A recent essay in NY’s Daily News asserts that “landlords are people too” and addresses some of the current misdirected rage against landlords – most of whom are mom & pop operations – as well as dispelling the myths that landlords are both uncaring and rich. As readers well know, those notions are both dangerous and flat out incorrect. As the author, Charlotte Laws, points out, most landlords faithfully make repairs and don’t want to evict anyone because having an empty unit leaves the property owner with a loss of income (among other things). She emphatically says that if small landlords go, “so does much of the affordable housing.” Indeed…
“The rage directed at landlords may come, in part, from the divisiveness of the country, the pent-up anger over COVID-19 restrictions, and the fact that lessors are regularly depicted in film and on television as fat, white slumlords who refuse to make repairs, grumble about their boarders, and rejoice over tossing them into the street…”
“The government’s destruction of small landlords in 2020 will be disastrous for tenants in 2021 and beyond. There will likely be a flurry of foreclosures and sell-offs by those who are unable to weather the eviction-moratorium storm. When the small landlords go, so does much of the affordable housing.”
“Although there is an especially strong case to be made for the mom and pop, it is equally unfair to turn the big landlord into an ATM for the pandemic. Their constitutionally-protected property rights have been ignored…”
Click here to read the full essay at the NY Daily News.
