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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns housing. The thing that 16-year-old TikTok millionaires can afford, and you can't. Housing is something TV audiences can't seem to get enough of.

Speaker 1

00:15

Whether it's watching angry couples hunt for the perfect place to get divorced in, or watching celebrities giving architectural digest tours of their homes as they discover things that were clearly put there by stylists, and occasionally call it out in a gloriously passive-aggressive way.

Speaker 2

00:30

I love cooking. I cook a lot and I bake a lot. I love limes.

Speaker 2

00:35

I love them. They're great. I love them so much and I like to present them like this in my house.

Speaker 1

00:40

She is so magnificently weird. Now, real Dakota heads will know that She later claimed she is, in fact, actually allergic to limes, saying, it was hard to ignore them, so I just lied. But she may well have been lying about that as well.

Speaker 1

00:53

She's pure chaos. I love her. She should be the president. But this story isn't gonna be about people who own their own lime-infested homes.

Speaker 1

01:01

It's gonna be about the more than a third of American households who rent. And if you do rent, you'll undoubtedly be aware of what's been happening recently.

Speaker 3

01:09

Tonight, skyrocketing rents, forcing a growing number of Americans to think twice about where home is.

Speaker 4

01:16

Rent prices across the country skyrocketing.

Speaker 5

01:19

Rents are rising nationwide.

Speaker 3

01:21

Rents are going way, way up.

Speaker 1

01:23

Yeah, rent is skyrocketing, and that is the last thing that you want to hear is on the rise, along with COVID cases, murder rates, and Henry Kissinger's life expectancy. The bitch just won't quit, will he? The median monthly asking rent in the U.S.

Speaker 1

01:40

Surpassed $2,000 for the first time last month. That is up 15% since the same time last year, well above the rate of inflation. And it's up over 30% in cities like Cincinnati, Seattle, and Nashville, and nearly 50% in Austin. You or someone you know may well be struggling to find a place right now, or are being priced out of where you currently live by your landlord.

Speaker 1

02:03

But the fact is, rent affordability isn't a remotely new problem.

Speaker 6

02:08

If you live in New York, your city became unaffordable to rent in in 2004. See this line? That line is 30% of what you make.

Speaker 6

02:16

Generally for rent, it's advised you don't spend past that line. But if you live in Miami, you probably passed that line in 2001. And in Chicago in 2012. Los Angeles has been plain unaffordable since before 1979.

Speaker 6

02:30

Rent is growing faster than the money most people make to pay it.

Speaker 1

02:34

It's true. Rent is growing faster than wages. It's a problem we've known about for decades and is only getting worse, which was, I believe, a working title for this show.

Speaker 1

02:45

It was either that or America's Saddest Home Videos with adult McLovin. In fact... You're laughing too hard at that. In fact, right now, there is not a single county in the U.S.

Speaker 1

02:58

Where a worker earning minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom rental home. And look, there are undoubtedly individual landlords out there who behave decently to their tenants, but many others will conveniently blame the market rate for extortionate rent hikes and imply that the decision simply isn't theirs to make. Just watch financial guru Dave Ramsey try and reassure 1 landlord who said he felt guilty about raising his rents above what his tenants could afford.

Speaker 7

03:24

If I raise my rent to the market rate, that does not make me a bad Christian. I did not displace the person out of that house if they can no longer afford it. The marketplace did.

Speaker 7

03:39

The economy did. The ratio of the income that they earned to their housing expense displaced them. I didn't cause any of that.

Speaker 1

03:50

Of course, kicking someone out of your house doesn't make you a bad Christian. It's in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Speaker 1

03:58

Fucked are the poor in money, for theirs is the kingdom of landlords, we're there! So, given that rents are going up, and some landlords seem to think that that's completely unavoidable, we thought tonight, we'd look at rental housing. Why it's increasingly expensive, how steeply the system is stacked against renters, and what we can do to combat that. And let's start with understanding our current housing supply.

