alt Hacker News> The uptick in rental delinquency isn’t new. It started six years ago
It has nothing to do with Mamdani, for those of who don't want to bother to read. Most of this occurred under Eric Adams's watch.
Anecdotally, I do think covid made people a lot more aware of how deeply backlogged the housing courts are. It seems like a lot of people (like the anonymous one in the article) realized they could not pay rent and avoid being actually evicted for quite some time.
This is a recurring theme in city problems: Backlogged courts. Sometimes that's to the benefit of the less fortunate (here), but it also often results in terrible outcomes (see: Kalief Browder).
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It’s fascinating that America can be the world’s superpower(?) and yet huge swathes of society still live in unstable conditions like this.
You can't blame Adams for delinquent payments. He dramatically expanded housing vouchers (the source of the budget crisis) which in theory should have reduced delinquency.
Moreover rents for affordable housing haven't kept up with inflation while benefits have.
Arm chair speculation like what's in the article won't suffice. People need to be surveyed and interviewed to get to the bottom of this.
So say they do get evicted eventually, what are their chances of getting the next rental?
Politico is an Axel Springer rag, in case anyone was wondering why they would put a photo of mamdani in the article. It's propaganda.
I think even the benefit for the less fortunate here is at most a short-term one. In the longer one, you need building and renting out shelter to be reasonably profitable, so that people do it.
It's basically the same argument that says rent caps are bad for the renters in the long run.