The Megyn Kelly Show - The Cost of Biden's Eviction Moratorium - One Landlord's Story | Ep. 143

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Adam Schinzel and Daniel Klemme, a landlord and landlord association president in Washington state, to talk about their story in dealing with eviction moratoriums, and the cost of the new eviction moratorium from President Biden. They discuss their own situation dealing with a particular tenant and the fallout after COVID started, the politicization of the issue, what happens next for landlords and tenants, property owner's rights, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, the eviction moratorium. The Biden administration basically admitted that it overstepped its legal bounds. It knew it was doing it, but it was just trying to buy additional time for tenants who are facing eviction for nonpayment of rent. While the legal process plays out again, they know that the Supreme Court is not likely to uphold this extension of the moratorium. And yet, thanks to the activism of people like Cori Bush, this St. Louis congresswoman who's been sleeping out in front of the Capitol four nights in a row trying to prove what it's like to be homeless.

OK, they they bent. They bent. The Biden administration told the CDC to do it. And the CDC extended the moratorium, even though it was out of legal authority to do it. And now what about these landlords? Where do they go? How do they pay their mortgages? How would you do it if you were relying on your tenants rent payment every month? And let's not pretend this is March 2020. It's not. It's it's August now, 2021. And there's been a whole lot of taxpayer money given to people who are suffering, tenants who are suffering. Some of the states haven't

dispersed it. But why should the landlords have to suck that up? Right? Like what's the matter with the states and what message does this send to the renters who are managing to pay their rent, who are working extra hours and who are managing to honor their responsibilities? Today, we're going to have two landlords on. One is an actual landlord and one represents landlords. He's the president of a landlord association up in Washington state. And wait until you hear this guy, Adam's story, the landlord. Wait until you hear what happened to him as a result of this moratorium. We'll get into it in one minute. First, this. Adam, you're the actual landlord. And Daniel, you represent a landlord's association, so you represent a bunch of landlords. Correct. Yes. I'm the president of the

Landlord Association of the Inland Northwest. Okay. And you guys are out in Spokane, Washington. Yep. Yep. All right. I don't know anything about Washington state. So what part of the state is that? Politically speaking, is that a dem area a republican area yeah uh it's spokane is a different color uh rather than the red or the blue um it's very hazy right now from all the wildfire smoke um it's a little more conservative i think than the west side uh a lot more conservative we don't actively try to make bad policies, which kind of just accidentally make them over here. Well, it's happening right now. So, um, let me start back with, with you, Adam, your, your family has how many houses? Uh, they have, uh, three rentals in Spokane area.

And are they big houses, small houses? What are they like? Uh, they're three bedroom, two bathroom. Like a condo type of thing or a standalone house? There's a standalone house. Okay. And why did they start buying up these properties? Why did they have those three properties? Well, the property, the depot out in Cheney, they bought when me and my brother were going to Eastern at the time. So we lived there at one point. So yeah, they just bought it as an investment, I believe. So as an investment. And prior to the eviction moratorium, had you ever had a problem with a tenant who didn't pay the rent, needed to be evicted, that kind of thing?

We've had late payments here and there, but nothing like this, no. Okay. Never where you have to actually kick the person out. No. And, but before the eviction moratorium, and I'll ask you this, Daniel, it was relatively easy to kick somebody out if you needed to as a landlord. Yes. Yeah. There was a pretty clear established process, um, that everyone that, and it's been the

same process for forever. So the, the eviction moratorium, uh, kind of kind of just changed everything with regards to Washington State landlord tenant law. What was it? It was basically you had to give 20 or 30 days notice and then the person had to go if they were in arrears, if they weren't paying. Right. Yeah. You'd give them a pay or vacate notice. You'd hire your lawyer and they'd hire a process server and you'd mail it to them and post it on their door and try to give it to them and let them know they have three days to pay or vacate or 14 days to pay or vacate. And now you can't even really serve those notices. Right. So when the pandemic started and we went into quarantine and everybody was told to stay at home and they were shutting down businesses and so on.

And we had that emergency eviction moratorium saying for a number of reasons, you can't can't get people out. A, we need people to stay at home. B, we're taking away jobs. The government is basically taking away jobs left and right thanks to this quarantine. How did you guys feel about the eviction moratorium then? As a as a landlord association, I mean, I think it was just kind of a strange time. I remember that time pretty vividly where I can give quite a bit of grace right at the start of what could have been, I don't know, I don't want to say it wasn't super, super serious, but it kind of seemed like it was going to be the end of the world.

I thought that would be a faster process than the end of the world we're currently experiencing. So yeah, at the time, it was pretty shocking, but it was like, okay, well, they're going to do this for... Our first moratorium, I believe, was about 48 days. And so it's like, well, that's a month and a half. We'll get back to normal. And then here we are. No, there's no normal as we're all experiencing. So Adam, did your tenants, and I know we're talking about the property out in Cheney, Washington, just outside Spokane. So did your tenants who were in there at the beginning of this eviction moratorium, were they paying their rent at the beginning? No, they were not paying rent. And had they been paying rent prior to the announcement of the eviction moratorium?

They had stopped paying right around a couple months prior to the moratorium, right around that time. So this was a nightmare for you because you had tenants who were already flouting their rental obligations and then the government swooped in to give them a big, a big pass. Yeah. So they were assisted through a government program. So, um, and it was working. And even if they were falling behind the program assisted them. Um, and then the moratorium started. Um, and that's when things, you know, they were not only not paying rent, well, they were not only not paying rent now. Um, it seemed like now all responsibility for the tenant was gone. So they started destroying the property, um, becoming a nuisance to the

community. Uh, there's 27 police reports just in the time that they were there. Oh my gosh. So let's back up and talk about who moved in because your reports just in the time that they were there. Oh, my gosh. So let's back up and talk about who moved in, because your heart was in the right place when you initially rented this property to, I think it was a couple, right? It was at least one guy. He was a veteran and you wanted to help him for all good reasons. Can you just give us a little bit of background? Yeah.

