Biden Thread

**ReluctantSamurai** · 08-03-2021, 11:31

This is certainly not going to help the Democratic Party going forward:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/u...using-aid.html

There is certainly blame to go around, from the overly complex application process to receive federal aid (only around 3 billion of the 47 billion set aside has been disbursed), to the typical "wait until the last possible moment" government muddling, to huge multi-national corporate land-lord companies.

Make no mistake, there are companies and individuals who stand to make billions as hundreds of thousands of people get evicted from their homes and apartments (click on the link to view the PDF report):

https://ips-dc.org/cashing-in-on-our-homes/

America’s 61 billionaire landlords have wealth totaling $240.9 billion – and have seen their wealth increase $24.4 billion since mid-March 2020. The top billionaire residential landlords in this report have wealth totaling $194 billion and have seen their wealth increase $21.2 billion since mid-March 2020.

To wit, federal, state, and local agencies, bear the brunt of the failure to disburse the CARES Act funding:

The piecemeal eviction measures at the federal, state and local level provide some tenants important protections but have left too many people unprotected or unable to access them. The regulations have been extremely difficult for economically stressed families to navigate during the COVID crisis and have not prevented landlords from filing evictions against tenants. While many evictions filed during the ongoing pandemic may be illegal, as they are against renters who are covered by various eviction moratoriums, it is the tenants who bear the heavy burden to defend themselves. They must show up in court during a health crisis and make a complicated legal case that the filing violates the various moratoriums. This could force them to miss work and potentially expose them to the coronavirus and requires tenants to research, understand and make complex legal arguments regarding numerous and ever-changing eviction policies and regulations. And there has been little to no public education for tenants, who are already struggling to keep themselves and their families safe, healthy and fed during a pandemic.

There is certainly one group that is smiling at the coming debacle:

Not content with reaping billions from their existing holdings (read: our homes), leaders and owners of corporate landlords are openly delighting in plans to profit once millions of Americans are evicted, seeing housing as an “opportunity sector” where they can extract more wealth for investors and themselves. They are poised to profit from the pandemic economic downturn much as they capitalized on the 2008 financial crisis and mortgage meltdown, with plans to buy up more real estate and increase their stranglehold over the residential housing market. As Starwood Capital CEO Barry Sternlicht said on a 2020 quarterly earnings call: “When it’s really ugly, it’s a good time to invest.”26 The Wall Street Journal reports that Invitation Homes, the largest U.S. single-family rental company, has raised $1 billion to purchase more homes. This is just one example of how dozens of companies, as detailed below, are raising billions — what we refer to as “cash on hand” — to profit from our suffering by buying up more homes, raising rents and repeating a deadly, racist cycle.

Irregardless of the blame game, the optics of throwing hundreds of thousands, and probably millions out of house and home during the worst global pandemic in a century, is not going to look good for an administration that's already struggling with following through on promises made during the 2020 campaign run-up. That this is happening under Biden's watch will not be lost on voters in the 2022 mid-terms, and the 2024 presidential election.