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[Music] [Music] um one other thing that's happening is um evictions even during this pandemic and it's it's really gotten no attention especially as congressional lawmakers continue to negotiate a relief package where they stand with the negotiations is shameful in a number of different ways but when it comes to the issue of evictions it's particularly bad so let's talk a little bit about that so there's a looming eviction crisis and based how relief package negotiations are taking place among congressional lawmakers doesn't seem like they plan on doing much about it now the cdc's eviction moratorium will expire on december 31st which will lead to an explosion of americans being forced out of their homes and onto the streets and congress is having a discussion about maybe we should extend maybe we should extend this moratorium but even that's not enough so just to give you a a sense of the weight of this issue 6.7 million adults are likely to face eviction or foreclosure in the next two months and you see actual instances of people being evicted even now during this so-called moratorium when people are supposed to be housed in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus um but again just let me reiterate that moratorium isn't enough uh here's what the scene looked like in brooklyn on december 11th uh when a tenant activist tried to or tenant activist tried to block the the nypd from evicting a family from their home take a look and it didn't stop there in fact just last night uh there was yet another protest and new york state assembly member desmond meeks was arrested for being there to witness what was going on he was filming it documenting it the cops were there to try to evict a mother and her children a single mother and her children and of course uh the weather is pretty cold and awful in new york right now um and here's what happened when uh cops confronted meeks this this is what we see this is an eviction of rpd about to put a single mother and her children out on the streets this is this is assembly member damon meeks i'm under arrest i'm under arrest for coming out here filming what's going okay i'm inviting camera okay i'm not i'm not resisting how are people getting evicted right now when there is a moratorium and when there are as many as 3 500 people dying every day from coronavirus this pandemic is worse today than it was in the beginning of the pandemic and in the beginning of the pandemic i mean at least there was some willingness for our lawmakers to take it seriously to protect people to ensure that people were housed to ensure that there was something being done to provide some relief through robust unemployment benefits through a direct check to americans but that's not the case right now clearly and all we keep hearing about is that looming december 31st date but again congress hasn't done enough the cdc hasn't done enough and when it comes to the more recent moratorium that was implemented by the cdc the problem was that it was implemented and written in such a vague way that some states decided to interpret it in let's just say a way that isn't so generous to people in need take a look it's important to realize that the federal moratorium that's due to end wasn't good enough to begin with it didn't come until september and that was months after people in places like kansas city had been evicted and forced to the streets in the middle of a global pandemic the cdc moratorium only covers one type of eviction and those are evictions for non-payment of rent it leaves a lot open to local interpretation and it puts the burden on tenants to apply for that protection so the cdc moratorium was not good enough but the cdc moratorium allowed to expire at the end of the month leaves hundreds of thousands millions of families vulnerable to eviction within the first 20 days of the next year and she's absolutely right i mean in in some places in this country you even have federal judges who are hearing eviction cases and siding with landlords one perfect example is judge patricia kinsey from florida who has decided to consistently side with landlords she sided with a lawyer for a tenant named steve crowley um i'm sorry she sided with a lawyer for tenant steve crowley's landlord a big canadian company that owns 19 000 rental units in north america who'd argued that the cdc order was unconstitutional in fact she thought that this was horrible when it comes to private property agreeing with the landlord's lawyer kinsey ruled that the cdc moratorium represented an unlawful taking by the u.s government of landlords private property rental income oh no i mean we can't mess with private property but to be sure there is an issue with mom and pop landlords who literally rely on their rental um you know rental property in order to pay their own bills and to be quite honest with you we haven't really seen much of an effort by congress to handle that situation either and look even when the pandemic um was you know finally taken seriously and people were housed um because it was considered a an important public health measure the system still will value profits over human lives so for instance take a look at this tweet by mike baker where he mentions that there's been another record more than a quarter million new coronavirus infections were identified in the united states today this was a tweet uh that he put out there on december 18th over the past month about 5.9 million new infections have been