When all you have is a hammer

There sure is a lot of violence in New Orleans lately. What could possibly be causing it? Nobody seems to know. 

HousingNOLA Executive Director Andreanicia Morris told WDSU, "The first two failing grades were a warning of things to come when you look at what's happening with inflation, housing is at the core of the crisis."

The report says the city of New Orleans has seen the median rent price rise to $1,082 while the median income for the city decreased by almost $4,000 since 2019.

HousingNOLA also said that 30% of homeowners pay more than 30% of their income toward housing.

"More than half the people who live here can't afford to actually live here," Morris said. 

Must be some kind of "cultural" issue. Maybe there's a bad video game or something. Someone should really look into it, though. Because maybe if we knew what the problem was, we would know how to address it. Or at the very least we would know how not to go about exacerbating it. 

A deputy constable and a property manager were shot Wednesday while serving an eviction notice at an apartment complex in the West Lake Forest area of New Orleans, authorities said.

So until someone can come up with a reason this sort of thing happens, we won't be able to come up with an effective policy response to keep it from happening in the future. Until then, I guess we'll just keep going with what we know. 

Police had received an anonymous tip that the suspect in the shooting that injured a deputy constable and a property manager in the Lake Forest area of New Orleans was in Mid-City, Officer Reese Harper confirmed. After shutting down several blocks of Canal Street and locking down multiple nearby schools, authorities detained the suspect after a brief standoff. Nobody was injured in the apprehension.

A massive police presence snarled traffic as police searched behind a house in the 3200 block of Iberville Street and used a megaphone to try and convince a man to come out of a backyard with his hands raised.

The rent is too damn due

We've hit another first of the month again. There's one every month!  But this one has been the most first of the month that has yet firsted since pandemic crisis began.  And it has gotten dark.

NEW ORLEANS — Deputies with the First and Second City Courts of New Orleans will be required to get a coronavirus vaccination. Constable Edwin M. Shorty Jr. has mandated all commissioned deputies must be vaccinated as COVID-19 case counts are rising with the spread of the delta variant. All full-time and reserve deputies must meet this vaccination mandate by Aug. 16, the constable said.

Officials said vaccination rates among law enforcement entities are high, but it has not been mandatory in the past. The mandate will ensure SCC deputies are not leaving the public at risk when performing duties of the department and ensuring their personal safety, according to the constable. The use of personal protective equipment will also be mandated while remaining socially distanced when possible and minimizing interactions with other employees or the public when possible.

Shorty said he expects the courts to be at capacity in the coming weeks. He says that we are not out of the woods of the pandemic, and will make sure all CDC guidelines are followed in addition to the mandatory vaccination decision.

What duties will the constables and the courts be performing that will have them "at capacity in the coming weeks?"

Second City Court handles eviction cases for Algiers and the West Bank of Orleans Parish. This decision comes after the federal eviction moratorium expired over the weekend. First City Court officials confirm that all East Bank deputy constables for Orleans Parish are fully vaccinated, and any new deputy constable will be required to vaccinate as well.

Perhaps when the constables go about their busy work evicting people, they could bring some vaccines with them.  It's about time we get a bona-fide door-to-door vax program going in this city that actually reaches the most vulnerable.  Of course this would be the way it happens. 

Evictions are  not just about to spike in New Orleans. They're about to spike nationwide. Some parts of the nation will be spiking harder than others, though. You will not be surprised to see which they are.  The maps in this NYT opinion piece by Sema K. Sgaier and Aaron Dibner-Dunlap show how many renters are behind and how far behind they are on rent in each US county or parish. 

Just the other night someone reminded us, as the South goes, so too goes the nation. The South is not going well at the moment. In Orleans Parish (which, despite much contrary popular myth making, is located in the South) 19.6% of renters currently owe back rent according to numbers cited in that NYT article. The average amount owed is $3,187. Sgaier and Dibner-Dunlap write that state and local governments "can prevent this rental crisis from becoming a homelessness crisis" by speeding up distribution of Emergency Rental Assistance funds made available by the stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year by Congress.  But we already know that isn't going to be enough. 

As of last Thursday, the Times-Picayune reported the City of New Orleans had already run through $18 million of the $52 million in rental assistance that has so far been distributed for the entire state processing only 5,000 of 16,000 applications. The state has another $87 million to disperse but it's not clear how that gets divided. That total will still not be sufficient to meet the need so, no matter what, everyone will be waiting on the feds to release the second tranche of ARP funds. But, as we will see, that tranche may not arrive at all. 

Meanwhile, we learn by that same T-P article there are approximately 400 evictions cases queued up to file as soon as the moratorium ends.  This story says 58 were filed on Monday. Which is a very bad time for that to happen because it follows right on the heels of this.

