[WSBARP] WSBARP Digest, Vol 75, Issue 36 Landlord question - next legislative session

[Carmen Rowe]

Lord help me but I feel compelled to give my $.01 on this - I'll reference
Kary's as a succinct encapsulation of my thoughts:

> You're generalizing.  The moratorium protects an entire class regardless
> of their need, at the expense of another class, regardless of their need.
> If it were based on economics I'd have little problem with it, but it's
> not.  Beyond that though, I'm worried about the long term adverse effects
> on those who actually need the protection.  The moratorium may have given
> them a false sense of security and lead them to make bad decisions.  Back
> when I practiced law I did primarily debtor bankruptcy and the moratorium
> is likely causing people to make decisions that no competent financial
> planner would ever advise them to make.
>
> Also, you can't even assume someone who rents cannot afford to own.  They
> may just not wish to own for many different reasons.
>
> Kary L. Krismer

It is the "regardless of need" on either the tenant's or the landlord's
side that I think takes away all of the generalized philosophical
conversation about distribution of social needs - the generalization of
tenants as victims and landlords as capable of shouldering society's needs.

I liken this to requiring that restaurants provide food - as hunger and
even starvation are most definitely very real to the same if not greater
extent of homelessness - with the promise that the people will come back
and pay them for it when it's all over.

The thought that it's all ok because the tenants still owe the rent is
poppycock. If they can't pay it now, you think they'll have a $10K-plus
stash to pay the landlord with when the moratorium is lifted? worse than
illusory, it's purposefully ignoring reality to support a social argument.
It equates constructively taking the property for social purposes. Unless
perhaps the government commits to paying any defaulted payments - though,
like most things, that help would likely come far too late to prevent
devastating impact on many landlords.

The thought that the landlords are in a better position to bear the burden
is also poppycock. Taking out of the picture the bigger landlord operations
(though there are arguments there too that are problematic in putting the
burden on them), what about all of the small rental owners? I'll throw
myself on the sword, lay my personal life bare and use myself as an
example. A decade ago my partner and I opted to move to his house (which is
paid for) and rent out mine (which was not) for the nearly sole reason that
paying the mortgage posed some serious questions of hardship (for various
reasons both of our jobs were in flux, and I have that pesky law school
debt to deal with). I couldn't sell without knowing bankruptcy could be a
very real necessary piece of that decision, as that was in the dip in
market and I couldn't have sold it for enough to pay off the mortgage. Now,
it's different - but at the time, if I couldn't have gotten rent, I very
possibly could have lost the house and still owe money and probably file
bankruptcy. I know a lot of people who did just that, who weren't so lucky
as to have somewhere to go that enabled them to rent their home.

I'll also lay myself bare to say that any comment that rent takes up a
disproportionate amount of salaries means that the landlord should take the
hit, as they were "benefiting" from that gouging, is a problem with pay,
not rent, and part of an ongoing gross mischaracterization of the status
landlords are in financially. I make a whopping $200 a month over my
mortgage payment, which I assure you doesn't even carry the costs of
upkeep, necessary repairs or replacements, etc.

I know a lot of retirees that are reliant on their modest rental income,
they certainly can't cover expenses with their social security. I know many
who planned for their retirement this way - keeping their home after a
necessary move to assisted living, buying a duplex that they could both
live in and rent, investing in a small rental property(ies) to supply that
supplementary income. None of whom are "gouging" anyone with rent.

And to Kary's point, and a gross generalization of the victim-renters, I
know a lot of renters who are very well off, particularly in the urban
areas, who opt to rent rather than buy for any number of reasons. And just
because they can pay doesn't mean they do. There was (is?) even a
commissioner in Olympia who openly refused to pay rent in "solidarity" with
those who couldn't afford to. Thus sticking her landlord with carrying the
property when she had every capability to pay what she contracted to pay.

I guess this comes back to Kary's observation - any argument about who
should bear the burden for the greater social good is false when it
generalizes the tenants as victims and the landlords as sufficiently
privileged and well off to bear the burden during this time. I don't see
how you canNOT consider that a taking. The illustory concept that the
tenants will pay the money at the back end is meaningless in any case where
the tenant truly couldn't pay rent.

Ok so I gave more than $.01. Some of that is I have lived the flip side of
these arguments, and I share this not to embarass myself but to show that
my view isn't an academic one in a philosophical argument on social justice
and balance. I am particularly aghast at the idea of imposing social
idealism to protect people who may not need it, and make those who may not
be able to afford to carry the financial burden of a social need, based
upon a dismissive view that "the landlords can take it" and the "tenants
will otherwise be homeless." Who said? some, sure. Many, no.

Again, consider a restaurant. If someone orders, eats, then says they can't
pay, why is eating any less important than housing? so if the restaurant is
not considered appropriately on the hook to let them walk out the door with
an "IOU" to come back and pay when it's all over, why is a landlord? Any
argument you may make on this landlord/tenant situation would apply equally
to any other provider of essential goods, and yet something in our social
mindset (perhaps primarily in urban areas) thinks that for this one class
of people, it's ok for them to be the ones that pay.

The views I have seen in that vein have been consistently based upon the
premise that the landlords are in a better position to bear the loss. And
it just isn't true, that is a skewed and false perception that in the end
serves a great social injustice in and of itself.

And then there is the fact that because of these types of decisions on
blanket prohibitions on landlords regardless of their needs or the actual
needs (or, not) of the tenants, most small-scale or single-rental landlords
I know are looking to back out of the fiasco of renting in Washington as
quickly as they can, which strips an awful lot of affordable housing. But
another topic, out of so many.


Carmen Rowe, Attorney/Owner



Phone: (360) 669-3576 (direct cell)
Email:  Carmen at GryphonLawGroup.com

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