So I've known Daniel for 10 plus years. He's one of my best friends. He was working with a government organization that houses veterans. And me and my parents attended a seminar that they were putting on. And, you know, we have a special place in our hearts for veterans. They serve the country and they deserve, you know, support. So, you know, and this, this program said they would do just that. And, you know, as far as us being landlords, it was,

you know, a little more secure because they were getting support and it seemed like a win-win, you know, a good for everybody. So we were really excited about it. And so, yeah, that's how we initially, you know initially started the process. And can you give us the first name of the tenant just so we have a name to work with for the show? Yeah. Thomas. Thomas. Okay. So Thomas moves in and it's no accident he moved in. You guys both thought it would be a good idea to help a veteran. Also, there's a government assistance program that helps veterans pay their rent. So that's good. Your heart was in the right place. The government and taxpayer funds were in the right place to help our veterans coming back

from fighting, get back on their feet. Okay. Yeah. It seemed like a great thing. Yeah. And what, and just on a larger level, Daniel, how, how do veterans normally do when they come back from fighting and they get this government assistance, they move into rental properties. Are they a reliable risk normally or? Yeah. Yeah. No, they absolutely are. And this, so this program that I was working with is called the supportive services for veteran families program. And what that program is, it's for veterans and their families that are currently experiencing homelessness or at immediate risk of experiencing homelessness. And so it's not just, um, it's not, you know, it's not just your, uh, you know, somebody, you know, takes their boots off and, you know, isn't in the military

anymore. And then they, they transition to this program that this program is specifically for, um, you know, people that are sometimes chronically homeless, you know, that have been experiencing homelessness for a long time up to, you know, you might be homeless tomorrow. You should, and there it's really a fantastic program overall. Was that the story with Thomas? Was he down and out? Absolutely. Yes. Uh, he, you know, just kind of the way things worked is, um, without giving, you know, too much, uh, personal info. Um, he was one of those people. I'll just say that I feel like our country owes, um, for, for what they've done and the things that they've given up. And so it was pretty special to even be able to work, uh, to work with

him and his, uh, his family, cause it was actually actually a large it was a large family um and so they were on but they had some barriers you know they had some rental uh barriers that are really hard to overcome um credit that kind of thing yeah yeah yes of course uh a lot of things like that uh you know just they were kind of just uh they were going to need a special touch. And so what I did was I worked very closely with them. And, um, after Adam and his parents came to one of the, you know, I would put on events for landlords in the community to talk about our program and they, you know, they came out to it. Um, and, uh, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty touching, you know, that this is my buddy, you know, we have a great friendship. I don't mix, I keep work at work. Um, but specifically I brought them because they needed to, you know,

I needed to house this family. So Thomas was married with kids. Yeah. So they move in. And as I understand it, you had a very good relationship in the beginning, Adam, with the tenant. Yeah. You know, we, yeah, we did. Daniel even went out there and, you know, gave the guy guitar lessons. We reached out and said, do you guys need anything else? You know, clothes. You know, we have a big family. So if the kids, you know, need need clothes or anything, let us know.

You know, we dropped rent from what we were initially charging $1,400 to $1,200. We wanted to work for them. You know, it seemed like a good thing to do. And yeah, we wanted to work. And by the way, Daniel, you tell me, but the beginning of this story underscores why we need mom and pop landlords. Absolutely. There was no way for a lot of families in programs like this. It's not just exclusive to programs like the SSVF program, but it could apply to the Section 8 program or lots of other types of programs.

You will not pass a rental criteria that especially large landlords have, you know, as a policy. Smaller, you know, and it's just no. And you can appeal some of those things, but usually it's no. Yeah. You need a reasonable human who has the power to bend the rules on the other side. I have been on both sides of this as somebody who used to have absolutely no money coming out of school, having put myself through. And I w I would look at people who wouldn't help me and say, but this is why there's a human being in your position, you know, who can use reason and kindness and heart to make decisions. When you're dealing with a corporate landlord, there's no reason and there's no heart. So it's great to have the Adams of the world. It's because and it's because those big landlords get sued.

And that's when they make those, if you give one person the deal and the next person finds out about it, they're like, hey, wait a minute. Why didn't I get a deal? And so the small landlords are able to do that. As we see Walmart and CVS and Starbucks and all these banks take over the nation, Amazon, it's just nice to be reminded that like mom and pop operations are important and they're important for a number of reasons. And this is just one, you know, hand to hand deals can be made and judgment exercise where it ought to be. Now that that is not undermined by how this story ended because not every risk pans out, you know, for, I'm sure

for every Thomas and it did not work out with Thomas, which is where we're going. You've got a lot of other guys, gals, veterans in particular, who live up to their obligations, who take the fresh start and make make a go of it. One of the reasons you're on is because the fact that this guy didn't has made news and underscores the position you were put in by your federal government. OK, so, Adam, back to you. So things were going great. Daniel's going over there, giving Thomas free guitar lessons. You've lowered the rent. You guys are helping him out. And then, um, couple payments missed and you get the eviction moratorium. So were you, did you guys owe a mortgage on this property? Was it met? Was it a matter of, if I don't get the rent, I can't pay my mortgage. Um, yeah, I mean, it's my, my dad got laid off during the coronavirus so this is his main source of

income this is you know my mom and dad my mom's retired dad didn't have a job so it was this is their retirement so yeah they they heavily depend on the money um every month you know it's it's it's it's his business so even though he owns these three houses, he's not swimming in money. This is not a rich man. No, no, absolutely not. Okay. Well, that makes sense. I mean, even in New York, it's the same thing.

