(NOT) my pres drumpf / trump, (NOT MY) vice pres pence and the gop / greed over people-republican party are waging class warfare against the majority of American people with the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. The drumpf / trump-pence administration with the gop / greed over people-republican party are abandoning millions of Americans who are still out of work due to this administration's lack of an adequate response to the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. Millions are facing employment and unemployment, health care, food, and housing insecurity due to this pandemic recession and they will face more competition if the administration's / gop "pandemic rescue plan" is passed because millions will loose additional unemployment benefits and eviction moratoriums are ending and social safety net programs will remain underfunded. By the by, (NOT MY) president drumpf / trump spent the last 2 days playing golf, kinda like nero fiddling while Rome burned. Here is some helpful information for renters from the Washington Post......
A federal eviction moratorium is ending. Here’s what renters should know.
The end of the four-month moratorium puts 12 million renters at risk of eviction as the pandemic continues to surge
July 24, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
“This is a cliff we don’t have to go over,” said David M. Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, which has advocated for billions of dollars in rental assistance.
Of the 110 million Americans living in rental households, 20 percent are at risk of eviction by Sept. 30, according to an analysis by the Covid-19 Eviction Defense Project, a Colorado-based community group. African American and Hispanic renters are expected to be hit hardest.
Here are some common questions for renters struggling amid the pandemic:
What should I do if I can’t pay my rent?
Renters unable to pay should immediately alert their landlords. Housing advocates and property owners agree this is the best first step. Landlords are typically more willing to negotiate with tenants who reach out quickly, rather than those who hunker down and stay quiet, they say.
“A lot of landlords are willing to work with people in this situation. They would rather keep a tenant who can pay less than try to get someone new in,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project.
Some property managers are waiving late fees or providing other types of help, said Bob Pinnegar, chief executive of the National Apartment Association, but it depends on their finances. Property managers “are helping when and where they can, but they must take in enough revenue to ensure that the property remains financially viable,” he said.
Can I be evicted?
It depends.
Congress passed a national moratorium that has shielded about one-third of renters from eviction since late March. The renters protected under this moratorium live in buildings or homes with a mortgage that has some form of government backing.
That moratorium expires Friday, but renters still have a little time. Once the ban ends, landlords are required to give renters 30 days’ notice before filing an eviction complaint in court. That means the eviction paperwork won’t be filed until late August.
Some renters are also covered by a patchwork of state and local eviction bans that don’t end until August or September. Renters should contact local housing groups and tenant rights organizations to determine whether they are covered by a local moratorium.
Princeton University’s Eviction Lab maintains a Covid-19 Housing Policy Scorecard that includes some information about local moratoriums.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have also set up websites with resources for renters.
Once the moratoriums end, do I owe the rent payments I missed?
Yes, the moratorium prevents landlords from evicting tenants, but the rent continues to accumulate. However, depending on the type of moratorium, landlords may be prevented from charging late fees or other penalties to delinquent renters.
Some states and cities have set up local rental-assistance programs to help tenants cover their missed payments. Austin, for example, distributed $1.2 million in an emergency rental relief fund in May, helping about 1,600 of the 11,000 who applied. In July, it announced another $17 million program.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is tracking local rental-assistance programs here.
There’s a pandemic. Do I still have to show up in court if my landlord files for eviction?
Yes, eviction court hearings are still going on in pockets of the country. In some cases, judges are allowing renters and landlords to attend hearings by phone or video conferencing. Others are holding in-person hearings and attempting to maintain social distancing within the courtrooms.
“If you have a notice to appear, pay attention” and read all the court paperwork carefully, said Roller of the National Housing Law Project. If a tenant does not appear for a scheduled hearing, the judge can grant a default order against them, allowing the landlord to move forward with the eviction, he said.
Many renters leave their homes as soon as they receive an eviction notice, but that may not be necessary, housing advocates say. There is a huge backlog of cases across the country that could take months to get through, they say.
Should I get legal help?
Eviction laws are complicated and can differ by state, city and courthouse. For renters unfamiliar with the process, finding an attorney could be helpful.
A legal aid attorney may be able to help a renter determine whether the landlord is violating any federal programs. For example, the Federal Housing Finance Agency granted additional relief for property owners with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, allowing them to temporarily skip some payments.
Those landlords were barred from filing eviction complaints or charging late fees while receiving that help. But it may be difficult for a renter to determine what protections should cover them without legal help, housing advocates say.
Many legal-aid attorneys work pro bono or for a small fee and can be found on LawHelp.org or through a local housing rights group.
Will there be more help for renters?
It’s unclear whether Congress will step in to offer more help to renters.
Some Democrats have called for a $100 billion national rental-assistance program and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) has unveiled a sweeping housing plan that would ban evictions and foreclosures for a year, while giving tenants up to 18 months to pay back missed payments. But neither idea has gained traction with Senate Republicans.
