Coronavirus IX: Evictions: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

moving on our main story tonight concerns the corona virus among other things the worst thing to happen to weddings since flashmobs and the reason we're talking about it is that we have a huge Kovach related catastrophe that's actually just around the corner hide routes of tenants rallying this week demanding rent relief they warn the next few months could see the largest number of eviction cases ever yeah as if things weren't already bad enough in the middle of a pandemic we may be about to see evictions on the rise and on the list of things you hope never to see on the rise evictions have to be right up at the top tide of course with Larry King's penis that thing going up is just not what our current situation requires and while evictions rising is shocking it was also completely foreseeable coronavirus has played havoc with employment making it difficult for many to make rent which was always going to have significant consequences given that about 1/3 of US households are renters and renters tend to have lower incomes than homeowners in the first place and while stimulus checks expanded unemployment insurance and state and federal moratoriums on evictions undoubtedly helped hold back the tide those mechanisms and now starting to run out or expire and if we do nothing experts are predicting horrific outcomes with millions of people left vulnerable this is the worst economic crisis the United States has seen in generations if nothing else changes and evictions continue as normal and this public health crisis will turn into a full-blown hominis crisis it's true the coronavirus crisis could also soon turn into a full-blown homelessness crisis and it's hard to even fathom something already so bad transforming into something else so appalling it's like finding out that magikarp objectively the worst pokemon for obvious reasons is set to evolve into Kevin Spacey I should have traded you for Psyduck when I had the chance and it says something about the utter absurdity of what's about to happen that this is how some eviction hearings will be taking place starting with tomorrow's docket judge Lopez will start hearing eviction cases either in the court using webcams with the defendant and the plaintiff in separate rooms / zoom or even on the phone what are you doing you know it might be worth thinking twice about what you're taking part in if you're throwing people out of their homes via zoom a platform you're only using because it's not safe for people to leave their homes besides zoom shouldn't be where you find out that you're getting evicted it should be where you find out in a virtual happy hour which one of your co-workers has been secretly rich the whole time I'm sorry Johanna has a chandelier where did she get chandelier money why don't I have chandelier money look the fact is we're about to go out of our way to throw people out of their homes at the worst possible time and even in normal times evictions are incredibly damaging with long long-term effects on the community level they've been linked to heightened residential instability substandard housing declines in neighborhood quality and job loss and on the individual level they can be completely devastating in ways you may not even realize from families losing their possessions and having to start over to significant difficulties in obtaining new housing something that can be hard to do with an eviction on your record Vick shion's have consequences that can haunt you for the rest of your life so tonight with rent due in just three days we thought it might be a good time to talk about evictions and let's start with the fact that the lack of affordable housing is yet another systemic problem that the coronavirus has thrown into harsh relief because to be clear it was a crisis in this country long before the pandemic struck with rents so high and renters so burdened that stories like these became a staple on local news a chaotic scene as hundreds make a run for the door and a chance at Dallas County housing vouchers at least eight people suffered injuries while trying to line up this morning jordon Spivey's all scuffed up after taking quite a tumble this morning but grateful she wasn't trampled to holy no one should ever be trampled by a crowd of people out of desperation to get rental assistance there are only two times when trampling is remotely acceptable the day after Thanksgiving that's America's national trampling holiday and whatever day in the future the ps5 comes out I don't care that it looks like an alien's waffle maker or a penguin designed by Apple it's gonna have horizon forbidden West as an exclusive release and I will stomp anyone who stands between me in that game I want to murder dinosaur robots with flaming arrows and a want to do it now now that particular Stampede was nearly a decade ago but unfortunately the problem has only gotten worse since then rents have risen significantly faster than incomes to the point where for renters below the poverty line the majority are spending more than half of their income on housing and a quarter are paying 70 percent or more which is just not remotely sustainable meanwhile around a million households have been evicted each year for over a decade and all of this disproportionately impacts people of color as black households for instance are twice as likely as white households to face eviction and women of color particularly black women are especially vulnerable to it so things have clearly been bad for a long time but once the pandemic hit like everything else they got even worse and yet you might have assumed that there was a freeze on rent payments if you listened to decomposing melon larry cudlow laying out the Trump administration's plans back in March don't forget also please regarding things like rent payments or rental home loans all that will Vic shion's let me add that all that will be put on hold there will be no evictions during this period now that sounds great especially if what you took from it was no rent no evictions but that's not actually what he's saying there the policy he's describing only paused evictions not rent meaning that for those unable to pay the bills they owe have just been piling up this whole time also the policy only applied to certain properties like those with federally backed mortgages which for just a quarter of all rental units so as far as comprehensive plans to stem this crisis it leaves a lot out much the same way in fact that larry cudlow wife leaves a lot out of her many paintings of her husband's clothes specifically what she leaves out is her husband because as we've mentioned before on this show there was simply nothing that she likes to do more than paint her husband's ties over and over and over and over again in a joyous celebration of the absence of larry cudlow and quick side note here when we first brought this up months ago we offered anyone 10 US dollars plus a $20,000 donation to their local food bank if they were willing to sell us one of these genuine Larry les masterpieces and everything's being so busy that we haven't had the chance to reveal something to you and that is we actually got one and let me tell you the absence of Larry is even more striking in person look the point is the federal moratorium on evictions left a lot of people unprotected and while several dozen states put in place their own moratoriums many of those protections have already expired leaving renters in 23 states with no state-level protection from eviction meaning many tenants are forced to rely on the kindness of their landlords some of whom to their credit have worked with their tenants and reduced the rent owed or have stepped up in even bigger ways like this guy Mario Salerno owns roughly 80 apartments in his hometown of Williamsburg he knows the pain so many are going through so he decided this month to waive rent for everyone everyone 200 tenants and he is not collecting for me it was more important for people's health and worrying about who could put food on whose table I had tenants that said they can't work they didn't have money to pay me I says don't worry about paying me worry about your neighbor that's great that's very generous but unfortunately the solution clearly can't be to count on everyone being like that guy if for no other reason and if everyone was like that guy we'd be forced to make a sopranos reboot that was essentially just oops all and nobody wants that not even Silvio he bolted his brief tenure being the skipper he couldn't handle the crown let's just let him stay where he's comfortable and the truth is rather than emulating that guy some landlords have gone the opposite way even trying to threaten tenants despite the protections in place kortnee is still in disbelief as she reads through the most recent emails from her landlord she says on March 31st she told the landlord who lives in Canada that April rent would be late days later just pay the rent or move out the email started you lying both you and your grandmother can go online and yourselves Wow that isn't just horrifying it also effectively demolishes every Canadian stereotype I've previously