Commentary: Rent Control Is the Wrong Solution for Housing Affordability

My family moved to the United States from the Caribbean in 1985. About eight years later, my parents saved enough to purchase a two-family home in the quiet outskirts of Boston far away from our crime-ridden neighborhood. As landlords, my parents charged modest rents—enough to “help with the mortgage”—and ensured that the first-floor apartment was always well maintained for our tenants.

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Tucson Ban on Landlords Considering Income Could Hobble Its City Budget

An Arizona lawmaker wants the state Attorney General’s office to investigate an action taken by the City of Tucson.

Arizona House Speaker-elect Ben Toma, R-Peoria, filed an SB 1487 complaint with the Arizona Attorney General on Wednesday, asking the office to investigate Tucson’s policy forbidding landlords from considering people’s sources of income on rental housing applications. Toma wants the Attorney General’s office to investigate whether this violates state law.

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Minnesota Gov. Walz Policies Prevented Landlords from Evicting Tenants Who Piled Feces in Home

Some Minnesota landlords are blasting Gov. Tim Walz and his eviction moratorium for costing them more than $100,000 to repair the mess some tenants left behind.

They are sending a message in hopes it will help others speak up after a tenant went 18 months without paying rent or utilities before they were forced to hire an attorney to get her to leave.

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Ohio Landlords May Not be Responsible for Tenants’ Unpaid Utility Bills

Ohio landlords moved a step closer to staying off the hook for tenants’ large unpaid utility bills after the House passed a bill Wednesday over objections from municipalities and utility organizations.

The bipartisan bill, House Bill 422, came as a way to change a longtime process in the state that holds people who have not contracted for service liable for unpaid debts.

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‘Squad’ Members Earned Tens of Thousands as Landlords, Even as They Supported Eviction Moratorium

Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib

Far-left Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who have both been vocal critics of landlords and supportive of the eviction moratorium that prevents them from collecting rent indefinitely, made tens of thousands of dollars themselves collecting rent last year, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Tlaib disclosed in a recent financial statement that she made between $15,000 and $50,000 from rent out of a property she owns in Detroit, even after she had recently criticized “landlords and bill collectors” and said that Americans needed to be protected from them “in the midst of a pandemic.” Pressley made roughly $15,000 from 2019 to 2020 off a property she owns in Boston. Pressley has denounced landlords for trying to collect rent during the pandemic, claiming it to be “literally a matter of life and death.”

Both congresswomen, along with others in the so-called “squad” and other congressional Democrats, were supportive of extending the eviction moratorium that has forbidden landlords across the nation from collecting rent, ostensibly to provide financial relief to Americans who cannot pay their rent due to losing their jobs to lockdown orders. The Biden Administration extended the eviction moratorium through October, after the original moratorium implemented last September by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was set to expire earlier this year.

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Harvard Student and Legal Gun Owner Asked to Find Another Apartment by Landlord

by Neetu Chandak   A Harvard University graduate student was asked to look for another apartment by her landlord after roommates intruded the student’s room and found guns. The roommates searched 24-year-old Leyla Pirnie’s drawers, closet and under the bed for the guns, The Washington Free Beacon reported Friday. “When I asked them why they were in my room to begin with, they each came up with completely contradicting stories (none of which made any sense), but one comment struck me in particular: ‘We saw that you had a Make America Great Again hat and come on, you’re from Alabama … so we just kind of assumed that you had something,’” Pirnie said, the Beacon reported. “I asked why they didn’t just call me and ask me before intruding. One of the girls responded that fear took over her body and she felt compelled to search my room until she found proof … I cannot make this up.” One of the roommates emailed landlord Dave Lewis after finding the guns and expressing discomfort, according to the Beacon. “That being said, it’s clear that the rest of the housemates are extremely uncomfortable with the idea of Firearms being kept in the…

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U.S. Constitution Does Not Guarantee That You Can Always Pay With Cash

In its Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, the United States Constitution provides:  “The Congress shall have Power…To coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof….” And since the Constitution’s drafting in the year 1787, cash has played a vital role in the nation’s economy as the generally-accepted medium of exchange.  Barter still exists, but on a relatively limited basis and, although there has been chatter for decades about America one day becoming a completely “cashless” society, that day has yet to arrive. In modern times, there are, of course, multiple methods of payment for goods and services as well as to pay down debt in installments — or to completely extinguish it in one fell swoop.  In addition to cash, there are checks, credit cards, electronic money transfers and other means of payment. Pursuant to the above-quoted provision from the U.S. Constitution, Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1965 (last amended by two bills approved by the 97th Congress in Public Laws Nos. 97-258 and 97-452; the 1965 Act is the successor to the Coinage Act of 1792 as well as the Coinage Act of 1873).  The 1965 version includes Title 31 United States Code Subchapter 5103 which, from 1983…

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