Speaker 1

04:21

You'll often hear that high rents are a supply and demand issue. Basically, too many renters, not enough units. And that is partially true, because There are currently not nearly enough affordable units in the U.S., which is a little weird to think about, isn't it? Because if you live in any city, you probably see new buildings cropping up all the time, called things like 4 East or Summit 311, with taglines like, luxury urban dwellings driven by design.

Speaker 1

04:47

There's almost certainly a coffee shop without a bathroom on the ground floor. So, apartments are being built, but the problem is, thanks in part to local NIMBY opposition to more affordable multifamily housing, it's mainly been at the high end. In fact, in the last 3 decades, the national stock of rental units available actually grew by more than 13 million, but crucially, the number of units at the lowest end of the market fell by nearly 4000000. That might be why if you've ever tried to search for affordable apartments in your area, Google just says, -"Nope." -$1,000.

Speaker 1

05:21

And this serious lack of new affordable housing has enabled landlords to charge higher rents for the units that exist. Something that is increasingly attracted institutional investors. These are corporate landlords, like private equity firms or even publicly traded companies that pool the rents of their tenants and sell them as investments. They've long been players in apartment rentals, but more recently, after the 2008 housing crash, Companies like these popped up to snap up single-family homes and rent them out.

Speaker 1

05:50

And because institutional investors are always trying to maximize returns, they'll take any opportunity to push rents higher. Take Monarch, which has been called Middle America's fastest-growing landlord. Here is their owner last year, salivating at the prospect of rent hikes.

Speaker 8

06:06

We have an unprecedented opportunity, at least in my working lifetime, to really press rents. Press rents on renewals, because the country is highly occupied. We're 97.5 percent, And so where are people gonna go?

Speaker 8

06:21

They can't go anywhere. They wanna be in apartments or they have to be in apartments. And we have a tremendous opportunity to press both on renewing leases for existing residents and to reset market rates, which we've reset numerous times even this year.

Speaker 1

06:38

Wow. They can't go anywhere, and for us, that's an unprecedented opportunity to press them. That is a terrible way to talk about people. Honestly, it's barely an acceptable way to talk about paninis.

Speaker 1

06:51

Those sandwiches can't go anywhere. Fuck it, press them. Squeeze those fuckers. I wanna see lines.

Speaker 1

06:56

-♪ ♪ -♪ So if you are wondering why your rent is going up, it may well be because your landlord sees the current affordable housing crisis as a chance to reset market rates. And in a lot of the country, there are very few legal constraints to stop them doing that. You may have heard of rent control, which strictly limits how much a landlord can charge you, but vanishingly few people have access to that anymore. More commonly, there's rent stabilization, which in theory means that on certain older properties, landlords can only raise the rent by a certain percentage per year.

Speaker 1

07:28

But only 2 States and D.C. Require it, and more than 30 states have actually passed laws banning it. And even when protections exist, landlords can find ways around them. For instance, they might try and force rent-stabilized tenants out by allowing a property to fall into disrepair, or by harassing them with incessant construction until they voluntarily leave.

Speaker 1

07:50

Take the rent-stabilized tenants who lived in this building in New York. Their landlord claimed that he was simply upgrading it to improve tenants' quality of life. But that is not how it felt to them.

Speaker 6

08:01

Tenants say they were offered buyouts to leave, but some, like George Manitas and Gretchen Mongrain, who've lived here for almost 10 years, opted to stay. A decision, they say, came with a warning.

Speaker 9

08:11

Well, if you don't take the buyout, we are going to renovate this, and you are going

Speaker 6

08:17

to have to live through the nightmare of renovation. Mon-Grain says the unit next to her was demolished with a crowbar. When she asked about the noise and debris left behind...

Speaker 9

08:27

All the person said was, I just want to let you know there's gonna be a lot of rats from now on.

Speaker 1

08:34

You know, it says a lot that they would endure a rat-littered construction site just to hold on to a rent-stabilized unit, because that is not exactly a welcoming message. If you went to someone's home and their welcome mat said, -"There's going to be a lot of rats from now on. You would drop your casserole dish then and there and turn the fuck around, thereby instantly falling right into the rat's trap.