held because it seems there's a new type of Canadian that none of us have known about in it the hard-hearted bad boy who tells you and your grandma to go yourselves no luckily that woman's governor had ordered a freeze on evictions for those affected by Kovac which covered her situation and when that local news reporter pointed that out to her landlord his response was pretty remarkable he sent us a colorful email in it he apologized for the profanity and eventually said he's willing to waive her late fees plus half the April rent which he would lose anyway if he had to find a new tenant and they can both get on with quote our miserable lives ok whatever you think of that landlords behavior I will say this that is just objectively the correct way to end any email in 2020 happy virtual graduation now let's get on with our miserable lives Congrats on the new baby now let's get on with our miserable lives my deepest condolences on the loss of your grandmother she lived a long and miserable life and now she'd want us to get on with Arliss and the thing is even when landlords and property managers obeyed to the moratoriums they often made it painfully clear the tenants were going to be evicted at the first available opportunity I'm notoriously a landlord that doesn't generally invite tenants get by with any exception even as court hearings are temporarily on hold he's moving forward with filing evictions and attempting to collect it's never fun throwing you know throwing a single mother and their three kids out on the streets that's not fun but it's business okay first of all Never Say Never what if the three kids in question were baby Hitler baby Stalin and Donald Trump jr. and that single mom was Galen Maxwell that's a pretty funny vixen right there that foursome could frankly use a little time on this street but what is happening in that example is actually really important because many of those moratoriums prevent the physical act of eviction but they don't stop the legal process that leads up to it many landlords and property managers have been able to file for evictions in court this whole time meaning cases have just been piling and piling and piling up and as soon as moratoriums are lifted which is already happening in many places evictions could come fast and some landlords will tell you that the current situation simply isn't there thought and that their tenants should have somehow prepared better one property management company actually made that argument to a local denver news crew who then played the audio to one of the company's tenants and just wait until you see his response maybe you shoulda say for the rainy day just saying yeah that's a fair point because why are renters consistently the only ones being told that they should have planned better it's important remember everyone is in this crisis together right now and this isn't just a rainy day it's the great flood and one reason no one has an umbrella is because it's not safe to reopen the umbrella factory yet and in the face of an extreme crisis some tenants are understandably calling for drastic measures like rent strikes we are out here today to demand that the city the state and the federal government cancel the rents we need rent cancellation every month we're accumulating more and more and more debt so there's no way we're going to be able to repay that back a lot of us are already choosing between food and right we're saying to choose food the same way they bail out banks they should have bail out working families like mine yeah of course we should absolutely treat families at least as well as we treat banks who can apparently like Wells Fargo just re-establish themselves whenever they get in trouble in fact next time your landlord asks you for your last three months of rent why not tell them that they're mistaken that rent was owed by the previous you the current you was reestablished on July 1st of 2020 and you're ready for a fresh start and look rent strikes are a risk ultimately you could end up being evicted for non-payment which remember could make it harder to get housing in the future and depending on your landlord situation they might be unable to meet property taxes to go toward funding essential city services so they are not without consequences but you can see why many have been pushing for them or indeed for rent cancellation because people are desperate and strikes have been an effective way of calling attention to how dire things are right now and while long term we desperately need a plan to fix our affordable housing crisis in the short term we just have to find a way to keep people in their homes and although some cities are trying to provide rental assistance the limited funds at their disposal make it difficult to address the scope of the problem take Houston they established a 15 million dollar rental relief fund and this is what happened fifteen million dollars gone in just 90 minutes money that was dedicated to help families pay their rent during this pandemic we're not able to accept your application for the green and Trevor had applied for 1,800 bucks and rental assistance they won't be getting that help though because by the time they applied online this morning the money was already gone 15 me not going within an hour come on now yeah it's shocking to watch 15 million dollars disappear in 90 minutes I mean not quite as shocking as watching one hundred and seventy five million dollars disappearing around the same time but still you know shocking and the thing is the city of Houston knew in that this was going to be an issue they even tweeted after the fact we understand this is nowhere near enough to meet the need of all houstonians and in fact the city directly encouraged people to reach out to their representatives to advocate for greater funding because the truth is cities can only do so much without federal intervention but they have essentially the same amount of power as the servants of downton abbey' sure they'll do what they can but at a certain point when things get really bad they're gonna have to take this upstairs now in a much bolder move the city of Ithaca New York is currently the process of trying to count salt rent for those affected by this pandemic and it's calling on the state to provide funding for landlords who need relief and that is an interesting idea although again it requires the people upstairs like the state and ultimately the federal government to act and unfortunately they have dragged their feet on offering solutions for renters that remotely meet the scale of this crisis back in May to its credit the House passed the heroes Act which provided a hundred billion dollars in rental assistance for the most vulnerable unfortunately since then the bill has stalled out in the Senate which is frankly no surprise as multiple high-level Republicans have expressed their reticence to pass another relief package I think that many people would like to just pause for a moment and take a look at the economic impact of this massive assistance program if the economy continues the momentum that we're beginning to see over the last couple of weeks of data that I think that one might conclude that the stimulus that we've already passed is enough we need to assess what we've already done take a look at what worked and what didn't and we'll discuss the way forward in the next couple weeks Oh in a couple of weeks really well here's the thing that was back in May we're now at the end of June nothing has been passed and rent is due on Wednesday that said I do know the time simply does not function the same way for Mitch McConnell as it does for everyone else for instance for us today is June 28th but for him based on the way that he generally thinks speaks and behaves the current date is somewhere around May 12 1853 and look sad truth is we've already waited too long here and there is absolutely no excuse for not attacking this problem with real urgency because while we wait for Congress to act people like this woman having to deal with the consequences Kiana Ashley is being evicted and a nightmare is unfolding for her and her five-year-old son Nazir that's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy because not knowing where you're going to rest your head up from the next day that's not good yeah of course it's not good everyone deserves the basic stability of shelter and if you are in a position where you've begun to despise the house that you've been shut inside for the past three and a half months it is worth remembering the only thing worse than knowing you're gonna spend another day stuck under the same roof is not knowing that and while there are clearly no perfect options here the very worst thing that we could do right now is nothing because every day we fail to act is a day that we're compounding another future crisis for millions of vulnerable renters and their communities we need to stop this before it gets even worse and in a long-term we badly need to solve our affordable housing crisis because then and only then if I may quote the world's rudest Canadian can we all get on with our miserable lives you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 7,553,269