A lot of renters and landlords in New York City and the landlords, even though they own these beautiful buildings, they need your money to pay their mortgage. That's how they pay these expensive mortgages. Yeah. It isn't a business. My dad's an everyday guy. Our other rentals are families that have been in there for five, six, seven years. They keep the rent affordable because for them, they would rather have tenants in there that are happy and it all works, it can be stressful if you really, you know, get into it. So, um,

Well, and by the way, on your other properties, did the tenants stop paying their rents or do they continue paying throughout the moratorium? They continued paying. Okay. So this tenant was given a gift Thomas and what happened? So how did you first realize this is getting bad? This is, this is about even more than not paying rent. Um, it was the, the police reports that we were getting, you know, like I said, there was 27, uh, calls to the cops within the time they were there. Um, and so it was becoming, you know,

a nuisance to the community. And then that on top of unpaid rent, we weren't really sure what we could do. We didn't know what our options were. You know, the moratorium was so new. Nobody really knew. We contacted a lawyer. It just didn't seem like anybody really had any answers, you know, and we couldn't really afford our lawyer at the time. It was, you know, it's like make a quick phone call, you know, and we couldn't really afford our lawyer at the time. It was, you know, it's like make a quick phone call, you know, gets quick answers kind of thing. Cause, um, and it was difficult cause you know, they, the tenants had a free lawyer, so we knew our, you know, our backs were kind of against the wall. So it was, yeah, it was, it was,

and why did the tenant have a free lawyer? The Northwest Justice Project is the Washington free lawyers for tenants. And so this isn't about his status as a veteran. This is about the eviction moratorium. Not only will they stop the landlords from throwing you out if you don't pay your rent, they'll pay for your lawyer if the landlord does get to the point where he needs to take action. Yeah. And that organization existed before the moratorium. And it's, I guess, I think it would be labeled housing justice or a housing justice organization. And they have a good use because sometimes, you know, there is bad actors that are landlords or, you know, there's a business dispute and it's worth, you know, it's, it's really cool when somebody that's

very low income can be represented. Um, however, uh, not from the moratorium, but actually from, uh, some of the legislation that's passed in Washington, um, things like the Northwest justice project that's made to kind of help the little guy has kind of turned into a behemoth that helps all tenants avoid any eviction. Up in one minute, what Adam actually found in that house when he got back inside and a note, it was horrifying. It's a word of caution to all landlords whose heart may be in the right place about the power of government when connected with bad actors. That's in one minute. What kind of police reports were being filed, Adam? What were they alleged to have done? Domestic violence, drug use. It was just constant, you know, and it was, you know,

an everyday thing. So we don't really know what was going on in there other than it was within, you know, a year and a half there was 27 police reports. And they were in there, what, five months after that, which there were several more. Do you ever show up at the door and knock on the door and just say, hey, Thomas, what's going on? I mean, yeah, we tried. It would either be no response. The one time that I did put a notice up, there was a woman there and she didn't even know who they were, who the tenants were, Thomas.

What? Thomas is gone? They had been gone, yeah, for a month, two months. I'm not quite sure how long they were gone for, but yeah, she didn't even know who they were. So now you've got squatters in there. Yeah. So I don't know what you do about them. Are squatters covered by the eviction moratorium? Kind of. Yeah. Yes. Yes, they can be. And Washington, you know, we have a bunch of crazy liberal policies before the moratorium, too. So don't let's get let's give us our fair due here. We've been doing it the wrong way for a long time.

Yeah. It's not all the federal government. Yeah. Because there's several states who have their own eviction moratorium on top of the federal one. And whichever one is more strict is the one the landlord's bound by. Yep. So that's a tough situation. All right. So Adam, so you, when I imagine there was a point at which you were just looking at the end date of this moratorium thinking, just get me to that end date. Just get, let's just get there. And then I can get these folks out. Whoever's in there now. Yeah. Um, but it was so unclear when the end date was going to be. So what did you think? I mean, like what, what were you waiting for? What date? We didn't really know every, you know, everything was so uncertain. It seemed like nobody had an answer for any of our questions. Um, and it seemed like, uh, because of the moratorium, it was everybody's hands were tied. You know, we, the cops tried to, you know, did a lot for us.

They tried to, they tried really hard and yeah, I just, there was nothing we could do because of the moratorium. So I didn't really know what to think. I pretty much was thinking we're going to lose our house. I mean, at that point, that could have been a blessing. I mean, losing the house means it's now the bank's problem. I just, I'm thinking how long can this go on where you've got squatters inside who may be committing criminal acts over whom you have no control, but might have to whom you may have potential liability. I mean, it goes on and on. I would think as a landlord, it might be a blessing to have the bank take over. I mean, certainly they were in this position where this is a really hard

part of being a landlord is a lot of times people that are landlords are older and you have to do, you know, estate planning and, you know, some asset planning on how, if you're going to exit the rental industry so that you don't pay too many taxes. Right. And so all of a sudden, right. You know, when Adam's father's retiring, um, and then, you know, he picked up a side gig and then, you know, COVID happened. And the whole goal of his retirement was, you know, it was, it was stress and it was time for, you know, dad to be home a little bit more, like kind of like from the doctor type of a deal. And all of a sudden there's this very stressful situation. And so the first thought is, well, maybe we should just sell the unit. And you are allowed to do that

