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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Eviction moratorium is pure theft; it’s a sign of creeping socialism

By David McElroy · June 29, 2021

Dishonest people have no incentive to pay rent right now. Why? Because landlords in the U.S. are powerless to do anything about freeloaders.

Let me tell you a story. I won’t mention any names, but I know the case very well. I could point you to the case file at the county courthouse in Birmingham, but it’s a story that’s playing out all over the country.

A woman moved into an apartment last fall. She had a good job that generated plenty of income to pay for the home. But after about three months, she stopped paying rent. For six months, she hasn’t paid a nickel.

She still has her job. She won’t respond to collection efforts. She managed to get herself arrested on drug charges during the winter. The only response she ever made to collection attempts was to send a form letter from the CDC claiming she’s been affected by COVID-19 — she doesn’t have to prove it — so she doesn’t have to pay right now.

And today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that property owners can’t do anything about this. The people who thought they owned property have discovered they have no right to their property — all because a bureaucrat issued a piece of worthless paper.

This is theft.

I’ve been on both sides of the relationship between renters and landlords. As a renter, I’ve had good landlords and I’ve had terrible landlords. I appreciated the good ones and quickly moved away from the bad ones.

When I was in college, I quickly realized which were the rental companies to stay away from. Students talked about such things. The good companies were rewarded with good tenants. The lousy companies had to take the poor risks.

For the past four years, I’ve managed rentals for about 20 properties as part of my job with a Birmingham real estate company. I’ve made the rental decisions and I’ve had a phenomenal record of choosing good tenants. Out of all the people I’ve rented to, only one has been a problem.

A lot of other rental companies have had a terrible time for the last year or so. I’ve talked with some owners and managers who have as many as half of their units occupied by people who won’t pay rent and who won’t move.

In most cases, the people have the money to pay rent — but they prefer to spend the money on other things. After all, there’s nothing an owner can do right now if they don’t pay.

If I have to explain to you why this is wrong — why it is theft — I don’t know how to make it clear to you. The entire idea of property was that it belonged to the owner to do with as he pleased. For the last century or so, governments in the U.S. have slowly applied progressive left political principles to property — and they have slowly stripped away owners’ rights.

If you went back a hundred years, you would find American property owners who wouldn’t have believed that politicians could decide what they do do with their property. Zoning pretty much didn’t exist at the time in most places.

Restrictions on what could be done with property was handled in deed covenants, which were mutual agreements — which a buyer voluntarily agreed to when he bought a property — not with orders handed down unilaterally by politicians and bureaucrats.

Over time, more and more rights have been stripped away. An owner has to rent to whoever politicians say he must rent to. Politicians impose new restrictions and new rules on owners whenever they want — and the property owners have no say in the matter.

And to make matters worse, faceless bureaucrats even get to decide how much a property is worth — and how much the owner has to pay in property taxes. (The property taxes went up on our apartments last year by about 25 percent — and there was nothing we could do about it.)

On top of all of the rules and regulations — combined with the constant threat of lawsuits — that have come about in the last 50 years, the government now says, “If somebody doesn’t pay, you can’t make them leave. You have to keep paying your mortgage and your taxes and property upkeep, but you can’t enforce your lease. If you try to do that, we can fine you or even send you to jail.”

And now the U.S. Supreme Court says that’s perfectly fine.

I’ve been saying for years that property ownership is just an illusion in this country today. At best, you are leasing your property from a state. Even if you paid cash to buy a property, you have to keep paying forever — and if you ever quit paying, that property will be taken away from you.

You can’t use your property as you please. Governments can change the rules whenever they like. If a bureaucrat decides all houses in your neighborhood have to be painted pink, you have to get on board. It doesn’t matter that you never agreed to obey whatever somebody dictates.

And now, if you’ve bought a property to generate income for your retirement, for instance, that income can be stolen from you — by dishonest tenants who have been enabled by politicians and bureaucrats.

This country is slowly moving toward socialism. You can make a strong argument that we’re already at the stage of fascism. (Socialism and fascism have a lot more in common with one another than they have in common with a voluntary system based on individual freedom.) In a fascist system, property is privately owned, but it’s used as government dictates. With increasing segments of the U.S. economy, we are dangerously close to that today.

As long as you don’t own property, it’s easy to snicker at the “evil landlords” getting the shaft, but that is stupidly shortsighted.

Without private property owners who make investments in property — to build apartments and homes in order to rent them — these rentals wouldn’t even exist. And when more and more property owners get out of the market — realizing that they are being burned — idiots are going to scream that they should be forced to come back. They’re going to claim it’s a “market failure.”

Anybody who owns rental property is courting disaster right now. Your rights are slowly being stripped away. If you have any sense, you’ll sell your property and put the money somewhere safe — while you’re still allowed to sell.

When socialists take over a country, one of the first things they do is seize private property. There is going to come a day in this county — sooner than you think — which such nightmares will come true. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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