Housing advocates say they are hopeful, arguing it is the only way to avoid a major crisis in the rental market. Either Congress gets ahead of the problem and establishes a rental assistance program now or waits until an emergency emerges, said Dworkin of the National Housing Conference. If Congress waits, he said, the resulting crisis could cause widespread devastation to communities throughout the country.
Have additional questions you’d like to see addressed in this FAQ or others? Send an email to caresacttips@washpost.com
Coronavirus aid: What you need to read
What you need to know: Personal finances during the pandemic | Paying your rent or mortgage | What to do if you’ve been laid off or furloughed because of the pandemic | Coronavirus stimulus check calculator | 10 Americans navigating the coronavirus economy
Small businesses: How to get a PPP small-business loan | Graphic: SBA data on businesses that received PPP loans
We want to hear from you: Are you waiting on a stimulus check, loan, or unemployment assistance from the Cares Act? | How has the coronavirus impacted your business?
Are you recently unemployed due to the pandemic? The Post has a new Facebook group to help you navigate what’s next.
Crumbs for the Hungry but Windfalls for the Rich
Billions are going to zillionaires under the guise of pandemic relief.
While President Trump and his allies in Congress seek to tighten access to food stamps, they are showing compassion for one group: zillionaires. Their economic rescue package quietly allocated $135 billion — yes, that’s “billion” with a “b” — for the likes of wealthy real estate developers.
My Times colleague Jesse Drucker notes that Trump himself, along with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may benefit financially from this provision. The fine print was mysteriously slipped into the March economic relief package, even though it has nothing to do with the coronavirus and offers retroactive tax breaks for periods long before Covid-19 arrived.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas, both Democrats, have asked the Trump administration for any communications that illuminate how this provision sneaked into the 880-page bill. (Officially, the provision is called “Modification of Limitation on Losses for Taxpayers Other Than Corporations,” but that’s camouflage; I prefer to call it the “Zillionaire Giveaway.”)
About 82 percent of the Zillionaire Giveaway goes to those earning more than $1 million a year, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. Of those beneficiaries earning more than $1 million annually, the average benefit is $1.6 million.
In other words, a single mom juggling two jobs gets a maximum $1,200 stimulus check — and then pays taxes so that a real estate mogul can receive $1.6 million. This is dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers, and socialism for the rich.
Many Americans understand that Trump bungled the public health response to the coronavirus, but polls suggest that they don’t appreciate the degree to which Trump and Congress also bungled the economic response — or manipulated it to benefit those who least need help.
The United States simply accepted that the pandemic would cause vast numbers of workers to be laid off — and then it provided unemployment benefits. But Germany, France, Britain, Denmark and other countries took the smarter path of paying companies to keep workers on their payrolls, thus preventing layoffs in the first place. The United States did a little bit of this, but far less than Europe — yet the United States in some cases spent a larger share of G.D.P. on the bailout than Europe did.
So the unemployment rate in Germany and Denmark is forecast to reach about 5 percent while in the United States it may already be about 20 percent, depending on how you count it.
It’s not fair to viruses to blame our unemployment crisis simply on the pandemic. It’s also our national choice.
At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that money intended to rescue small businesses has often gone not to those with the greatest need but rather to those with the most shameless lawyers. They are part of our national equation: Power creates money creates more power creates more money.
One provision in the rescue package provides a tax break that benefits only companies with more than $25 million in gross receipts. AutoNation, a Fortune 500 company, received $77 million in small business funds, although it returned the sum after The Washington Post reported its haul. For-profit colleges, which are better known for exploiting students than educating them, have raked in $1.1 billion.
A Brookings Institution study found that young children in one in six American households are not getting enough to eat because of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and we’re rushing to help … tycoons!
A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that because of layoffs, 27 million Americans as of May 2 were at risk of losing employer-sponsored health insurance. You might think that this would lead to a push for universal health coverage. But, no, the opposite: Trump is continuing to support a lawsuit to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act — and allow millions more to lose coverage.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt responded boldly to economic desperation by creating jobs, passing Social Security and starting rural electrification. In this crisis, Trump is trying to restrict food stamps and health insurance while giving free money to real estate tycoons — probably including himself.
Of course, America does remain a land of opportunity, if you have the wealth. A new study determined that in the two months since March 18, roughly the start of the economic crisis, America’s billionaires saw their wealth collectively grow by 15 percent. And another 16 Americans became billionaires in that period. It’s great to see people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps!
The House of Representatives is trying to repeal the Zillionaire Giveaway, but Trump and his congressional allies are resisting. Trump meanwhile sees little need to help states and localities, which in April alone laid off more employees than in the entire Great Recession.
Trump was elected in part by voters angry at the way the system was rigged. But under Trump, the economy has become rigged ever more decisively, even as children go hungry and ordinary workers lose their jobs and their lives.
Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on Instagram. His latest book is "Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope." @NickKristof • Facebook
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