identified that's one out of every 56 people in the nation now i give you that statistic because it's important to understand how this virus is just tearing through the country it continues to be a gigantic public health concern yet people are being unhoused already even before the moratorium is lifted and congress has failed as of now as we do this story uh has failed to come up with a robust relief package that really addresses these issues but even a robust full-proof moratorium isn't enough and i want to make the case for that because all it really does is provide a temporary bandage on something that was a gushing wound even before the pandemic unaffordable housing homelessness these issues existed before coronavirus uh you know started to tear through the country and remember the eviction moratorium isn't the same as rent cancellation or mortgage cancellation all it does is kick the can down the road and americans are still gonna owe thousands of dollars in back rent so for americans who did find some protection under the cdc's moratorium understand that once it eventually expires and we know it eventually will their landlords will try to evict them if they are unable to pay that back rent the portion of tenants owing back rent has roughly tripled during the pandemic federal census surveys show the most recent survey tracking the pandemic's impact on households identified an estimated 18 percent of households behind on rent payments so what do you guys think that looks like how bad is the problem what does the average renter own as soon as these um you know moratoriums are lifted well the federal reserve bank of philadelphia says renter households experiencing job loss because of covet 19 currently at this moment owe an estimated 7.2 billion dollars in unpaid rent or 5 400 each but don't expect the appropriate response from our congressional lawmakers like for instance republican senator ron johnson who literally had the balls to stand up and give this ridiculous speech this week when i came to the senate we were a little over 14 trillion dollars our gdp was over 15 trillion dollars we're actually below 100 of gdp now i know i'm using a lot of numbers right now and i'm going to use more because that's part of the problem and one of the reasons we are 27.4 trillion dollars in debt is we only speak about need we only talk in terms of compassion we all have compassion we all want to fulfill those needs we just don't talk in numbers very often we don't analyze the data we don't take a look at what we did in the past and see did it work oh oh i love love looking at the past and trying to figure out whether some of the actions taken by congressional lawmakers have worked or failed now of course there have been a lot of failures and i'd like to point to one that involved republican senator ron johnson uh this is from the milwaukee journal sentinel a headline that says u.s senator ron johnson backs tax cuts dismisses one trillion dollars uh projected one trillion dollar projected increase in federal debt because they don't actually care about the debt do they love tax cuts of course they do do they love spending any of our resources on actually benefiting the american people especially during a time of crisis of course not and that's what that speech was really about it was a giant middle finger to the american people who are truly suffering right now due to no fault of their own a virus that they couldn't have predicted a virus that has led to tens of millions of americans losing their jobs a virus that has led to more than 300 000 americans dying and ron johnson stands up there and pretends like he cares about the debt it's absolutely shameful and there's virtually no aid for independent mom-and-pop landlords who again do rely on rental property income in order to pay their own bills and so they're still responsible for paying utilities for their buildings they're still responsible to pay their property taxes and some of you might think no landlord's bad doesn't matter if they're corporate landlords or independent mom and pop landlords but understand that this has created a situation in which the worst corporations are snatching up these buildings and just continuing to increase the rent so i'll give you a perfect example and this was written by david sirota for the daily poster please read the full piece because it's fantastic so um at the goldman sachs financial services conference on december 9th blackstone's billionaire ceo stephen schwartzman boasted that after the 2008 financial crisis his firm was able to cash in on the mortgage crisis at the time the company was able to buy up foreclosed homes and convert them into rental properties subsequently plagued by the accusations of dilapidation or excessive fees all while it received a big financial boost from the government and guess what blackstone is really excited about these independent landlords who have become desperate because they're not getting any aid from the government they're not able to collect rental income uh for obvious reasons and so they're either putting their buildings on the market which then gets snatched up by people like schwartzman or they're being foreclosed on and so it's going to create a far worse situation for renters down the line and congress doesn't care congress isn't doing anything about it as schwarzman says you always have winners and losers blackstone was a huge winner coming out of the global financial crisis and i think something similar is going to happen i bet he does and