So, landlords are just supposed to eat it?

So, landlords are just supposed to eat it?

When we replace a sense of service and gratitude with a sense of entitlement and expectation, we quickly see the demise of our relationships, society, and economy. ― Steve Maraboli,

Before we get started, please let me state for the record that landlords may well be my least favorite planetary subspecies. Of the six landlords I had to endure in my misspent youth, just one possessed anything mildly resembling a heart. I deducted the bugs share of the rent at one Rogers Park apartment explaining that the property management company could recover it from the roaches. When another Evanston apartment started eliminating amenities like dumpsters, I made them give me a $25 monthly rental rebate for the inconvenience.

So, to say it’s a stretch for me to write a column defending those scurrilous multi-family property owners would not be at all inaccurate. The semi-impenetrable reality is the average American’s entitlement mentality has expanded to such immense proportion it tends to create some rather strange bedfellows

I still can’t get over the horde of doomed-to-repeat-history nitwits who still post “We killed old people just to save the economy!” memes on social media. They seem to forget the last time we faced an economic collapse it led to the rise of fascism in German, Italy, Japan, and Russia culminating in over 70 million World War II deaths.

Put more simply, the casualties and catastrophic fallout from another global depression would make all those tragic plague deaths look like a flippin’ walk in the park. And I can’t begin to comprehend the kind of thought process that would so willingly embrace that kind of disaster.

And now, with the national eviction moratorium expiring – and that’s only because the SCOTUS finally put their collective foot down – the entitled progressive horde has gone full Chicken Little on us. Not only is the sky flippin’ falling, but some of these mopes are calling for full on “rent forgiveness.”

Really? You should live rent free for over a year because you’re so cute?

Of course, their “logic,” if you can call it that, is the Delta variant is presenting an entirely new threat and to throw people out on the street would only further increase those plague totals.

And that’s actually true, IF THE EVICTEE ISN’T VACCINATED. Because if they are, according to those archconservatives at CNN, the CDC reports there’s a scant 0.004 chance a fully vaccinated American will experience a breakthrough COVID case requiring hospitalization.

That puts the odds of that possibility at 1 in 25,000! To put that in perspective, you have a:

  • 1 in 6 chance of dying of heart disease
  • 1 in 88 chance of killing yourself
  • 1 in 92 chance of overdosing on opioids
  • 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash
  • 1 in 235 chance of perishing from choking on food
  • 1 in 8,912 chance of dying of sunstroke
  • 1 in 15,000 chance of being struck by lightning in your lifetime
  • 1 in 15,638 chance of dying from electrocution or radiation

Do I really need to continue?

So, with vaccines available to any U.S. citizen over 12 who wants one, on what fuckin’ planet do beleaguered landlords have to endure another year, or more, of no rent because the plague isn’t going away and a minority of idiots have a death wish and won’t get vaccinated? And what flippin’ kind of entitlement mentality must exist for a majority of Democrats to believe they’re doing the right thing in this regard?

I’ve said it before, particularly in light of the spread of deleterious delta variant, if you won’t take care of yourself, what makes you think we will – or should? Please don’t forget! I’ve been a social liberal as long as I can remember, but real liberalism only goes so far.

The Tribune’s last real columnist, Steve Chapman, reported that Alabama and Georgia realtors have already sued to stop the moratorium because their landlords are losing $13 BILLION a month in unpaid rent. The national overdue rent total likely exceeds $200 billion.

My I’ve-covered-human-nature-for-15-years instincts are telling me that at least 66 percent of these deadbeats are gaming the system. The math supports that theory, too! Just 10 million Americans aged 16 to 64, or 4.7 percent of that population, lost their jobs to COVID. Don’t tell me the rest of ‘em can’t come up with rent.

Meanwhile, the federal government under Trump and Biden set aside a measly $47 billion for rent relief and an abysmal 12 percent of that has actually been dispersed. As Chapman put it, “distribution has been glacially slow.”

Now, landlords are telling me that some parasitic tenants actually did apply for that federal money but they kept the cash for themselves. Leave it to the government to determine it wasn’t more efficient to send the check directly to the landlord.

And just when you thought the nanny state couldn’t possibly get any worse, in the process of penning this piece, despite having no power to do so, the CDC circumvented the Supreme Court by extending the moratorium until October. Their logic, of course, is that we have to protect stupid people who refuse to get vaccinated.

We’re not talking about corporate overlords here, either. Just 41 percent of landlords fall into the that mold with mom and pop operations presiding over 77 percent of two-to-four-unit properties. And these fine middle-class folks depend upon that rent money to pay their mortgage.

So please tell me why they should have to bear the brunt of this fiscal stupidity? What makes you (the rabble) think you’re entitled to live rent free while the bank forecloses on the building? Why should the taxpayer bail your sorry ass out when we’ve all been hit hard by the plague? It’s a level of entitlement that I can’t begin to comprehend.

Though voting for a Trumper is out of the question, I can’t imagine voting for another Democrat for the rest of my life.

I never thought I’d see this day. I never thought I’d come to despise my fellowman as much as I do at this very moment. And I never thought I’d start to loathe the country that’s given me so much, but here we are. The fall of the American empire is clearly at hand.

 

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