A while back I mentioned the book Evicted, stating “It is extremely well written and it describes a world that most middle class Americans are unfamiliar with: a world of want, a world of existential worry, an underworld in the midst of our land of plenty. Though nonfiction, the book reads like a novel with compelling highly flawed characters. The book concludes with a prescription for solving the problems so eloquently conveyed by its author Matthew Desmond. If you care about our country, you should read this book.”
I stand by what I said, but I should have said more. And now I have the chance because I saw Desmond speak earlier this week. He explained a few of the vignettes from the book, assisted by photos on a backscreen that also displayed him larger than life. He spoke for 45 minutes without notes, alternating between being riveting and merely highly engaging. One key takeaway that he repeated and accentuated is that although most people think poverty causes eviction, often it’s the other way around: eviction causes poverty. His research (beyond what is in the book) suggests that people who are evicted almost always end up in a worse situation.
He stated that poor people who rent spend an undue amount of their income on housing, often more than 50%. They have few good options, especially if they have a prior eviction, which is an irreparable blot on their record. They end up spending nearly as much as a more affluent person would (for a similar sized apartment), though inevitably for a worse apartment (often not really habitable), in a worse neighborhood. But they have to sleep somewhere. Those with children have even fewer options because many landlords (not unfairly) consider kids a threat to the well-being of their property.
Desmond argued that a home, whether house or apartment, is a basic human need that effects many other fundamental needs. He proposes a governmental subsidy that would ensure that poor people would pay no more than 30% of their income for housing. He estimates that the cost would be approximately $22 billion per year. That’s a lot of money and some might suggest that the poor don’t deserve such largesse. If you are one of those people, Desmond considers you incredibly short-sighted. His research indicates that people without stable housing are:
- less likely to find or hold on to a job,
- less likely to attend school, let alone excel,
- likely to spend so much on housing that they can’t afford food, clothing, or health care, and
- more likely to commit crimes.
Desmond concluded by suggesting that those who complain that $22 billion for a housing subsidy for the chronically poor is too much money are obviously unaware that the mortgage interest deduction subsidizes homeowners by approximately $170 billion annually. Yes, as a country, we consider it worth $170 billion a year to subsidize the housing of people with enough income to borrow money to purchase a house. But we currently don’t think it is worth $22 billion to help the chronically poor secure stable housing – even though not doing so causes even more problems whose cost is inexorably borne by society. It’s a modern version of let them eat cake.[1]
[1] “Let them eat cake” is commonly attributed to Marie-Antoinette, in response to being told that the poor people of France did not have enough bread to eat. Modern sources concur that there is no evidence that she ever uttered the words or anything like them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau included the quote, attributed to “a great princess,” in Confessions, which was written around 1767, approximately three years before a 15-year old Marie-Antoinette left her native Austria to marry the King of France. https://www.britannica.com/demystified/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake The modern equivalent would be for a famous real estate baron (no names please) to say “they should buy a house,” upon being told that poor people can’t afford rent.
Nicely argued, Mr. Riedel. Your view of the social contract is darker than mine, though. In civilized nations the implied force is necessary to protect the natural rights of the people. I don’t believe state power is a threat to those rights as long as our republican institutions remain strong. People don’t like taxes, but pay them willingly if they see the state as legitimate.
During a visit to Berkeley, California in April, I learned that the state has a unique law that governs evictions of every unit of a dwelling in order to take the unit off the rental market. The landlord must pay the evicted tenants a sum of $15,000 and give them four months’ notice. It’s called the Ellis Act and you can read more about Berkeley’s version of the law here:
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Rent_Stabilization_Board/Home/Ordinance___BMC_Section_13_77_Ellis_Implementation.aspx
I thought I heard my Berkeley friend tell me that a landlord can only make these types of evictions effective in the months of June, July or August. Perhaps that was a law that was on the ballot but failed to be approved by the voters.
I don’t know about the Desmond proposal to pay low-income people a subsidy to meet rent payments. I wonder how it would affect the price of rental housing. If demand exceeded supply, landlords might drive prices up to capture the new government subsidy, as long as the laws of their city did not prohibit rent increases on the order of the subsidy. I’ll leave this one to far greater minds than mine!
Desmond confuses justice with charity and in his confusion he improperly seeks to “prescribe” a system of “compulsory charity.”
Saint Thomas Acquinas defines justice as “the perpetual and constant will to render to each one his right” and states that “a man is said to be just because he respects the rights of others.”
The claim that those in need of food, shelter, and health care place on others are not claims of justice – for the object of justice is rights and rights are restraints on action rather than obligations to act; therefore, justice requires that people be left alone free to enjoy their rights.
The claims that those in need of housing place on others are claims of pity, of compassion, of sympathy, of help, of mercy, of love, but not of justice. The term “social justice” is an absurdity. The claim of those in need is the realm of charity.
Acquinas defines charity as “love which is together with benevolence” and as a kind of “friendship in which we actively desire the good for our fellow human beings.”
Charity places an obligation on each one of us to desire and actively seek and do good to others through beneficence and almsgiving – not by cooking up government schemes to expropriate other people’s money under the false promise of eliminating poverty. Desmond’s “prescription” is not an act of charity and is most certainly not an act of justice – it is born of the desire to virtue-signal and is yet another example of liberal arrogance and condescension.
“Government programs” can only be implemented through state compulsion, i.e. through violence or the threat of violence. The government can not solve our problems like poverty. It will only serve to exacerbate the problem. The poverty rate at the time of the Great Society welfare programs was something like 14%. Fifty (50) years and trillions of expropriated taxpayer dollars later it remains at 14%. In the bargain, the black family was completely decimated and torn apart – something that 300 years of slavery could not do.
I suggest that Desmond consider the destruction of the family by ill-advised government policies and actions as one of the more profound causes of not only poverty in our country but other social pathologies as well.
Government is not the answer – we and our moral obligation to perform true acts of charity are the answer.
Here in Ohio, companies who specialize in building and renting mass apartments were found to be reselling public utilities to their renters at ridiculously high prices, (preventing those renters from economic stability, under a lease written in such a way that prevented them from moving out). These companies did this without reasonable disclosure to a population who had no other choices; Columbus is a locked market for renters as it is growing fast and there are too few other rental options for this large population of renters.
Sure it was ‘free enterprise’ for the owners to charge whatever they wanted (‘charity’ be damned), but to say that the owner’s freedoms were diminished by the state’s violent intervention in stopping this disgusting practice completely disregards the government’s role in keeping the peace in general, and advancing the wellbeing not only of its citizens but of society and prosperity for everyone in general.