Thread by @doctorow

The CDC's eviction moratorium in an incredibly important piece of public-health law: people facing homelessness may not shelter in place when they're sick, and people who are rendered homeless are at risk of both contracting and spreading covid.

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Despite this, many states and cities have treated the moratorium as a suggestion, not a binding law, and, of course, it's hard to get justice when you've just been evicted (the CDC seems to have brought ZERO enforcement actions against violators).

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That's why the latest interim rule from the @CFPB is so important: it affirms the CDC rule and makes many other parties liable for its violation, including, notably, landlords' lawyers and debt collectors.

files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cf…

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As Adam Levitin writes for @CreditSlips, this is a very big deal indeed, because in addition to expanding liability, it also expands who has a right to seek redress.

creditslips.org/creditslips/20…

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Under the CDC rule, only the government could punish evicters, but CFPBs rule come wiht a "private right of action." This means evicted people can seek redress for people who break the law to render them homeless, including lawyers representing lawbreaking landlords.

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CFPB rules come under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which also provides for statutory damages, actual damages, attorneys' fees, and class actions.

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Levitin: "How many attorneys are going to want to assume this risk to further a foreclosure for a client? I suspect that an informed attorney will be much more inclined to counsel the client to follow the CDC moratorium."

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It's a good example of how important a private right of action. It's why private right of action is a major sticking point in proposals for a national privacy law: the commercial surveillance industry does not want you to have recourse to legal self-defense.

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Europe's flawed but crucial #GDPR includes a private right of action, which is why @DRIalerts is able to bring a mass action lawsuit against Facebook over its 500,000,000-user data-breach.

pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/whe…

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Without a private right of action, people who've been harmed, even maimed or killed, by corporations have to petition DAs and Attorney Generals to take up their case, while private rights of action allow everyday people to seek justice on their own.

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That's why private right of action scares the shit out of corporate lobbyists and why they've spent decades running a disinformation campaign aimed at ending it ("tort reform"), pushing lies like "The McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit."



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Private right of action is especially important when it comes to housing. The collapse of the defined-benefits pension system has forced everyday people to gamble in a rigged stock market as a hedge against a starving and homeless retirement.

pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/mem…

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Many everyday, middle-class Americans rely on their homes as a retirement piggy-bank, which sets up an unresolvable contradiction in American finance policy. To keep home-owners solvent, politicians have to take every possible step to make housing as expensive as possible.

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When you put it that way, it's obvious why this is such a bad idea: housing is a human right and a necessity for human thriving. Policies that seek to make housing expensive ("increase property values") are as indefensible as policies to make food as expensive as possible.

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So: if you own a house, you get a tax subsidy (a direct way of increasing property values). The tenants you rent it to don't get that subsidy (an indirect means to increase tax as it pushes renters into home ownership, bidding up prices).

prospect.org/justice/widely…

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Converting the human right to shelter into an asset that is its owner's best hope for a dignified old age distorts all kinds of policy, pushing otherwise decent people to block high-density housing because increasing housing supply decreases the value of their assets.

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It sets parents to war against their children, who have to compete for the dwindling supply of available housing, or rent under conditions that favor landlords.

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But (as with market-based 401k pensions), the property investment game is rigged in favor of the super-rich, who use "mom-and-pop" investors as human shields for policies that benefit private equity ghouls.

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In many places in America, your landlord is almost certainly a Wall Street fund, not a nice old couple who bought "income property" for their retirement.

reuters.com/investigates/s…

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Wall Street landlords spin rental income into bonds, and secure high ratings for them by turning housing into deadly slums with high payments and low costs, backstopped by evictions, once unheard of in America, now a national (and racist) epidemic.

newyorker.com/magazine/2016/…

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When you hear about the CDC eviction moratorium, you might picture a retiree renting out the family home after downsizing to a condo. But the median American landlord is a faceless, remorseless Wall Street fund engaged the wholesale destruction of cities and their residents.

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America needs lots of housing. To get there, America needs a social safety net, a guarantee of a decent retirement for people who work hard all their lives - not a seat at a table in a rigged stock-market casino, nor a chance to destroy their kids' chances at a decent home.

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Image:
Arthur Rothstein (1915-1985)

"State highway officials moving evicted sharecroppers away from roadside to area between the levee and the Mississippi River, New Madrid County, Missouri"

Library of Congress:
loc.gov/resource/fsa.8…

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ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/eut…