It’s also partially pricing in the risk of another eviction moratorium. It’s still recent enough in landlord’s that the government could take away their recourse for non-payment.
More than 30 U.S. economists have signed a letter expressing support for strong federal tenant protections and rent control as housing costs remain sky-high, even amid broadly cooling inflation.
The economists note in their letter, released Thursday, that the median rent in the U.S. “has surpassed $2,000 for the first time, and there is not a single state where a worker earning a full-time minimum wage salary can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.”
“We have seen corporate landlords—who own a larger share of the rental market than ever before—use inflation as an excuse to hike rents and reap excess profits beyond what should be considered fair and reasonable,” the letter continues. “Renters are struggling as a result.”
The letter’s signatories—including Mark Paul of Rutgers University, James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austin, and Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst—call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to require rent regulations as a condition for federally-backed mortgages and reject the “economics 101 model that predicts rent regulations will have negative effects on the housing sector,” likening it to typical arguments against raising the minimum wage.
“Empirical research on local rent control policies in San Francisco, CA and New York, NY found that rent regulations lower housing costs for households living in regulated units,” the economists wrote. “In Cambridge, MA, empirical research showed that the repeal of rent stabilization laws resulted in an average rent increase of $131 for tenants.”
Given that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages on the secondary market support nearly half of rental units in the U.S.,” they argued, “Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) have the influence needed to meaningfully change the trajectory of the housing crisis.”
The economists’ letter is part of a broader push by tenant rights groups and housing justice organizations to secure federal protections against egregious rent hikes and wrongful evictions.
Earlier this week, 17 U.S. senators wrote in a letter to the FHFA that “renters also have too few protections, making them vulnerable to steep rent increases and deteriorating housing conditions—factors that are out of their control.”
“Tenant protections vary drastically from state to state and even sometimes from county to county, often leaving renters without recourse,” the senators added. “There have been repeated reports of investors using low-cost financing from Enterprise-backed loans to buy properties and then sharply raising rents, mistreating tenants, and allowing buildings to fall into disrepair.”
More than 140 academics, over 70 climate researchers, and dozens of local elected officials have also joined the call for nationwide rent regulations.
Tara Raghuveer, director of the Homes Guarantee campaign at People’s Action, said in a statement Thursday that “tenants are coming for rent regulations, and everyone from senators to economists agree: tenant protections are common sense.”
“Due to lack of regulation, affordable housing is lost quicker than it can be built,” said Raghuveer. “Corporate landlords call the shots with federal financing through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That’s why tenants spent this summer organizing to win what we need: federal tenant protections like caps on annual rent increases.”
In late May, the FHFA issued a request for public input on tenant protections at multifamily properties with mortgages backed by GSEs.
Tenants with the Homes Guarantee campaign responded by knocking on more than 4,000 doors at GSE-backed properties and organizing more than 2,000 comments in support of tenant protections and rent regulations.
“The system as we know it today has failed everyday people, many of whom make impossible choices between rent and food, their homes or their medications,” said Raghuveer. “The status quo is not working for the people, it is only working for the profiteers, and it is time for change. It is time for the federal government to make changes to that system, to correct the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants, to protect tenants, and to stabilize the American economy.”
“We have seen corporate landlords—who own a larger share of the rental market than ever before—use inflation as an excuse to hike rents and reap excess profits beyond what should be considered fair and reasonable,” the letter continues. “Renters are struggling as a result.”
The first Quran burning event in Sweden was Paid by a party of the extreme right with Russian connections. The burning was in front of the Turkish embassy, to anger Turkey as much as possible, probably exactly to prevent Sweden from entering NATO.
So very obviously the Russians had part in it from the beginning.
Which one? That stupid Dane has been burning Qurans in Sweden since before the war began.
And it’s a bit misleading to say paid. It’s technically true, but it is a very low amount of money that’s needed for a permit. It’s 50 € or something like that.
While the Russians might have encouraged it, he would have done it anyways. He just loves attention.