Louisiana residents will no longer receive an extra $300 a week on top of the state’s maximum $247 benefit. The state will also pull out of federal programs that provided jobless aid to self-employed workers and gig workers and allowed people to get jobless benefits past the 26-week state cap.

The benefits were made available by Congress until Labor Day, but Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, ordered Louisiana to stop accepting the federal payments effective July 31 in exchange for support from GOP lawmakers and business groups for a permanent $28 hike to the state’s weekly unemployment benefits, beginning in six months.

The move spells the end to jobless aid for nearly 86,000 residents who make their living as self-employed contractors, musicians, tour guides or gig workers. Another 65,000 residents who have exceeded the state’s 26-week-long limit on unemployment benefits will also get the boot, according to data from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

For the 35,000 residents who will remain on unemployment rolls, weekly checks will be cut in half – as Louisiana joins 25 Republican-led states that have rejected the $300 supplemental payments under pressure from business groups who argue the payments are discouraging employees from returning to work. 

Is that $300 pittance discouraging people from returning to their demeaning and dangerous service jobs in the middle of a fourth wave COVID spike? So far there isn't any solid evidence that cutting those benefits has sent them all rushing back. 

So far, early data suggests that cutting the benefits given to Americans who lost their jobs during the covid-19 pandemic has not led to a big pickup in hiring. The 20 states that reduced benefits in June had the same pace of hiring as the mostly Democrat-led states that kept the extra $300-a-week unemployment payments in place, according to state-level data from the Labor Department. Survey data from the Census Bureau and Gusto’s small-business payroll data show similar results. 

Many economists and business owners say other issues such as health concerns, child-care problems and workers reassessing their career choices appear to be larger factors keeping them home.

The same week that the governor is cutting off the $300 is also the week the landlord wants that $3,000 average back rent or thousands of people are going to be be put out. Hard to imagine they're all jumping on one of those $8 or $10 an hour jobs so they can hope not to get sick before figuring out the math isn't gonna work.  What are people supposed to do?

For much of the past week, the President's message has been that he isn't supposed to do anything. Last week, he insisted that a month old Supreme Court ruling prevented him extending the moratorium without congressional action. On Friday, as congressional leaders were giving up trying to take that action and punting the problem back to him, Biden turned the blame onto governors and mayors saying in this statement, "there can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants who have been hurt during this pandemic." Biden's statement also contained a passive aggressive suggestion that the mayors and governors, "should also be aware that there is no legal barrier to moratorium at the state and local level." 

Neither John Bel Edwards nor LaToya Cantrell has imposed or even spoken in favor of a local moratorium on evictions. Maybe they didn't think Biden was talking to them.  We've already mentioned they seem to be doing an adequate (relatively speaking.. not objectively great) job of spending the rental assistance money so he probably wasn't talking to them about that either. And it's true there are states doing a much worse job. For example, Florida, under the psychopathic governorship of Ron DeSantis, has withheld 98% of its allotted rental assistance funds in what we have to assume is an act of deliberate cruelty. 

Having said all that, we should point out that governors and mayors (not just DeSantis types) are nonetheless reluctant to spend their stimulus funds. Partially this is because Joe Biden and the bi-partisan infrastructure deal making its way through Congress now is about to yank a bunch of it back.  That has already become an issue in New Orleans city government as the Cantrell administration discussed its plans to spend its stimulus funds with the City Council last week.

But officials said they are resisting the urge to spend the windfall immediately to supplement the $633 million budget for 2021. They recommend the money be stretched out until revenue improves. That’s particularly crucial because the forecast calls for the lost revenue from 2020 to total more than $290 million by 2025 -- more than City Hall has received so far from the stimulus, codified in the American Rescue Plan.

“Even if we’re using that ARP money, we could still end up in a deficit,” City Council member Helena Moreno said.

City officials are nervously eying negotiations over President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan. While such a plan would likely mean more federal money for New Orleans, city officials worry that Congress might cancel the second stimulus payments to cities and counties to help pay for infrastructure.

They aren't at all wrong to be worried. That's exactly what the current version of the infrastructure bill is set to do. And that's not really even the worst of it. The infrastructure bill is best understood as a privatization bill.  The American Prospect's David Dayen explains in this breakdown. He actually thinks it's been improved in the latest negotiation. I'm less encouraged and will explain in a bit. Here is what Dayen has to say.

The revenue offsets did change quite a bit. We knew about Republicans ditching the tax enforcement piece. But there was a big victory here for progressives. A few weeks ago, it looked as if much of the bill would be financed by selling off public assets and allowing investment firms long-term concessions of roads and water and power systems and whatever else they could land. The privatization agenda was extremely dangerous, and in my view enough to oppose the effort entirely.

But it has mostly vanished in this new version. After significant pushback from the left, a good deal of the privatization schemes are gone. That was an important show of force.