Rating: 4.8340144 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: R652nwUcJRA

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ghostbuster_119]

Yep, and if you think people becoming homeless is bad wait until they get desperate.

Or infected and desperate

Or worse....expelled.

[u/dominikwilkowski]

Mirror for overseas people?

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/bow2sensei]

This must start higher in the food chain with mortgage freezes, so landlords are not also being destroyed. Too bad our politicians won't stand up to the banks.

[u/LazerHawkStu]

I like the idea of using 10% of the US Defense budget to help out with this. 74 billion is 10%.

Edit: since there is a lot of debate below on what the money is spent on and where money could be cut from...here is an article to get you started down the rabbit hole of figuring out how many billions of dollars disappear every year.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-america-defense-budget-bigger-than-you-think/

[u/_AlreadyTaken_]

Hard to shelter in place without shelter.

Those landlords have mortgage payments too though, and repairs, etc. I'd push the banks.

[u/BlameReborn]

The problem is the “rainy day” the home owner described has turned into a rainy 5 months at this point.

[u/headedtojail]

"Thanks" to the Corona pandemic, all of the shortcomings of the US social system come to light.

No real unemployment benefits or employee protection. No renter protection. No universal healthcare.

The US are truly and quite obviously made for rich people - by rich people.

I am so glad I live in a country were this segment on evictions simply could not be made. People here can't be fired as easily, would get unemployment of 60% of their income if they are fired, and getting rid of renters, even those who don't pay, is notoriously hard. They would have to be 3 rents behind to begin with. And even then....

And we are still an economic powerhouse!

Now I know that I am preaching to the choir here, but holy hell.....when you see it add up like this....I really wish someone would make America great again.

[u/VariousLawyerings]

Speak for yourself, John. I want Oops! All Silvios