Speaker 1

08:56

And it is worth noting, when rent-stabilized tenants did leave that building, the asking rents, unsurprisingly, then as much as doubled. And I assume that those apartments were then snapped up by a nice young rat couple with rich taste and disposable income. I believe we have a photo? Yeah, there it is.

Speaker 1

09:13

Yeah. They seem Nice. And with rents being squeezed across the board and protections few and far between, lower income renters are obviously the most vulnerable here. Even before the pandemic struck, 23 million people lived in households that paid more than half their income on rent and utilities, which is just not sustainable for anyone.

Speaker 1

09:35

Now, in theory, we have something designed to combat that, federal housing assistance in the form of housing choice vouchers, commonly known as Section 8. The idea behind them is that a household still has to pay 30 percent of its monthly income for rent and utilities, but the government will then help cover the rest. The problem is, this program is massively underfunded, to the point that only 1 in 4 households that qualify for assistance actually receive it. As we've shown on this show before, sometimes people have literally raced to apply for vouchers when they became available.

Speaker 1

10:08

And even once you have applied, the waiting period can be absurd. Take Chicago alderwoman, Jeanette Taylor, whose application took a ridiculously long time to be approved.

Speaker 3

10:19

When did you apply for this voucher?

Speaker 5

10:21

In 1993.

Speaker 3

10:22

And when did you get it?

Speaker 5

10:27

2020. 2. So, 29 years.

Speaker 3

10:31

What was your reaction when you got that letter?

Speaker 5

10:32

I just sat on the side of the bed for like an hour and shot. And I was like, God, you got a sick sense of humor.

Speaker 1

10:39

I mean, she's right. He does, although to be honest, I kind of prefer God's earlier stuff. Convincing Abraham to almost kill his son as a prank.

Speaker 1

10:48

Very funny. Flooding the world and making 1 guy get every animal species to fuck on a boat. Hilarious, but a housing voucher that's 29 years late? I don't know, that does start to feel like God might be running out of ideas.

Speaker 1

11:01

And the thing is, even if you are lucky enough to get a voucher, you still then have to find a landlord willing to accept it. But many landlords don't, either because they see it as a bureaucratic hassle, or because they have a stigma against Section 8 recipients. All of which leads to a lot of stories like these.

Speaker 10

11:18

I was blessed with a Home In Choice voucher in April, and... I haven't been able to find a spot. I called over 200 places that would supposedly take the voucher, and none of those places were actually renting.

Speaker 3

11:34

How many places do you think you got turned down from?

Speaker 5

11:37

Jesus, at least 15. 15

Speaker 3

11:40

places turned

Speaker 5

11:41

you down? If not more. It's like I have a plague.

Speaker 5

11:45

It's like we have a plague.

Speaker 4

11:47

Everywhere you turn, no Section 8. I've called up 50 apartment complexes in Sacramento. They don't look at me as an individual.

Speaker 4

11:55

I'm on Section 8, therefore I'm poor, therefore I'm bad.

Speaker 1

12:00

That is terrible. Because even the worst people will honor vouchers. Take Willy Wonka.

Speaker 1

12:05

Sure, he may have run a sweatshop with horrible safety protocols that put children's lives in danger, but even he had the decency to honor the fucking vouchers. -♪ ♪ -♪ Now, discrimination against those with Section 8 vouchers is illegal in some places, but even where that is the case, landlords can just invent other reasons to turn people away. And with housing this tight, rent skyrocketing, and landlords holding this much power, low-income renters can be left vulnerable to the nightmare scenario, eviction. We've talked about evictions on this show before.

Speaker 1

12:37

They're invasive, traumatizing, and like all the other perils of renting, disproportionately affect black people. 1 study of more than 1,000 counties found black renters made up around 20 percent of all adult renters, but nearly a third of all eviction filing defendants. And perhaps nowhere demonstrates the enormous power imbalance between landlords and tenants more than housing court. Starting with the fact that in most places, tenants don't have a right to a lawyer in eviction proceedings.