Is Musk really that excited to get knocked around like a toy? Zuckerberg is very fit, trained in jiu-jitsu, eats healthy, and is active in that space. Musk has nothing since childhood but his ego and is 51 years old.
“Musk says” is a phrase that needs to be treated properly: as an injustice against the poor letters trapped within it and not as anything approaching meaning.
I mean, he suggested it, Zuck responded, and now he’s doubling down. He has a pretty solid track record of doubling down on stupid decisions and embarrassing himself.
More of a history of doubling-down in front of everyone while trying to find loopholes to get out of it behind the scenes, finally being forced to do it kicking and screaming THEN embarrassing himself.
I’ve worked in ERs before, and there is more to this story that the article sidestepped quite neatly. Most ERs these days are filled to capacity with dangerously low staffing ratios, and the general public’s definition of an “emergency medical condition” and the medical definition of an “emergency medical condition” are very different. Some nights I’ve worked, we had people with chest pain and a cardiac history wait in the lobby for 5+ hours because there were no beds available and their EKG was mostly okay for the time being. A big contributor to this problem is a lack of mental health resources which results in ERs losing beds for up to weeks or even months at a time to hold psych patients that have nowhere to go. It is heartbreaking when we had to turn away people who mostly needed a social work consult…but when there’s two doctors and twelve nurses for a 40 bed ER and 2 out of 3 resuscitation bays are in use for active codes, there just isn’t anyone or any resources available to help someone who isn’t actively dying.
The inpatient side isn’t a lot better. Skilled nursing facilities and rehab centers are increasingly rare and increasingly expensive, and the hospital can’t keep a patient forever if they don’t meet criteria for hospitalization. The nice thing about inpatient is that they get to enforce their staffing ratios so that each nurse only has so many patients to handle. In the ER with EMTALA, it doesn’t matter that a nurse is caring for 6 patients (3 of which are waiting for an inpatient hospital bed, and 1 is waiting for an ICU bed…), that nurse will have to take on another critically ill patient that is stuck on a bed in the hallway if that’s all that’s available. The inpatient problem exacerbates the ER problem, and then you have people stuck in the lobby for 12+ hours before there’s a physical space for someone to see them, that provider’s capacity to take on another patient notwithstanding. It’s a true crisis and it’s only going to get worse until the full healthcare system (i.e. all the non-ER parts) are as accessible and available as needed.
We really need to start redistributing how we spend money on health care. Public option, lower executive pay. More non-emergency long term facilities for patients with psych issues or rehabilitation, and chronic illness care. Better pay and shorter shifts for doctors and nurses. Subsidies for medical tech companies to offset end-user price. More government-funded research into medical tech.
Health care should realistically be our biggest industry akin to a military with the social status of being a soldier and the compensation of being a software developer. We have the wealth and technology to help most people live healthy lives. We need the government to incentivize allocating it correctly.
Healthcare is a bigger industry than military. Medicare alone is almost spending the same as defense and that’s not counting Medicaid or Tricare (military Healthcare) and private spending.
Executive pay is high and could go down, but it’s hardly an issue overall. A big problem is lack of doctors at all, especially rural areas, but general practice is becoming scarce everywhere. There’s also a massive incentive problem that encourages companies to have ERs full of non emergencies.
Spending more or adding another public option isn’t going to fix the problem, ther needs to be a massive realignment of incentives. Specialists are over paid and over utilized. For example an endocrinologist can charge about twice as much as a GP to manage a diabetic patient and the patient still has to see different doctors for anything else. A GP can manage 95%+ of diabetic patients with no need to consult an endocrinologist and manage the vast majority of other medical issues that person may have. Very few doctors choose to become GPs though because it’s significantly lower pay, and not significantly shorter training periods.
The incentive program is screwed up because to a Healthcare company it’s more revenue to have people go to the ER for everything than set up a GP office. That also assumes they can find doctors to staff both, which again is getting more difficult. That ER doctor (another specialist) telling someone to drink fluids and rest for a cold brings more revenue than a GP that said the same thing.
news
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.