under the moratorium. You can give a 60-day notice of intent to sell. And it was, I think, 11 months after that notice that they finally got out. Wow. When you give the 60-day notice, do they have to get out within the 60 days? Technically? Unless there's, uh, there is a certain amount of judicial discretion. So, you know, if you, uh, get the right judge, uh, maybe not. Um, realistically, you could never sell the property with such tenants inside, right? I mean, no, I mean, we couldn't even, we couldn't even show the, uh, the house they had, you know, they had spike strips on the driveway. It wasn't, it wasn't a house. Yeah. It wasn't a house you wanted to approach. I mean, it's, it's guns drawn when you're approaching that house. It's, and I didn't really realize,

I didn't realize how dangerous it was until perhaps after the fact, but you know, yeah, it wasn't, you don't go knock on the door and say you know how you doing it's and was the house in a good area i don't mean what kind of neighborhood is it i mean cheney is considered one of the it's a great town yeah that's where i grew up as a kid which is why i wanted to house them out there. Cause I never, I never once that's how, you know, that's how I cared about those people. And I'm like, you know, if they need to get safe, you know, this, this person's done a lot, let's get them into, uh, you know, Cheney has like the state patrol, the Spokane County sheriffs, the Cheney police department and Eastern Washington

university's police. I'm like, you guys are going to be safe here. No more of the worries of, you know, sleeping in your car, worried that your stuff's going to get ripped off. Your kids are going to get to go to school and it's going to, you know, they're going to, they're going to have a new life, a new, a new chance. So finally you get into court and does the judge side with you in terms of the eviction? So not the first time. Yeah, correct. Not the first time. It was the second time. First, you were told no because of the eviction moratorium? Yeah, correct. Okay. And so what finally got the judge to change their mind? I can give a little bit of info on the timeline. Sure. So as far as I can tell, what what happened was, you know, they they served a 60 day notice for the intent to sell.

And the realtors couldn't access the property because they were being literally chased away and screamed at, you know, by whoever was there. And this was during a time when the courthouse and stuff was shut down due to whatever phase we were in right well and she also claimed that she had coveted three times right so people the yeah the defendant kept claiming right that they had coveted and what at the time the courts were very they didn't there was no proof yeah no proof required during the moratorium that you actually have coveted but the courts were very willing to you know push the date out push the date out push the date out all the concern for landlords rights i mean zero zero zero zero yeah correct um so so that's so that's what happened um it kept getting pushed out

and ultimately uh you know adam's family and and their lawyer basically decided, let's just start over with this process. Right. Let's give another 60 day notice and let's take it from the top. Take two. And shortly after about, I don't know, maybe 20, 25 days after that notice was served, that's when there was a major, um, uh, you know, a felony assault, um, at the, at the property. And I, I think that that may have weighed, um, at this point in the police reports that the police are like, we are at this house all the time. And I think that that kind of was the nail in the coffin because they, you know, they didn't leave again after the second 60 day notice. And so at that point, they could potentially be actually evicted even under the governor's moratorium.

Right. It has to be, it has to be that egregious in order to get around it. They make it so hard for the landlord. I mean, that standard of proof to get somebody out under this thing is next to impossible. You kind of have to have a tenant like this in order to get around it. Because the presumption is always with the tenant. They're,

they're bending over backwards to help the tenants. And this is even though we've given billions of dollars in relief to tenants. I mean, the federal government understands that it put tenants and landlords in a tough position and has been giving out billions of dollars. And yet, way because the truth is that the unemployment rate is extremely low right now. People are getting back to work. The jobs report in July was better than it's been in years and way better than they expected it to be. And so there's a real question about why the tenants who aren't paying their rent aren't paying it. Why aren't they working at this point? Well, the moratorium incentivizes bad behavior. You don't have to take responsibility for yourself. And even with the police reports, it took a long time to get them out. And I think it was only really under extreme circumstances that, you know, we were able to, and the damage is not over. It's the house is still, you know, destroyed.

Well, what happened, Adam, when you finally got them out, you got the order and you finally got into the house, what'd you see? Yeah. So, you know, we, uh, we couldn't you finally got them out, you got the order and you finally got into the house? What did you see? Yeah. So, you know, we we couldn't afford clean, you know, a cleaning crew. So it was me and my father went out there to our house and it was atrocious. You know, it was it was a nightmare. It was really disheartening. It was, you know, garbage everywhere.

You know, heroin needles, feces, broken windows, broken doors, spray painted, you know, on the floor, spray painting, you know, cuss words. There was, you know, it was like, it was devastating, you know. We had to clean everything out. I mean, just the amount of garbage and dump, just the dump fee was upwards of four grand just to dump the garbage. That's how much stuff was in the house. So it was devastating. I mean, it's something that we obviously, we talked about it every single day. It started to consume my dad. It's how are we going to get this fixed? What are we going to do? Is it worth selling? And it's somebody who destroyed your property, destroyed their income. It's their livelihood. So it still is

something we're dealing with. It's wrong. Right. Because it's not just money. It tugs at your heartstrings. It's a constant stressor. And I'm not blaming the tenants. I mean, in certain ways, but they had a rough past and they needed, you know, support and they needed a chance. I'm not so much harping on them. They have troubles that they need to, you know, get through, but it was really the system in place, the moratorium, um, with no plan or recourse, the landlords, nothing you can do. Someone is blatantly destroying your property and when's it going to stop? We didn't know. Is it over now even?

