Small-Time Landlords Struggle to Keep the Lights on as ‘Devastating’ Eviction Moratorium Continues

[thackney]

Small-Time Landlords Struggle to Keep the Lights on as ‘Devastating’ Eviction Moratorium Continues
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/small-time-landlords-struggle-to-keep-the-lights-on-as-devastating-eviction-moratorium-continues/
April 5, 2021

...Ultimately, it wasn’t a hard decision. Lights are more important than a swimming pool.

“I need to keep my electricity on in the common areas so that the place isn’t black at night,” said Graves, who has an ownership stake in five Houston-area apartment complexes, and does third-party management for eleven other properties.

Graves is one of the millions of landlords and property owners in the U.S. struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, providing an essential service – housing – while regularly getting painted as heartless by the mainstream media and slimed by progressive lawmakers and advocates who want to #CancelRent.

At one of Graves’s complexes, 14 of her 22 tenants are behind on rent. Some residents haven’t paid a cent since last June, and she said she’s been forced to tap into her personal savings to keep the business afloat. “The utilities, all those things, payroll, is coming out of my pocket,” she said.

Her opportunity to start collecting from her non-payers was pushed back again last week, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended its ban on evictions through at least June. It’s a move that some legal experts say is beyond the CDC’s authority. But keeping people in their homes – and out of homeless shelters – “by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said last week, defending the move. Housing advocates praised the extension as “essential.”...