About 24 hours after the Supreme Court struck down the CDC’s latest eviction moratorium, housing advocates assembled in at least twenty cities to protest. The protests were organized by Cancel the Rents for the purpose of demanding that Congress enact an eviction moratorium for the duration of the pandemic.
Cancel the Rents (CTR) called for Congress to return to Washington to “take emergency action against evictions.” The organization argues that the only way to resolve the housing crisis is to “cancel the rents and mortgages by wiping clean all debt accumulated over the course of the pandemic.”
CTR failed to explain how wiping out rental debt will resolve the housing crisis. Canceling the rents will not increase the housing supply. Indeed, it will ultimately diminish the housing supply as landlords withdraw their properties from the rental market.
No business can operate for long if it is forced to provide a value without compensation. Yet, the eviction moratoriums and cancelling the rents have put many landlords in the precarious financial position of paying their mortgage, insurance, property taxes, and maintenance with no compensation. But these facts don’t matter to housing advocates.
“Housing justice” activists believe that if they make enough noise, housing will somehow appear like manna from heaven. They believe that if they repeat their slogans loudly and frequently, those slogans will somehow become true. They believe that might makes right.
The housing movement frequently notes that tenants far outnumber landlords. If tenants work together, the movement’s leaders say, far more can be accomplished. And what they want to accomplish is the socialization of housing. They want more public housing projects, more housing vouchers, national rent control, reparations for past racial discrimination in housing, and much more. They seek to use political power to gain economic power. They want to replace the power to produce with the power to control.
This goal is flawed both morally and practically. Morally, they seek to seize values from those who have produced those values. Practically, they will discourage further production. But these facts don’t matter to housing advocates. They want something for nothing. However, since there is no free lunch, they will ultimately wind up with nothing.