Relief Needed for Small Landlords, Says Letter Writer

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Letter to the EditorCovid 19 has had a huge impact on everyone. Efforts have been made to ease financial hardships for everyone except for landlords. While all other self employed people are eligible for unemployment PUA assistance we are not.

We have been excessively impacted by eviction moratoriums. It simply is not fair. While mortgage companies are willing to temporarily waive payments they increase monthly payments in the future or add to the length of the loan and say to get payments from renters. Most renters have no intention of paying back passed due rent.

In addition any income that is generated from the rent that exceeds the mortgage payment, the money small landlords rely on to live is gone.

We have worked our entire lives to be in the position to have rental properties. We pay our taxes. We deserve to be included in the PUA unemployment program or get state assistance (like Arizona who has set up a landlord relief program).

Please contact our representatives and ask for landlord assistance.
Congressman Jared Huffman – 707 407-3585
Assembly Representative Jim Wood – 707 445-7014
Senator McGuire – 707 445-6508
Every call matters.
Lora Wahlund

 

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24 Comments
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Scooter
Guest
Scooter
3 years ago

I would have to agree. With these last executive orders being almost useless there is a looming mass of evictions and foreclosures that are already starting. Landlords have mortgage payments and renters who have been laid off cannot pay 6 months back rent. We are heading towards a time of soup kitchens, and tent camps if nothing is done.

Black Rifles Matter
Guest
Black Rifles Matter
3 years ago
Reply to  Scooter

Personally Looking forward to picking up a few more foreclosures and short sales if what you say is true.

Thirdeye
Guest
Thirdeye
3 years ago

The best relief for landlords is direct aid or UBI for renters.

In my 1911 I trust
Guest
In my 1911 I trust
3 years ago
Reply to  Thirdeye

UBI is stupid. If you are going to to do UBI just stop making us pay taxes instead.

Justsayin'
Guest
Justsayin'
3 years ago

Interesting that you know the intentions of renters.
I whole heartedly agree with Thirdeye regarding the benefit of UBI which would allow many homeless people to find housing and restore their lives, though the way landlords gouge with high rents it might be a stretch

Mike
Guest
Mike
3 years ago
Reply to  Justsayin'

UBI exists, it’s called having a job. The governments the one who said people can’t have a job, so your plan is to give the government more money so they can keep 70 percent of it? Why? Because they did such a good job with the roads?

Rod Gass
Guest
Rod Gass
3 years ago

Sorry Lora,// It simply is not fair.//

Other than that, your position is ripe for the picking. Did you mistakenly expect that good time and prosperity would require fairness? When you began speculating on real estate, did you face the reality of boom and bust?

Asking taxpayers to underwrite your financial gambles seems to be unfair.

Really?
Guest
Really?
3 years ago
Reply to  Rod Gass

When the masses get a free pass because of the pandemic she’s just supposed to eat shit while tenants live for free? Oh. I’m sure she was clearing hundreds of thousands in profit in “that good time”. Most small landlords aren’t getting there full mortgage, property taxes, homeowners insurance and upkeep paid by their tenants, it’s a long term investment.

Neil
Guest
Neil
3 years ago
Reply to  Really?

Rod Gass “Asking taxpayers to underwrite your financial gambles seems to be unfair”. No it is unfair for the government to allow a tennant not to pay, and the landlord to have no recourse without compensation, that is not fair.

As I See It
Guest
As I See It
3 years ago

I can tell you from being a land lord that we’ve had to spend a great deal of money after renters leave the houses in need of repair, garbage hauling, etc. It is often not a money making investment. Its not an easy position to be in especially with it simply is because renters lost income due to Covid. I believe we are returning to a place where we will have to live more tribe like with family. Financially hard to make it alone these days. Tough calls.