Speaker 1

13:05

And if you don't have an attorney to guide you through what can be a complex process, not only can you fail to raise legitimate defenses, you can make basic mistakes with huge consequences.

Speaker 11

13:16

Gina comes across a tenant sitting distraught.

Speaker 12

13:19

So she came to court dutifully, came to court early, and as happens sometimes, because court is confusing, she sat in the wrong courtroom.

Speaker 11

13:26

While her case was heard in a different courtroom. When she realized her mistake, she dashed over and caught the landlord outside. But he doesn't want to speak with her.

Speaker 12

13:35

And the court informed her that after 10 days, the sheriff would come in and remove her and her 3 children from her home.

Speaker 1

13:45

1 tiny mistake and her housing was gone, which is clearly unfair. The only time someone should be punished for going into the wrong room is when they accidentally stumble into the 3.30 showing of Downton Abbey, A New Era. Because get ready for a long, boring ride.

Speaker 1

14:00

Oh, but John is delightful because they're British. Counterpoint, it is not. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ 1 study of nearly 100,000 eviction cases in Denver found that nearly 90% of landlords were represented by a lawyer, compared to less than 1% of tenants, which is not good. And yet some attorneys who work for landlords get very angry at the suggestion that tenants are poorly protected.

Speaker 1

14:23

Take this guy who represents multiple landlords in St. Louis. He's a self-styled guru for the real estate bar. And just listen to him giving a Zoom seminar about evictions and rolling his eyes at some of the basic legal protections extended to renters during COVID.

Speaker 3

14:39

The advocates for the tenants are like, you know, these people still don't know what's available to them, and they don't know anything about the CDC declaration. F*** them.

Speaker 11

14:51

F*** them all.

Speaker 3

14:52

They're too stupid to know what their legal rights are. They shouldn't have signed a f***ing contract for a thousand dollar a month unit for a year. If they're too...

Speaker 3

15:04

Stupid to sign, to know anything, to read the news, to have any idea about their rights. If they're too... Stupid, they shouldn't be signing a $12,000 contract.

Speaker 1

15:17

Okay. First, that is definitely the angriest I've ever seen anyone wearing a Rush hat. And second, there's just no doubt in my mind that that man at some point in his life has been kicked out of a youth soccer game. He just Exudes ref I'd like a word energy.

Speaker 1

15:33

I guarantee that is a man who has thrown a lawn chair, or at the very least, squeezed a Kool-Aid jammer so tight in his fists, the other parents thought his hand was covered in blood. Besides that, I will say, he seems like a cool guy. So that is what tenants can be up against. And the problem is, eviction filings can be on your record for years, jeopardizing your chance at future housing.

Speaker 1

15:55

Just watch as this woman contacts a realtor about a home that she is interested in.

Speaker 2

16:00

Did you get a chance to drive by and take a look at it?

Speaker 5

16:02

Yeah, I'm sitting in front of the home right now as we speak.

Speaker 2

16:05

Okay. And what's your name?

Speaker 5

16:08

Margaret.

Speaker 2

16:09

Okay, Margaret. And how soon are you looking to move into a home?

Speaker 5

16:14

As soon as possible right now.

Speaker 2

16:17

Are you in a lease where you're living at right now?

Speaker 5

16:20

No, as a matter of fact, we're not. We're actually homeless.

Speaker 2

16:26

OK, and so where are you currently living?

Speaker 5

16:30

In our vehicle.

Speaker 2

16:33

Unfortunately, when we checked the court records and see an eviction, unfortunately, we can't help you.

Speaker 1

16:39

Look, there are some things that should probably stay on your records, like war crimes, or voting for Taylor Hicks in the 2006 season of American Idol. You shouldn't get to come back from that so easily, but... People should have a chance to find safe and affordable housing since the alternative is being homeless.

Speaker 1

16:57

And the thing is, you could be turned down for housing simply because an eviction case was filed against you, even if that case was later dropped, or indeed, you won it. The long-term damage that eviction filings do to your records is why many will choose not to fight when a landlord tries to kick them out. That is 1 of the reasons that people can wind up with a so-called informal eviction. That's where their landlord does things like change the locks, threaten them, or even remove the front door.