you wouldn't and by the way wouldn't you know it despite the country's devastation and public health crisis blackstone continues to force their own tenants out on the streets as seroto writes blackstone has also been evicting residents during the pandemic and has faced a legal showdown in new york or with new york tenants at one of the city's largest rental complexes which it owns there the company has been trying to exempt thousands of units from rent regulation laws the company has reportedly even kept manhattan units empty rather than face rent control regulations and i've certainly seen quite a bit of that here in los angeles as well and look if senate democrats want to actually do something about this and to be sure lawmakers like senator bernie sanders have they've been fighting pretty hard but they can actually fight harder because believe it or not they do have leverage even though even though republicans control the senate what do i mean by that well keep in mind that mitch mcconnell just recently admitted that kelly lefler and david perdue who are you know running in the senate runoff races in georgia are currently being hounded due to the lack of direct checks to americans of course this is part of the relief package negotiation something that mitch mcconnell was not in favor of in any way at all however once he realized that this could hurt the chances of lefleur and perdue getting re-elected he jumped on a call with gop lawmakers and urged them to send a direct check to americans now that's important because we know that republicans don't want to lose control of the senate and so since democrats have that leverage why not use it there's also one other thing that's not getting a lot of attention turns out that donald trump wants whether you believe him or not he's on the record claiming that he wants a more robust relief package for americans here's what he said to brian kilmeade in the past weekend what about an aid package for the american people what could you do to get the 900 billion out well i wanted to please pushing it very hard and to be honest with you if the democrats really wanted to do the deal they do the deal they should do it right now i want to see checks going for more money than they're talking about going to people democrats should use that sound bite and they should use it aggressively and they should use that leverage against uh the senate gop which of course has served as an obstacle in getting a robust relief package to americans um but unfortunately we do have a number of uh feckless self-interested democratic lawmakers like senator warner who is one of the wealthiest members of congress he's a democrat and in regard to what progressives have been demanding he's gotten a little salty and here's what he said on a recent interview with msnbc i mean we're dealing with a senate that is still unfortunately controlled by the republicans we still have donald trump uh as president controlling two thirds in a sense of the federal government the executive in the senate and the alternative would have been to have people get kicked off of unemployment get kicked out of their apartments not get the kind of food assistance that's needed the republican deal was sitting at 500 billion dollars and frankly there'd not even been any conversations between leadership so he sounds like he's not really interested in fighting or using any of the leverage that senate democrats have in demanding more for the american people i want to reiterate the new york times reported that mcconnell said senators kelly lefler and david perdue who are both facing january runoffs that will determine which party controls the senate something very important for republicans right we're getting hammered for congress's failure to deliver more pandemic aid to struggling americans particularly the direct payments and that enacting the measure could help them i would uh dangle those senate races right before them and again just flex your muscle democrats fight and do the right thing but as i shared in a segment with you all last weekend the truth is when you have incredibly wealthy people allegedly representing us in congress they're so far disconnected from the realities that we face on a daily basis they just don't get it and so we get insulted with a proposal of a one-time 600 check or maybe no check at all but in this case i think if democrats understood the leverage they had and they were willing to fight a little harder they could get something done to not only prevent people from getting evicted in a temporary period of time but more importantly provide actual rental assistance so people aren't kicked out of their home as soon as that moratorium is lifted that hasn't been addressed i don't know if it's going to be addressed but it is a big problem that seems like no one's paying much attention to yeah i mean it just added up to the myriad ways in which our political class ruling class has just completely um left us in the lurch during this economic crisis fueled by the pandemic i mean it's it's weird because a lot of this stuff um you know obviously there's a ton of pain um happening right now but it's almost like the pandemic has frozen a lot of it you know like has frozen things in place and it will only get much there's a way in which it's going to get worse once everything kind of quote unquote goes back to normal um because like you said people are going to start collecting those checks that they're owed um you know it's going to it's going to create all kinds of uh