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On the one hand, "let's not kick people out of their homes because they lost their jobs in a pandemic they couldn't have avoided" is the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable so Dems should be able to handle this. On the other hand, come on, man!

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Your ex-cousins over at Jalopnik have been been ringing the alarm bells about how over-leveraged America is on its car payments for years now. Lose your house or your apartment you and your family can at least sleep in your car to stay off the streets and behind locked doors, and get to work on time, wherever you find work.

Which is why car loans are the last things people default or go delinquent on, even above housing. There's gonna be a lot of people who end up on the streets one month and lose their car the next month, and their jobs (if they still had one) not too long after that.

And given how George Floyd jumped off during lockdown, we've seen what a restless population with no job to wear them out, keep them occupied, keep them worried about losing if they speak out on the wrong cause or get arrested on a sunday evening can do. And that's demonstrating on behalf of other people. When the thousands in the streets are all mad because they've literally had everything taken from them?

Lets say it's probably not a coincidence most of California voted to increase police budgets at the same time the state was resolutely wasting six months doing nothing to protect tenants.

There's a whole other effortpost on the wisdom of allowing an unelected Judicial Council to arrogate to itself the powers of the legislature and judiciary because the electeds don't want to piss off landlords by helping their constituents but I'll leave that one for now.

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People should also expect a wave of foreclosures coming too. Most of the mortgage forbearance agreements I've seen just makes those missed months due in full and owing and the end of the term (usually 3-6 months). If they didn't have the money to make normal mortgage payments, where do you think these people are getting giant lump sum payments from?

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The CDC order has enough loopholes that the eviction crisis probably won't wait until December.

-Landlords are allowed to evict for "non-financial" reasons (landlords are terrible enough to make things up). Renters have to sign a declaration that they can't afford full rent, will try to pay partial rent, and would become homeless if evicted.

-The declaration ends with: "I understand that any false or misleading statements or omissions may result in criminal and civil actions for fines, penalties, damages, or imprisonment" which give landlords a big item to threaten tenants with if they want to evict them.

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If only there was one (or even another!) person that the public could or should have as a choice that would be so reliable in a crisis like this via their policies that we wouldn’t be hoping for a political Hail Mary of sorts....

.....oh well! I guess that’s my pie in the sky fantasies going off again!

Also apropos of nothing: was a big fan of y’all back at SplinterNews (only read, never commented) and I’m so glad that you guys are back! Can’t wait for Defector as well! Cheers!

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I can see the GOP now blaming Biden for a problem of homelessness and COVID spreading under "his" watch because of crammed homeless shelters.

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