Is it incentivizes bad behavior? Can you just explain that? Well, having no responsibility for your actions incentivizes bad behavior. And now it's not only, oh, we're not going to pay rent. It's we're going to break your stuff. People who otherwise wouldn't do such things, when you put something in such as a moratorium. It what's the rules now? You're not paying rent. There's no response. You know, there's no there's no consequence for not paying rent. It's you know, people start doing bad things, you know. And I mean, what would you say to the people who say, well, you had two other rental properties where people didn't do that.

So can't blame the moratorium. It's just one guy on a bad path. One's enough. One out of three, it leaves us. I mean, it doesn't sound like a good gamble to me. And quite frankly, it's not right. I mean, it doesn't quite make a difference if these other tenants did it right. Well, these people didn't. And the system completely failed us here. And what if you had an apartment complex? It's not just me that's getting affected by this. It's a big deal. Well, of course, people who are paying their rent,

you're looking around saying, why am I paying my rent? A lot of people are looking around saying, I'm paying my rent. And he's not paying his rent. And we're both living in a similar house. How's that fair? Well, you know, we were, and we were scared that our other tenants would, you know, the whole coronavirus thing was new to us. And it seemed like one of our houses was getting completely destroyed and it was a complete nightmare. So yeah, every month, you know, we're wondering, I hope the other tenants don't do anything similar to this or, you know, and thank God they didn't. But is that a risk that

we should have to take? And correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, you'll probably know this better than I will. But the assistance goes out to people who are making pretty good money. I mean, it was like $195,000 or near $,000 bucks as a couple. Just under that, you're eligible. You can get the advantage of the eviction moratorium. I mean, that's pretty good mint. Right. And really what it's doing is it's created, there's no responsibility because there's no consequences. And consequences are a good thing. You know, when, when somebody is doing something, you know, a bad behavior, not pro-social behavior, it's good to have those consequences because that's how people change.

Yeah. Right. And these people, these people are getting $600 a month. I mean, a week, a week from the government already, like it's part of the COVID relief. Right. And so, and there's, you don't have to prove it. Maybe things have changed slightly in the sense that if you get into court, maybe they'll bring up a little bit more of what your actual economic situation is. But for a very long time, you could not even ask if they had lost income. So, you know, a lot of people were working from home and they, you know, that haven't paid rent, their incomes didn't go down. I know in this instance that their income did not change over the course of a long time. So they were still getting whatever checks they'd

been getting when they'd been paying the rent. It sounds like in this case, they may have been diverting some of that to drugs. Not to rent. That's what, yeah, I can say that they weren't paying their rent with, with the money that they were receiving. Yeah. So what's happening is I was paying for whatever they were doing in that house. You guys were paying for whatever they were doing in that house. The people listening to this program, it's federal, federal money going to folks to trying to help them bridge this unemployment gap. Um, even though they can earn quite a big salary and still get it. And then if they're not paying the rent, we're backing them up again without doing much

of an inquiry to see whether they're an appropriate candidate. It's just a wide swath moratorium. It's not it's really not individual. And even when you get in court from what you're telling me, there's not much of an interest in probing the specific circumstances. Yeah, it didn't help anybody in this case. Didn't help, you know, certainly didn't help us. And it didn't didn't help them either. In one second, I'm going to ask the guys about Cori Bush out there pretending she's homeless by sleeping on the Capitol steps for a few nights in a row, as if this is somehow representative of what the homeless population experiences.

She says this is a matter of human dignity. Do the guys agree with that? And what's their response to her? This is an interesting segment. We'll get to it in just a second. But first, it's time for another edition of From the Archives, where we bring you some sound we feel you must hear from our growing library of podcasts. Today, we're going to bring you back to January of this year and episode 50. Let me set the stage. This was one week after January 6th. Donald Trump had just been kicked off of every social media platform. And in the episode,

we talked to the CEO of Parler, whose app was being forced out of existence by big tech. And then we talked to the CEO of Substack, which at the time was just starting to become a force in the independent media space. Here's part of my conversation with the co-founder of Substack, Chris Best. People are scared. So I think a place like Substack is probably looking good to folks who are worried they might get booted or their platform might get, you know, attacked. But you're not immune from this, are you? Are you immune to this, to this kind of crackdown? Because you also have servers that you probably don't control, no? Yeah. I mean, you know, that's part of why this stuff is worrying to me too. I don't think that we should be having people shut down people's servers and all that stuff. I think that way lies madness.

To me, the more interesting question here though is not like, yes, our present moment is crazy. Everyone's starting to kind of realize that things have gone off the rails. But things have been going off the rails like for some time. And this is sort of the reason we started Substack. It's the reason we started this company is I kind of feel like the place we're at now is a necessary consequence of the way that like the internet and our reading habits and the incentive structure within media has been pushing the whole discourse for the past decade. Outrage, outrage, outrage. Outrage, outrage, outrage. You have all these things where on social media, on these feeds that are maximizing for engagement, it's all about these takes. The people are fun. It doesn't matter who says the take, as long as someone says the take,

it's going to like take off and be great. And that means that you get this kind of, you know, market for outrage, where even if you're, even if you're an honest person and you don't want to take the, the, the, the cheap take, someone's going to take it, right? So any incendiary take that can exist will eventually exist. The truth gets devalued. We have this, it completely breaks our ability to see our own society and understand it. Because you're always seeing the craziest takes from everybody that you see as your enemies. And you get this funhouse mirror view of society where everybody that's not on my team is completely crazy. It completely justifies whatever my team does.