Antichrist
Guest
Antichrist
3 years ago

Ya know I almost feel sorry for you except that this seems to be your main source of income, I can’t wrap my head around someone who invests so heavily depending on renters to make their bills for them, small landlords don’t just have rentals they also have jobs. Tell me , please how fast do you make repairs on your rentals or do you hold off hoping some dumb shit will improve your property for you because they have pride and want to live in a nice place ? How fast are you with those 3 days pay or quit ? And truthfully how legal are your contracts with the hold harmless clauses mold lead and the like ? Because I have found that it is very few and far between where the landlords are 100percent following the law the way they hold tenents to the law.

White native
Guest
White native
3 years ago

Great article! I think there are alot of personal loans being written right now for low low interest so I recommend the landlords look into that as some sort of relief. It’s not free money but with low interest it’s easier to pay back and hopefully with a slight rent increase they could recoup their funds. No one likes rent increase but their designed to follow the economy so makes logical sense in this time. Once the loan is caught up and paid off then a rent decrease I suppose is fair.

Diane
Guest
Diane
3 years ago

Most mom and pops are making little on rentals – it barely supplements social security. A water heater go out? $1250. Heater? $1800. New roof? $25,000, simple gardener? $200 per month, Repaint interior? Approx $2400, exterior $5000 and up. Cleaning is $50 and hour, then add mortgage, insurance, taxes, trash etc – landlords are not raking it in. Everyone knows landlords only make money when they sell. Most landlords have regular jobs or are retired getting social security which is not alot. I work for one, I see it – I make more money than they do on most months by cleaning.

commenter
Guest
commenter
3 years ago
Reply to  Diane

When you seem to needlessly exaggerate Diane then your words might lose credibility. Redwood Empire roofed my house for ten grand, maybe your estimate is for a McMansion or apartment building? (House-cleaning? Never paid more than $25 hr around here.)

HotCoffee
Guest
HotCoffee
3 years ago

I’m taking my house out of the rental market when ever I can get my tenants out.
Having tenants has always cost me more than I made from rent.
I bet a lot of other people will too.

The Big Liebowski
Guest
The Big Liebowski
3 years ago
Reply to  HotCoffee

Like this darn Covid tenant we’ve been forced to live with.

The UN is your doctor, your banker, your pillow.

Enjoy the new normal.

Antichrist
Guest
Antichrist
3 years ago
Reply to  HotCoffee

Maybe it costs you more than you get paid for rent but in the long run you end up with a property that was mostly paid for by other people

In my 1911 I trust
Guest
In my 1911 I trust
3 years ago
Reply to  Antichrist

Renters shoot themselves in the foot all the time. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my friends who rent vote for some sort of bond that raises property taxes. They will vote for three or four bonds in single election. Then they complain when their rent magically increases. Now this covid crap with no help for landlords, yet they cannot evict non-paying tenants? I see why Air BnB’s are so popular nowadays. Oh, but then people will complain about a housing shortage. How about just paying your darn rent like everyone else? Renters are let off the hook to pay rent and can’t get evicted but I am still fully on the hook for property taxes. Sort of like the CRV deal. CRV has been postponed for how long? Yet we are still getting charged in full for the CRV on our bottles and cans. I’m almost low key worried about catching an abatement for the mini dump I have going on of glass and aluminum, but I am not giving back items I paid a deposit on for free.

yesmeagain
Guest
yesmeagain
3 years ago

I was a renter most of my life and I have a lot of sympathy for tenants AND for the many smaller landlords, folks who have only a handful of rental units — maybe a parallel to mom-&-pop cannabis growers?. These are not wealthy people gouging tenants; they’re trying to make a good living for themselves and their families by providing housing for other people trying to make a good living. And considering how much resistant so many communities put up to the construction of rental units, resulting in a lot of regulation, it’s not easy for the landlords or their tenants. Without affordable housing, people become homeless, and local businesses fail because business owners can’t afford to pay workers living wages, and so it goes. And then we end up with all services from housing to selling socks all managed by giant corporations. During this pandemic, public agencies need to step up and assist tenants, landlords, homeowners with mortgage, and business owners by dipping into funds that normally go for military materiel and a lot of other wasteful programs. (We can argue over which ones once we’ve agreed that those many categories of regular folks need relief.)

