Support National Rent Control (Don't Let Landlords Stuff The Ballot Box!)

 

<Screenshot from the More Perfect Union 

mini-documentary (see below)>

Picking up from our last post, I want to call another opportunity to your attention, one that will prove interesting to those who follow housing issues. This email bulletin came through People's Action, a million-strong grass roots organizing group with 38 member organizations in 28 states.

Tomorrow (Monday, July 31) is the deadline to voice support for rent control and tenant protections that the Federal Housing Financing Authority (FHFA) is considering -- including a ban against evictions without good cause, limits on rent hikes, and standardized leases. These changes would affect landlords who receive federal financing, in an estimated 12.4 million apartment units nationwide. 

For those who don't already know, the FHFA is the entity tasked with regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose money has been used to buy apartment complexes like so many dominoes (see More Perfect Union documentary link below), one of the most obscene aspects of the whole skyrocketing rent craze. Are the FHFA proposals some type of atonement, or a tacit admission of guilt? Either way, it works for me.

Now comes the sticky part, as Peoples Action's email details: "In a callous and greedy move, corporate landlords are flooding the comment portal, opposing tenant protections, and trying to drown out the voices of hundreds. It's critical that they hear from you." Here is the place to do it:

https://tenantcomment.org/?link_id=3&can_id=4e6c8046819e1ba183f676fa03eddc7a&source=email-join-us-in-dc-next-week-to-defend-medicare-and-medicaid&email_referrer=email_2001960&email_subject=final-days-to-weigh-in-on-tenant-protections

Landlord industry groups have spent $10 million lobbying against the proposals. That's an awful lot of legalized bribery, though nothing on the scale of the pharmaceutical and healthy product industry's spending spree ($372 million alone in 2022, according to Open Secrets).

How typical of the bastards to pull these stunts, isn't it? The only democracy they understand is the one they can buy off the rack. The only representatives they respect are those they can bribe unconditionally, intimidate absolutely, or control completely. The only concept of civic engagement that interested them is the sound of the coins clanking into their perennially overstuffed, bottomless money bins.

All of their noxious, malicious, feral notions of unimpeded and unrestrained commerce are directed toward feeding the monstrous status quo that empowers them at our expense. As Shane McGowan puts it: "Greed knows no boundaries, greed does not feel." 

Obviously, this type of proposal is only a starting point for what should happen nationally. That's of the great curses of our system, with all its endless Rube Goldberg mechanisms -- like the Electoral College -- designed to thwart the most badly needed changes.

All of us need basic protections against these predatory operations, not just those living in federal housing. Otherwise, we're doomed to playing a perennial game of 50-State Whack-A-Mole, which benefits the monied interests and their deep-pocketed far right allies -- the same ones who brought us the "Corporations are people, too" logic that saddled us with the infamous Citizens United ruling.

The other obvious thing that needs to happen is getting the next generation -- the voices of the Tennessee Three, and others like them -- into power sooner, rather than later, and finally start nudging all these Boomer politicians off the national stages that they've hogged for decades. Obviously, getting that goal done is a much bigger job, but a necessary one, too.

The flipside of the argument is that we have to take our opportunities when they pop up, to negate whatever ballot stuffing that these outfits are trying to do. So take some time to review the video link -- there's lots of good info there, I've seen it -- and crank up that Pogues song, as you fill out your comments. as Peoples Action asks us to do:

"We know that the rent is STILL too damn high. And we know that this is flexible, so we will keep fighting for our rights and our homes. These proposed tenant protections are a critical step toward holding greedy corporate landlords accountable, and your voice needs to be heard."

To which I can only say, "Amen, and then some." You don't have to be religious to get behind that sentiment. Still, it's fair to say that if Jesus ever returns, in all of his apocalyptic glory, he'll likely send landlords and their corporate allies tumbling into the Lake of Fire first -- before he gets around to the other sinners on his list. --The Reckoner

Too much pressure, and 

all them certain kind of people

Too much pressure, them having it easy

Too much pressure, them having it easy

Too much pressure, them sail through life

Too much pressure, them have no joy

Too much pressure, them have no joy

It's too much pressure, it's too much pressure

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,

Before Your Rent Goes Up Yet Again):

More Perfect Union:

National Rent Control? It Closer Than You Think:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/185881030087155227/6806614908906792346

The Pogues: Bastard Landlord:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjd1WprEkZo