And if enough people believe that, if enough people, you know, even if you don't believe in what people say on social media, people tend to believe that other people believe it. And then you get this effect where that becomes a reality, right? People start to organize around these crazy lines where whatever we do is justified, whatever they do is awful. Everything is in this complete fight to the death.

And then you get this group think, right, where anybody that's critical of your own tribe lives in fear of being ostracized, of being shut out. What have we seen since? Well, Andrew Sullivan on this week again. He has a Substack column. It's crushing it, as is Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi's. Barry Weiss joined Substack shortly after that, too. For now, the censorship fans are not going after Substack too hard, although, you know, it's coming because already they're saying like, oh, it's not it's not big journalism. You know, there's no editor and so on. Oh, please. Like you can totally trust The New York Times because of its editors, right? Let me tell you half the interviews

I've ever given, you know, profile pieces of me or about my journalism, the report is perfectly friendly. They do a perfectly nice job. And then once the editor of these left-wing magazines gets his or her hands on it, they turn it into a massive hit piece on you. So you can see the work of these left-wing editors in these publications, even on my stupid profile levels, nevermind when it's something about Trump or today's politics or, you know, general cultural issues that, you know, these editors are on the left side of. Anyway, Substack is important and the absence of an editor is a good thing in my view when you trust the journalist doing the writing. So what's next? Podcasts? Are they going to come after us? The censor is going to come after us? Already we've seen some

of that. Well, bring it. Bring it. Because that's one good thing about the Sirius show. We're going to be live. You can't censor it. It's going out there live. Good luck. Anyway, for now, we're going to keep bringing you more highlights from the archives. And now back to our guests right after this. We've seen Cori Bush out. She's sleeping night after night out in front of the Capitol. This is somehow going to represent what it's like for homeless people with her seventy thousand dollars worth of security. But anyway, so she's she's railing about people like you who are opposed to this extension, which Biden already said they couldn't do. He already said, we checked it four times,

quadruple checked. And I guess on the quintuple check, they realized, oh, maybe we could, it's all a sleight of hand. They can't do it. It's not lawful. They're doing it anyway. They're trying to run out the clock until it gets back up to the Supreme Court. But here's Cori Bush trying to explain why this is necessary. Listen, when you sleep outside on the ground, you are open and you are vulnerable to all the elements. However, whatever those elements are was cold last night and now it's super hot. We've still been here. I still have on the same clothes I had on last night. I'm dirty. I'm dirty. I'm sticky. I'm sweaty. I still have on what I had on last night. I'm dirty. I'm dirty. I'm sticky. I'm sweaty. I still have on what I had

on last night. This is how people will have to live if we don't do something. Seven million people, six million, 11 million, how many ever it is, they deserve their human dignity. What's your message for her? I don't know if it's that simple of an answer, but simply just allowing tenants to not pay rent. I mean, where's the human dignity for me cleaning up heroin needles and feces in my home that has unpaid rent for over a year and it's destroyed? I just wonder, what is she even suggesting? I get that she cosplayed for a couple of days. And look, people that have the lived experience of homelessness, it is terrible. She's not totally incorrect, which is why this issue is so important.

Because we're kind of mixing a few kind of key distinct things. One, if we're talking about actually helping people that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, we're talking about housing them. That's the paradigm of these housing programs through HUD or HUD-funded programs and just in general for housing programs. It's called Housing First. And what it means is when you have somebody that's experiencing homelessness, like let's say you're sleeping in your car, it's impossible to go get a job. It really kind of is too, you know, because where do you brush your teeth? Where do you, where do you wash your clothes? You do that at your home usually. And so I understand what she's, what she's getting at. There's some truth there, but here's the thing. These policies are getting rid of landlords like Adam and his family that would normally, that would

maybe, maybe they would rent to this gal and her $70,000 worth of security sleeping on the steps. Maybe she could pass the application process. And even if she didn't, maybe they would figure out how to make it work but she's a she's essentially stating like oh well housing's a a human right which i would also potentially agree with that um but what she's not talking about is what this means for your property rights and and that's where this this the conversation has to it has to shift because we used to have property rights. I actually remember before the moratorium. I remember before COVID. It's the strangest thing. That was like 10 years ago, it feels like, right? But we had a little bit more rights back then.

And if you were to see the difference between, the difference between like Adam's demeanor, his family's demeanor, the stress that this puts on them, it went from being like, I'm sure glad that we have these units, um, you know, to, to supplement our income as our parents are in retirement age. It went from that to, I really hope that we don't lose everything. And so how can you even work with these programs? If the risk is, well, maybe the unit's fucking destroyed, okay? Or maybe it's not. But this person's saying, well, I'm sleeping outside and it's cold and stuff. And it's like, well, hey, those are those are kind of unrelated issues.

And you guys were already trying to solve the issue she's speaking about. You need willing landlords like Adam who are who will lower the rent, who will check on the tenant, guys like you who will go give the guitar lessons and just take a risk on somebody who the Black Rocks of the world will not. And her approach, which doesn't factor in landlord's rights, property rights, or the humanity of the landlord's renting at all, is a disincentive to them to help the very people she claims to want to assist. Correct. Right. And you're supposed to reward good behavior.