Speaker 1

17:23

It is hard to measure just how many of these take place each year, but a survey of Milwaukee renters found that for every eviction executed through the judicial system, there are 2 others executed outside the court without any form of due process. And given just how devastating evictions can be, it is infuriating to hear how some involved in the process view it. Remember that screaming Rush fan from earlier? Well, it turns out, he actually has a little more to say.

Speaker 3

17:49

It's sad to say, and some of you who are not landlords might be shocked to hear, we evict grandparents who are poor. We evict cancer-stricken people who are attending chemo. It's sad.

Speaker 3

18:05

But what's sadder is that somebody who purchases property for hundreds of thousands of dollars is given the finger by the law.

Speaker 1

18:17

Except it's not sadder. It's just not. On the great big list of sad things, person getting evicted during chemo is right up there with dog deaths and the first 10 minutes of Up.

Speaker 1

18:29

-...up. -...up. While landlord doesn't get rent is at the very bottom with celebrity tweets about a shitty airline experience and white guy not allowed to rap all the lyrics. It's objectively not that sad at all.

Speaker 1

18:43

That is the core issue with rental housing in this country, though. People who think that investments deserve more respect than basic human needs. And it has set up a system designed to ensure that some people just spiral downwards. They can't move somewhere cheaper if nowhere cheaper exists.

Speaker 1

18:59

They can't apply for federal assistance if there's nowhere near enough. They can't even use that assistance if no 1 accepts it. And they can't take their landlord to court if the court system is skewed against them. And they can't depend on rental housing ever again if they're evicted even just once.

Speaker 1

19:12

It's a complete shit show. So what can we do about it? Well, there are some small things that we could pass. We could pass rent stabilization laws, and laws that prohibit discrimination against recipients of housing choice vouchers and make it easier for landlords to accept them.

Speaker 1

19:27

We could also pass laws mandating the sealing of most eviction records and give people a right to counsel in housing court. That alone can have massive impacts. In 2017, after sustained pressure, New York City became the first place in the country to give tenants the right to a lawyer in housing court. It is a major reason why, even before the pandemic moratoriums, residential evictions were down 40 percent.

Speaker 1

19:51

And luckily, other places are now following that lead. But I would argue, what we really need to do is fundamentally change our mindset, away from simply hoping that we can tinker around the edges of housing policy and the private market will sort the rest of this shit out, because we have tried that for decades, and yet, here we are. Instead, we need to agree housing is a human right. And that is not actually just some empty slogan like, Subways Eat Fresh or Gatorades Is It In You?

Speaker 1

20:20

Which, looking back, was very, very weird. --LAUGHTER --This can actually be policy. Many countries, including France, Scotland, and South Africa, have legally codified a right to housing. And here in the U.S., three-quarters of Americans already believe that it is a human right.

Speaker 1

20:37

Now, as for what that would mean, it would entail a massive federal investment in rental assistance and the creation of much more affordable housing units across the board. And before anyone suggests that we can't afford that, we already subsidize certain people's homes. The mortgage interest deduction gives massive subsidies to homeowners by letting them deduct the interest that they pay on their mortgage on their taxes. That has cost the federal government more than 580 billion dollars over the last decade.

Speaker 1

21:06

And currently, nearly two-thirds of the deductions benefits are going to those making 200,000 or more a year. I am benefiting from this program, and I do not need to be. So we are clearly willing to prioritize housing in the budget, just not for the people who need it the most. The point here is, for a large portion of the population, simply having a place to live is an everyday battle, and for far too long, we've prioritized the protection of investments over individuals.

Speaker 1

21:35

And we've set up a system where landlords can press rents and reset market rates, and justify their actions with self-serving Bible readings, even as they subject tenants to everything from tactical rat assaults, to the incoherent rage of the single most foul-mouthed fan Ontario's premier prog rock power trio has ever fucking known.

Speaker 5

22:00

You