly likely this summer, everyone in the housing market has made the same plea to Washington: Send money -- lots of it -- that would keep renters in their homes and landlords afloat.City officials have called for such rent relief. So have landlord associations
As an eviction crisis has seemed increasingly likely this summer, everyone in the housing market has made the same plea to Washington: Send money — lots of it — that would keep renters in their homes and landlords afloat.
Congress has yet to adopt a new aid package that includes broad rent relief. It hasn’t passed any other cash assistance lately either. Expanded unemployment benefits, worth $600 a week, expired at the end of July, along with a more limited eviction moratorium. There have been no new stimulus checks. And additional unemployment benefits created by executive action by President Donald Trump have not yet reached many workers.
“We’re not comfortable with any protracted moratorium, because we just simply don’t agree that is the answer,” said Greg Brown, senior vice president of government affairs with the National Apartment Association. “We think rental assistance in and of itself is the answer. That said, if this is the approach that’s going to be taken, you absolutely have to have it connected to rental assistance.”
Already irate, the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 landlords in New York City, on Wednesday called the moratorium a form of “pandemic politics” at their expense. Now with the moratorium in place, the effects on landlords may not be immediately visible. Many property owners are accustomed to vacancies and occasional months without rent payments . But researchers warn that the strain will build, particularly on the small mom and pop landlords who own a few units and count on that income for their retirement.
Should private equity firms buy them up — as they did with many single-family homes during the Great Recession — rental properties that are relatively affordable today may become less so.
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