So these tenant advocates, I consider myself an affordable housing advocate because I have a huge heart for people in rapid rehousing programs, people on Section 8 vouchers. There's also a type of voucher called HUD-VASH, which is Section 8 for disabled veterans. There's a huge need for the services that they provide. But if you eliminate, whether it's through increased taxes or increased regulation, massive, massive... This has never happened. This type of regulation to happen kind of all with a stroke of a pen to fundamentally change the real estate market in the state that you know in Washington state they don't realize that well there's there's getting there's going to be less and less and less rental homes for people to rent

to um spoke spokane's not in the news for a lot of things usually we're in the news for like a serial killer or something like that um but we were recently yeah yeah we got we got some cool stuff going on over here um yeah it's pretty exciting pretty exciting uh we also have the hottest uh like rental market in the united states one of them i know we were in the top five a month ago and we were the number one for rent increases um and the reason why that this is kind of happening is the housing stocks going down because sync for and this is specifically for single-family uh home uh landlords right Not apartment buildings, but single family homes like Adam's parents have is you, when you sell that home, you're not selling it to another landlord, you're selling it to an owner occupier. And so that rental unit just goes away.

There's one less home for a family to move into. And it's not just affecting people that are experiencing homelessness. It's affecting everyone that wants to rent. That's why the rent's gone up so much because guess what? These landlords see, you know what? This risk, what's happening to my property rights is not worth it to stay in this game. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cash out while you, this is the highest our housing prices have ever been here. My impression when I listen to these politicians talk about this issue is they treat all landlords like they're, you know, money bags, you know, like you, you got more, we've got money coming out of your years. And then on the other side, there's the poor tenants who you're, you know, you're like a veteran. You're trying to push him out and he's down on his luck and the government screwed him over. And you're sitting back there with four houses and screw you, right? Like that's

how the media covers this. That's how the people like Cori Bush talk about this. They've done a pretty good job of demonizing the evil landlords. Well, it's not, that's not the case. Like I said, you know, my parents are everyday people. And every time they even, you know, bought a house, it was a sacrifice to get the house, you know, it was a big deal. It wasn't like, Oh, we're just going to buy, you know, it's years and years of savings to get a house. And then we fix it up. You know, we, it's a long process and, you know, a lot of time, you know, if they're moving out and you've got a couple of months, a couple of weeks,

you know, a little gap, sometimes you're breaking even, you know, and my parents don't, we're not, they're not one of those, you know if they're moving out you've got a couple months a couple weeks you know a little gap sometimes you're breaking even you know and my parents don't we're not they're not one of those you know landlords that but they keep the rent affordable they want people in there that are that everything's you know kosher it flows it works we don't you know it's good for everybody um so we're you know they're very reasonable in those terms. So it's, this is their income. My dad hasn't had a steady job in 10, 15 years. So this is his source of income. The government says they're supposed to pay you back, right? That the tenant, you can't throw them out, but eventually they're supposed to pay back all that rent. What are the odds of that happening? I don't know. I don't know. Did they even say that?

Yeah, they say a lot of things. The government says lots of things. Even Joe Biden recently criticized the states for sending out the money too slowly, which I mean, at that point, it means it's I think we can confirm that the money is being sent out too slowly. And you have to kind of ask yourself why. This is a good example of why because they you know let's talk about housing first again real quick so housing is the most important thing in these people's lives which is what you know uh what'd you say her name was uh the gal yeah so i guarantee she's a huge guaranteed she's a huge housing first advocate. Guaranteed. She'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, what they're not really taking into consideration is, you know, housing first applies to a few different people.

And we need housing first to apply to the landlords, too. You're not supporting them. Apparently, there's supposed to be some money that they're going to get. Why isn't it getting to them? It's because they only pay the tenants both, right? The, what the government funds do is they fund these grants and the grants get picked up by nonprofits, right? That, that have the ability to, or the capacity to, to do the grant, you know, because there's only so many nonprofits. You're talking non-moratorium stuff now. You're talking about housing first

and other policies that are meant to get- No, so for this CARES Act and American Recovery Act funds, right? There's a ton of money for tenants and to potentially pay landlords like Adam. But the issue is one, it's hard to find organizations that have the ability to even do that. And two, when you see these grants, they're hiring people for

$16 to $18 an hour to give landlords to deal with these claims. And I just wonder, okay, I thought housing was the most important thing, yet you're going to require a master's degree to go work at a nonprofit for 16 bucks an hour. Like how, no wonder these jobs aren't getting filled. Well, so what's happened? Did you file a claim, Adam, that would reimburse you some of this money from the federal government, from the, from the COVID relief cares act? We did. Um, we haven't seen any money. Do they say that they'll put that, I mean, on on paper is there a representation that you could get all of it back no no no no nobody's no so what what had happened was that we did have a uh uh a mitigation fund in washington state through the department of commerce and here's the deal it can pay up to five thousand

dollars but if you take the money you can do no further action against the tenant, against anyone. And when you have the, yes. So it's a good deal, right? Which it is a really good deal. If there's a lot less damage, it's a really good deal. You know, like let's say there's a couple of broken, a broken door, a broken window. Yeah. Stuff happens, you know, and that mitigation fund, I've personally helped landlords when I was working at social service agencies fill out the paperwork. But, you know, when COVID happens, what happens is these offices, it kind of goes back to what I was just saying. These offices were shut down for in-person, you know, people weren't at work due to the COVID restrictions. And so they made this huge juggernaut of regulation and then sent everyone that would do anything home. Yeah. Right. And so they're wondering like,

well, why wasn't my claim process? It's because there's no one in the office to process it. Even now? Well, now they're starting to be, I mean, things are opening up quite a bit more. I know that Washington, you know, we love shutting down here. So like, I'm sure this, uh, this fall, we're going to, we're going to probably, you know, we're, we're going to do it again. I bet. Um, if I were, if I were to guess now, I'm not, uh, I'm not a doctor or anything, but I, if I, if I know them, um, there's going to be a reason, right. There's always a reason to extend the Moritz Hortum. The Mor. The moratorium has been extended seven times in Washington. There's always a reason to extend it. And what's so fantastic about the last extension is they don't call it a moratorium anymore. They call it a bridge program.

