Apartment Management Magazine Congratulations! We’ve Been Turned Into Our Tenants’ “Bitches”…?!!
Have we? That’s the impression it gives. Thanks to the stroke of the pen of our governor, our mayors and our county supervisors, we feel like we have become the “bitches” of our tenants. Wait, now … I’m not making any derogatory comments about the women or anyone here just stating that we’ve become our tenants’ “bitches”. Yet Microsoft Word berated me as I typed in the “B word” warning me that it might be offensive to the reader. Well, get over it, Microsoft, and each of you too! Let me finish making my point.
No, I use the term in the context of “someone’s bitch” as in someone (we the owners in the context of this editorial) doing everything for another, not very liked by the other person for who we do stuff. In other words, if we are the “bitch” of our tenants, then we are their indentured servant as someone they need to clean up for them, or someone who doesn’t mean much. Stripped of all our rights, forced to provide free housing services, handcuffed from legal action to protect property and other residents, and all at the same time, shamefully and harmfully debased, lambasted, demoralized and submissive. The last year and a half or so has been like hell in a hand basket for many of us.
As famous comedian Rodney Dangerfield has always said, “I don’t get any respect. And that in a nutshell is us. I am so tired of the treatment we have received and continue to receive in the media, by elected officials, and tenant rights groups “I’ll take what I can get for free” who are still pushing for free housing with many other “free” ones like university, medical care and more free unemployment. Sadly, it’s a never-ending cycle… so easy to distribute, rights like the free ride given to tenants and so many others over the past year and a half will be incredibly difficult to pull off when the time comes.
Yet we have endured so far. Granted, there are stories of rental property owners facing a financial crisis, foreclosures and even homelessness. Many have made incredible sacrifices as they pushed themselves and their family members almost to the brink… and the bullet continues to go beyond our control. The tenant protections of Assembly Bill 3088 required us to provide free housing services until January 31, 2021, then, when that wasn’t enough, Senate Bill 91 pushed the ball all the way. ‘to the June 30, 2021 limit. But, June 30, 2021 was not enough, so our state legislature and dear Governor “French Laundry” Newsom handed us Assembly Bill 832, which once again brought the ball to the forefront of September 30, 2021. How can you possibly run a business when the rules keep changing? It’s like we’re playing a game of “Whack-a-Mole”.
However, the truth is, we the owners have been true heroes throughout the pandemic. Yet public opinion and officials treated us only as “enemy number one”. All the while, we have been working our ‘asses’, stepping up cleaning protocols, taking more care of the tenants who stayed at home who were overtaxing appliances and building systems, coping with the increase in housekeeping issues. maintenance and noise complaints from tenants, and of course, struggling to collect rents and rotate homes when they become vacant. If I could name one song, just one song, that was written in honor of the owners, it would be Queen’s Freddie Mercury’s so perfectly “belted” song, “We Are the Champions.” We are!
Yes, we rental housing providers have been pillars in the battle against COVID-19 for the past 16 months as we have endured significant financial hurdles in the face of government-imposed moratoria. Today, many of our members have been forced to liquidate their retirement savings or have sold their rental properties and have left the rental housing industry for good. This less fortunate face foreclosure or its looming threat. Rental housing providers are the only small businesses that have been compelled by government mandate to provide services without compensation. They are now faced with large amounts of bad debts with too complicated, too slow and too tenuous rental relief. The fact that the most affected are the small and medium-sized housing providers who have the least capacity to withstand such stresses while providing the most affordable housing further compounds the serious harm suffered by rental housing providers in general. .
Maybe someday we’ll get credit where credit is due. The majority of us have continued to “hang on” despite enormous adversity and unfair challenges. No other company could have survived in the face of such massive and excessive government intervention. By the time this is released, we hope to have just a little more time until Assembly Bill 832 finally expires. But who knows what may be next? What evil lurks there in the politics of the Twilight Zone of Sacramento, or anti-property fanatics controlling local governments!
So as not to make anyone feel the need to jump off a cliff, but many believe we may see further extensions of the moratoriums on evictions from the state or many local governments after September 30, 2021 and through 2022 in at some point. It has been so unpredictable before, nothing in the future here can ever be certain. I guess we’ll see what happens before September 15, 2021, when our state’s lawmaker takes a break and rests and considers the next plots against us.
After the well-deserved restful bliss of legislatures, we can only expect more attempts at social housing here in the lawless state we know and love as the once great Republic of California. Perhaps we should be kindly urged by the state to relieve us of the burden of owning an income property and simply cede our private property to deal with the dire situation of homelessness that has proliferated today. in our streets and in the public right away. After all, it was the policies created by our state and local governments that caused the homelessness crisis, so what better way to resolve a crisis than by expropriating the government? It seems to me that it is the prerogative of our state and our local government these days, and apparently, “what is theirs is theirs and what is ours is theirs. ? ” It seems to me that this is so.
In the meantime, as we await the next decision from our governments, allow me to greet you here. I must commend the Texas real estate community for honoring ours, Governor Gavin Newsom, for being “Texas Realtor of the Year”. He’s certainly done a great job creating a real estate “boom” not just in Texas, but in Florida, Tennessee, Nevada and elsewhere, but here in California. Who, may I ask you, will stick around to continue paying the taxes needed to fund the huge state budget needed here in California? I feel like we will soon be on the brink, as if the ground has started to shake and the rocks are falling to the edge of the cliff, we Californians are standing… one wrong move, and anything could be finished.
As more and more money and wealthy and middle class Californians continue to empty our old “Golden State”, and more and more homeless from other states, illegal narcotics and foreigners undocumented keep coming, I can’t wait for the next big shoe to drop. It could happen relatively soon. Although, whatever may happen in the future, I am sure that somehow we the owners will be to blame and more of our rights will gradually be taken away.
So what are you saying… are we? Certainly, all of the seemingly appalling regulations imposed on us today give us plenty of reason to complain, put us at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to protecting our hard-earned interests, and we feel like we have to. be in a disadvantaged position and seriously underestimated. Here at the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, we have been and will continue to be involved in the struggle as if every day is a battle for our lives and livelihoods. I promise that as long as I maintain my position as the executive director of this organization, we will continue to represent your interests and wage war, whether it is defending housing providers in the media or in government meetings, doing pressure on elected officials and their staff, or retaliation in court. Nobody, nobody, will make us their “whores”. Not in my lifetime.