of chaos both in the in the housing market the commercial real estate market all these things like are just going to be in a very very precarious place and in just the we it's it's hard to imagine what's going to happen i mean there's there is such a deep and broad economic crisis that's that's happening right now that again like something it's either gonna like we're either gonna sort of emerge from this with some sort of big kind of new deal type thing um and i'm not necessarily thinking that's going to happen right now or with this current bite administration or whatever but like the the country is really kind of at a major major inflection point in which we're either going to we're either going to come out of it with this big kind of 21st century new deal or uh just or just kind of fall into a permanent state of um downward spiral permanent crisis and um and just kind of like a mass uh underclass that is just much bigger than it ever has been in our history i mean it's just it really is well to think about you look at something like this and you look at just how absent it is from the chatter the political conversation the negotiations going on on capitol hill all of those things and and it just it boggles the mind i mean it really boggles the mind um and again i just don't know what what is going to come out of this i mean it's going to create a political instability unlike we haven't seen in in our lifetimes yeah i mean and i i know that at least in los angeles you can already see um the impact of what's going on i mean of course we had a problem with homelessness even before the pandemic but that problem has really exploded um during this pandemic and i mean when you when it comes to local lawmakers like what have they done oh let's put a porta potty underneath the bridge and that'll be good enough no but that's it's insane because that's actually what was tried um back in i think the early 1990s and it ended up being a massive failure because people were using the porta potties for drug trafficking and all sorts of other crime and it did nothing to actually you know help with any type of public health concern um you know during the aids epidemic aids hiv epidemic there were um like housing programs because the government realized that this is a public health issue right and it's better to keep people housed in a clean safe place rather than have them you know out on the streets uh possibly you know spreading this and but we don't have that kind of mindset right now in this country like things are so like far in like this neoliberal profit driven direction that we're i mean like we're having conversations about okay what more can we do to bail out these businesses i'm not talking about small businesses like these corporations i mean the federal reserve printing money all of that is totally fine but when it comes to sending just checks direct checks to americans who are in need right now they're totally nickel and diming us 8 million more americans fell into poverty since the last summer that's insane it's insane and i think more than anything guys what is what it shows me is just how the left has no power because if we did then we would be able to do something about this congress isn't afraid of us they're not afraid of us at all at all and i think that's something that needs to be addressed yeah and ultimately i mean the presence of half a million homeless people in in the richest country in the world is is just utterly like it's one of those things that i like when i think about it i just i it drives me absolutely crazy and and and yeah i mean ultimately our goal should be to decommodify the housing market pretty much entirely i mean it should not be something subject to the winds of the market it just shows that the market does not cannot satisfy housing for all i mean it just can't so again you know decommodify the things that we need in our lives that should be a principle that we stick to uh over and over again whether it's food housing medical care education all those things need to be decommodified sure we can have we can have we can have like for shoes and stuff we can have companies competing with each other and things like that but for before the things that we actually yeah no i totally agree with you and and you know when it comes to like like rent control for instance i mean it goes back to a a very familiar theme on this show you know you can try to regulate a privatized industry right but it's it's never going to be enough because with rent control in l.a this pandemic has shown how weak rent control is because what ends up happening is okay these like mom and pop landlords can't can't they can't afford to keep paying property taxes and you know um utilities and everything for these buildings uh for their tenants and so they're putting this stuff back on the market or they're being foreclosed on which allows vultures like schwartzman to come in and snatch them up but understand what they do they don't keep the rent controlled buildings what they do is they demolish them and then they build these luxury condos or luxury apartment buildings that are overpriced and they do sit empty and it it like it blows my mind like that was a big problem even before the pandemic and now this pandemic and the inaction by our lawmakers is putting that problem on overdrive um so we're going to really see this housing crisis explode in the next year and congress is just not up for the challenge at all they don't care to do anything about it [Music] [Music] you