And the reason why they had to do this was because, uh, you know, a lot of people are, are getting vaxxed. Uh, we're at 70% in Washington. And so they didn't say we need to extend the moratorium because of COVID. What Jay Inslee said was that we need to extend the moratorium because we haven't put into place any of these enforcers of these regulations that we've done. And we need more time to send out the grant money that we promised we would send out. We promise we'll do it this time, unless we have to extend it again. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, Adam and his dad are living with the stress, wondering if they can pay the mortgage. And by the way,

is there a corresponding order that the banks cannot foreclose on the landlords? I think if you have certain types of loans, I believe like federally subsidized loans, I believe that that might be the case. But I mean, you don't have to, you have to keep paying your mortgage. Don't leave me now. We got more coming up in 60 seconds. You go into the house, it's a mess. And I saw pictures of the house that you gave our producers and they're beautiful. It's beautiful. It's a lovely home and it was in great shape when you delivered it to this tenant. And it is

just sad now. I saw the profanity and F you and just vulgarity spray painted here, there, and everywhere. And so now what do you do? Like, what's, what's your future plan? My parents are, you know, trying to sell the property, but they don't, they don't know what they're going to do. Uh, it's still, the house is still ruined. We're getting it, you know, fixed up, but it's hard to get work out there. And, you know, they're slow moving on the work to be done out there. So we really don't know what we're going to do. No one has an answer for us. So if, if the Supreme Court, if the Supreme Court doesn't take this case and scold the CDC for overstepping its bounds, they'll, the bounds, the thing will stay in place. The moratorium will likely stay in place. Even if the best case scenario is it gets resolved and the CDC can't

extend it past, I guess, the beginning of October. You tell me, Daniel, what you think people ought to be thinking about, because a lot of people out there are basically just thinking we need to help people who we screwed over by taking away their jobs, telling them to stay inside. And, you know, an economy that for whatever reason has been stalled in terms of the job front. A lot of people say it's because the unemployment checks are too big and people make more money on their couch. But what do you want people to be thinking about as we watch this case work its way through the legal system and the CDC, maybe finding the sextuple look allows them to extend it even further than October. I would say, first, I mean, first of all, they're going to try to keep extending it.

To quote Ronald Reagan, there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. And I don't, I don't see, you know, that's pretty rare for the government to give up power. Like we, we still take our shoes off at the TSA. Right. And so that's not going away. They're creating the infrastructure. Things are bad. And the reason why a lot of people don't really talk about it, especially some of these larger landlords, like why are they out of the conversation? Because you would kind of figure, you would kind of figure that their property rights matter too. Right. Um, it's, it's because people don't want to affect, um, the values of the assets in their portfolios, which is why you don't even hear it's like, well, how many people aren't paying rent? Well, it's impossible to answer because if you have now a single family home, I'm a capitalist. So I believe that if I see a home that I want to buy and you're selling it for a certain price, and I think that's a good price, I think we got a good deal. But with an apartment building, let's say there's 10 units in a building and let's say four of them aren't paying rent,

but how much is the building worth? And that question, the disagreement on the value of the assets between buyers and sellers is really fundamental to what could be coming. Because these big apartments are businesses. They're not just property. It's a property that is a business. With a single family home, it's like a property that you're running a business on but you could always just sell it to a nice family right well why would you buy a bunch of properties if you know that people aren't paying the rent and you can't kick them out well aren't they going to find that out eventually i mean when you when you're buying a house don't don't you get to see who's paying the rent and who's not if you're buying a property? Nobody wants to talk about this, okay?

Because this is a multi-billion dollar, probably trillion dollar industry. We're going to be changed. The regulation itself is going to... I don't care what Zillow says. I disagree with their assessment of like, no, the property values are going way up, way, way up. I'm like, oh yeah. Well then how come the landlords don't have any money? Sounds like, sounds like it's really going up. Sounds good. So you're, you're just betting on appreciation, right? You're, you're, you're betting on appreciation to get you through

not having any income from your business. It's really dicey. And on a big level, you could see how this really endangers banks and it's really dangerous. And on a big level you can see how this really endangers banks and it's really in danger and they're just going to keep adding more regulation right like their their answer is like oh well we don't like the last you know rule we made so we're gonna make 10 more rules and then before we even figure out how to do those we'll make we'll make more rules and we'll make more rules we don't even know and we'll fly out our old our old rules as well forget those initial rules even though they're still in the book. Forget those rules.

So there's no predictability for the landlords. Yeah, we don't like those. As it turns out, those are bad rules. Those are bad rules. Yeah, I know. And it's easy for people like me to report on it and people like Cori Bush and Chuck Schumer to comment on it. And it's a lot less easy for guys like you who are actually living it and having to deal

with these edicts to actually make sense of it and abide by it and then handle the consequences. Look, I really, really appreciate you guys coming on and telling your story. And I appreciate your effort to help people who are hurting, you know, people who are homeless veterans who need help. You know, I hope it's not a no good deed goes unpunished situation. I hope it turns into something where you can continue helping and still paying your own bills and feeling like the system works. But man, it'll be despite the government and not thanks to it. We'll continue to follow it, guys.

All the best to you both. Thank you so much. Pleasure talking with you. You can find The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, please subscribe. You can download the podcast, rate it, and review it. Five stars, of course. And then go and spread the word.

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