Personal Responsibility

Most landlords are honest, hardworking people who don't want to miss any type of payment just because there may be a ban on foreclosures. What ever happened to personal responsibility?

Let's parse this:

"Most landlords are honest, hardworking people..." 

Therefore some landlords are NOT honest or hardworking.  Does "most" equal 51%, meaning that the remaining 49% are NOT honest or hardworking?  The Trumps are an example:  They used the Federal order to cease discriminating against minorities as an excuse to raise the rents on all of their tenants.  That may have been legal, but was it right?  As with many generalities, landlords are known by their worst actors, not their best.

By lumping all landlords together under the rubric of "honest and hardworking", we are advocating that dishonest and lazy landlords benefit from the industry of the honest hardworking ones.  We are giving cover to criminals who break the law to feed their greed.  The article notes that landlords break the law by trying to evict their tenants, yet nowhere is there an indication that these criminals face any adverse action -- they are told to stop, and that's about it -- whereas a tenant may have her credit destroyed, her ability to find other housing made more difficult, may be made homeless -- all of which makes finding a job and being in control, and therefore able to be responsible for one's life, more difficult.  If you don't like homeless people on the streets, why advocate to make more people homeless?

"... who don't want to miss any type of payment ..."

And why would this bother them?  For the same reason that it bothers a tenant. 

Landlords who have a mortgage on their rental properties do not own those properties, the "bank" does.  That means that the landlord, too, is a renter.  That means that the landlord, too, can be treated like a tenant.  This means that a landlord is motivated to treat their tenants like they are being treated -- kind of the opposite of the Golden Rule.

But that is how our laws, especially property laws, tend to be crafted -- shit flows downhill:  Tenants owe landlords, landlords owe mortgage companies, mortgage companies owe their owners, their owners can declare bankruptcy in order not to owe anyone.

To become unable to honor or fulfill one's responsibilities or obligations is not something that most people welcome or aspire to. Those who seek out situations where they can lie to benefit themselves and get away with it, are usually thought of as crooks. Most people want to be or become responsible, trusted, adults, able to responsibly take care of one's affairs, provide for oneself and one's family, be a respected and contributing member of one's community.   In our society, it takes money or resources or followers willing to do one's bidding to do or be these things.  You may be infinitely precious in the eyes of God, but if you can't pay the rent, you're homeless.

"...  just because there may be a ban on foreclosures...."

 And why is there a ban on foreclosures?  Not too long ago, tax payers had to give banks and mortgage companies money so that those companies would not have to go bankrupt.  One irony is that some home owners were paying their taxes to bail out these companies so that these companies could take the homes of these tax payers because of their inability to pay their mortgages.  Who bailed them out?

The theory is that foreclosures on a mass scale -- let the "market" take its course, foreclose and evict anyone who can't pay -- is worse than asserting that "we [as a society] are all in this together" and keeping people in their homes is more important to society as a whole than the short-term profits of a few.

"... What ever happened to personal responsibility?"

"Personal responsibility" is a function of power.  Adults have more power than children.  Generally, a child is not held legally responsible for its behavior; an adult can be held responsible for a child's behavior.  In the past, women were held not responsible enough to vote, or have a bank account, or enter into a contract.  Now that women can vote, they have some responsibility in who becomes president.  To be responsible for something means that one has control over that thing, and that one can be held accountable for how that thing turns out (except, of course, unless you are really powerful).

This is recognized and widely accepted in many aspects of law and society.  If you get into a traffic accident, it is important to you to determine who is responsible -- everyone wants to be NOT responsible for the accident.  We believe in cause and effect we also believe in agency.  We believe that a person can cause something to happen, and so your insurance will go up if it is determined that you caused the accident.

But we also accept that in other cases, a person did not cause something to happen:  your car was damaged because a tree fell on it during a hurricane.  The insurance company would like to make you responsible for the damage, arguing that if you hadn't parked your car near the tree, it would not have been damaged -- you did, after all, choose where to park your car.  We want to be in control of everything, to know the cause and effect of everything, but that is not always how the world, or people, work.

People tend to take responsibility or credit for good things, and deny responsibility or blame for bad things.  Our actual agency regarding the outcome is less important than whether we get praised or blamed.  A person who has lost their job through no fault of their own, may still be held responsible for their rent, but their inability to pay their rent is not their fault, it is the fault of their former employer and their employer's failure to take personal responsibility for their failure to run a prosperous business.  If a landlord evicts someone, the landlord is responsible for increasing homelessness.  If the landlord looses their apartment building because they cannot pay the mortgage and the mortgage company refuses to honor the ban on foreclosures, then the mortgage company is responsible for the landlord's impoverishment, or perhaps the landlord is responsible for taking out an unaffordable mortgage.  There is lots of blame to go around, but not much willingness to accept responsibility.

Focusing narrowly on personal responsibility allows us to forget or ignore that we are also a part of a society that depends on everyone, all members, to work cooperatively; that we are an economic system in which everyone plays a part; that Jeff Bezoz is a billionaire because of the work of his order fulfillers and delivery drivers -- if no one fulfills your order, how is Jeff going to get your money.  It is easy to forget or ignore "the least of us" when times are good, but when times are bad, they are revealed as "essential workers".  If we want a good society in good times, then we must act as a good society in bad times.