HotCoffee
Guest
HotCoffee
3 years ago

Instead of playing musical chairs, the evicted tenants will be playing musical housing when this is over. Owners will evict non paying tenants just in time to rent to someone else’s evicted tenant.

I already paid about $3,000 to lawyers to evict tenants just in time for Covid to rescue them. They already hadn’t paid rent for 6 mos. before the virus and they are hoarders . Crap everywhere putting my insurance in danger of being canceled.

Antichrist
Guest
Antichrist
3 years ago
Reply to  HotCoffee

You can get them out for other reasons other than paying failure to pay rent on time , ie the trash or hoarding if your contracts are written with such things as must be kept in neat appearance and free of any violations to law or any dangers to property. Failure to have a proper contract either by failing to seek legal counsel on rental contracts or just plain laziness by using boiler plate contracts downloaded from the web, should not be reason to seek the public’s help on your borrowing money to gamble with, and lets face the fact that when you borrow money to buy property you can not afford unless you can get someone else to pay you rent for it, it is no different than a gambler buying lotto tickets on a credit card.

Guest
Guest
Guest
3 years ago
Reply to  Antichrist

By the same reasoning, renters should have known they shouldn’t lease places they couldn’t pay for. Sheer laziness in signing boiler plate contracts. Sheesh. Your one-sided view that it’s always the landlord’s problem if the government decided to put 20% of the population out work discredits your opinion.

Antichrist
Guest
Antichrist
3 years ago
Reply to  Guest

Negative there Batman, the relief offered to landlords is that they are allowed to have the missed months payments placed on the backside of their mortgages, meaning their payments are sort of delayed and their loan is merely extended the number of months that this eviction freeze is in place. The idea that these folks are not getting help is crap, there is help for them, it is just not extra free money merely because they decided to borrow money to have investment property.
Why should real estate investments get monies and say someone that bought stocks with borrowed money not get their risks covered when they lost their asses because Clovid shutdown flipped the market on it head ? Are landlords any sort of special class that they deserve special treatment in the speculation market with regard to borrowing monies to make a investment that might or might not pay off ? At least with real estate when it is all said and down most people will still end up with the real property that they were able to write off most of their expenses for and depreciate at least 50% of their paid money’s not to mention the amt deductions . If real estate didn’t have risks everyone would own and the rental market would become flooded to the point it would really cost investors to own rentals.
And for those who think I am one sided in my views I happen to be in property management and also have owned several rentals in the past . The amount of crappy owner-landlords in California is truly criminal .

Jesus, Chris
Guest
Jesus, Chris
3 years ago

For every bad tenant, there’s a good one! Screen your renters carefully, rent to healthcare workers, school employees, truckers, and skip the welfare moms, young guys, big families, etc. Make sure they have regular verifiable pay-stub employment, tax returns and good credit. References should be required!

If you rent to addicts and bums, low end folks, and people who make their money “in cash”, you are asking for trouble! Make sure your renter understands the rules, use a clear-English rental agreement. It’s a contract-legal or not!

Renters have possession and a preponderance of legal rights! Protect your property by being selective! It’s better to have a vacancy than to have a bad tenant. If the property is pissing you off, SELL IT! There are many others.

Learn to deal with rentals and tenants, keep the place in good condition. Be fair.

I bought one house, for $40,000, rented it out for 17 years, and sold it for $190,000! The tenants paid the payment and the taxes, and I got the profit. I used the profits from other deals, to pay off a different house, which is now rented to a tenant who has been there 7 years. She’s a schoolteacher, her rent is paid on regular and on time, the money is almost all profit, and, she will never move.

This is why you invest in real estate! Good luck!