The Patriot Post® · Is Rent Forgiveness Next?

Leave it to government to make a bad problem even worse.

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 disrupted our entire economy. From supply chain issues to soaring inflation, it’s no wonder so many Americans were priced out of buying a home and were instead forced to rent. But the inevitable domino effect also led to higher rent payments, which those same Americans often found themselves unable to pay each month.

No problem, said the Democrats, who then echoed Ronald Reagan’s nine most terrifying words: We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control issued a moratorium on rent payments — a moratorium that was ultimately and rightly ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The move had been a power grab by a vote-buying government bureaucracy, and it ended up hurting middle class landlords who were starved of rental income but still had to pay mortgages on their properties.

Initially, there were very few evictions. The vast majority of landlords likely sympathized with the plight of their tenants. Then renters got another reprieve when many states implemented their own moratoriums.

But that’s all about to change. Landlords, after all, have bills to pay, too.

“As pandemic eviction moratoriums expire and rent payment relief programs end across the U.S.,” reports The Daily Wire, “a rental crisis is beginning to crest. About 8.5 million people are behind on rent as of the end of August, according to Census Bureau data. Of those renters, around 3.8 million say they are somewhat or very likely to be evicted over the next two months.”

The Wire adds: “Meanwhile, rents continue to tick up and topped $2,000 a month in June for the first time on record. Before the pandemic, rents have increased by almost 25% and 15% in just the past year, according to Zillow.”

Bidenflation, anyone?

Yes, the same renters who got a rent reprieve during COVID are now on the hook for higher payments to make up for increasing costs and all that lost money. And we can’t blame landlords, who had to keep paying their mortgages on those properties and must now make up for lost revenue.

Unfortunately — and all too predictably — the people hurt most by this scheme are the very people Democrats claim to care about the most. As Moneywise reports: “Rising rents are hitting minorities harder than others, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. Among households headed by Black adults, 58% are renters, while 52% of those headed by Latino adults rented. That compares to a rental rate of slightly less than 40% of Asian-led households and 25% for households led by non-Hispanic white adults.”

And there’s another twist to the issue of high rent: Now that Joe Biden has set a dangerous precedent of bailing out student loan borrowers, what’s stopping him from doing the same for renters? That was a gender studies degree. This is a family’s shelter.

“It’s not inconceivable that Democrats will now blame property owners for the failure of tenants to pay their rent,” says political analyst Mike Miller, who goes on to connect the dots: “Not unlike Biden’s ultimate capitulation to student loan ‘forgiveness’ demands, can rent ‘forgiveness’ demands now gain even more traction, at which point Biden and the Democrats will again cave like cheap tents?”

With the midterms around the corner, we can expect Democrats to reach out and touch just about every group of Americans finding it hard to make ends meet in an economic malaise created by those same Democrats. It’s called vote buying. Just as they bailed out those who fell prey to the college loan scheme, the Biden administration may well throw a life raft to renters.

Meanwhile, our national debt continues to soar. At some point, someone’s got to pay for all of this, right? Democrats don’t seem worried about it, but perhaps a power shift to the Republicans this November will help restore some common sense and fiscal sanity to a government that’s out of control.