There is $100 million in “asset concession incentive” grants to help cities establish public-private partnerships (P3s). Some larger transportation projects will also be required to evaluate a P3 option, to ensure it’s given “a fair shot.” Tipping the scales to P3s is bad news, and these measures give them a foot in the door. But there was talk that the overall bill would save up to $100 billion by offloading the investment to P3s, which would really have been a fire sale. This is definitely more minor.

It's clear that someone in Gilbert Montano's office keeps a close eye on these developments. Not only has the city been anticipating the ARP claw backs from the very beginning of the infrastructure negotiations, they've also started the ball rolling on a "framework" for the privatization component of the bill as well.

Anyway, Dayen's description of the reduced emphasis on privatization is too optimistic. These changes he is describing are just the fluid argument over how to write the bill. The purpose remains the same. To put it plainly, public-private-partnerships (P3s) are privatization. Just putting them into the process this way practically guarantees they will get implemented through the regular corrupt local patronage networks. And the way New Orleans spends public money is especially suited to just that kind of arrangement.

A good little book to check out on this topic is Aaron Schneider's Renew Orleans?: Globalized Development and Worker Resistance after Katrina (2018) There, we find an analysis of the city budget based on the processes and institutions in place during the late 00s, which haven't changed a whole lot since then. The big takeaway is there's a lot of activity that goes on "off the books."  A quick excerpt summarizing this point:

The most important finding of this simple comparison (of New Orleans finances to those of similarly sized and situated cities) was that New Orleans taxes not too far below what is to be expected but has far fewer revenues and even lower expenditures. Taxes were only $7 million less than predicted by the model, but revenues were approximately $100 million lower and expenditures were almost $250 million lower than expected. New Orleans appears to tax its citizens the same but undertake less public action than other cities. 

A reasonable explanation is the proliferation of satellite entities, many of which are off-budget, difficult to monitor, and undertake significant fiscal action in the form of revenues, expenditures, and accumulation of assets. To explore these entities, data were drawn from 2007 and 2008, gathering information from city budget documents, Louisiana Legislative Auditor reports, and accounting documents collected directly from some entities. City budget totals include revenues and outlays by some boards, commissions, and public-benefit corporations, as they are considered component units of city government, and therefore government accounting practices require them to be included in the city's comprehensive financial report. Not all entities are so considered, however, and they vary in the degree to which their accounts appear in the public record. Some provide comprehensive financial reports to the Legislative Auditor's Office, others keep accounts according to government accounting standards but do not report them anywhere, and still others do not keep accounts in any easily comparable fashion. 

What this says in so many words is that New Orleans is crawling with public private partnerships and conceded public assets already. The city is run through an impenetrable network of semi privatized commissions and non profits who operate with almost zero public transparency. Schneider's analysis in fact shows this is actually the largest sector for public expenditures.

Take for example tourism promotion agencies like the mostly private New Orleans and Company seen here preparing to spend millions of dollars in public money on an ad campaign encouraging more people to travel and gather here during a pandemic.  Back in February, NO and CO's head Stephen Perry sent out an inflammatory email to agency clients wherein he blamed local COVID victims for preventing the cabal of tourism owners from making money. Here we see the Convention Center arguing over how to spread half a billion public dollars around to contractors and cronies to renovate and expand its facilities and develop whole new "entertainment district" for private profit while hundreds of New Orleanians are about to be evicted.  And still the Cantrell Administration insists the city gets its #fairshare from these agencies.  Maybe this is because dispersing public money through private conduits and expecting it to trickle down is precisely their idea of "fair."

It's important to understand this context because when you see administrators claim there are multi-year deficits which obligate them to hold back federal relief funds rather than use them to help people now,  you have to question where they actually intend those funds to go.  People are going to be evicted on August 1, 2021  October 3, 2021... actually the moratorium doesn't cover everyone and evictions have been ongoing this entire time. What good does it do them if we are hiding money away until 2025?

The administration is considering setting aside whatever money it might need for the latest 2025 estimates first and then work backward, only adding to next year’s plan at the end, Montaño said. 

Given that we know the city is preparing to implement the privatizing functions of the infrastructure bill, and given that Montano is arguing here that the City Council should butt out of his budget process, we have to conclude that the purpose is to consolidate as much of the pub-private patronage power through the mayor's office as possible.  At least that is one way to read this "efficiencies gained through the pandemic process," comment.

“It’s easiest to go back to the way you were and its easiest to go back to normal, but I’m not willing to lose the efficiencies we gained through this pandemic process,” he said. He added that the council reopening the process “takes away executive authority. The mayor gets to propose what we’re putting in the budget, not an agency director.”

Actually that's pretty much just a naked admission.  It would also explain why the same administration expressing concern over the ARP claw backs is simultaneously promoting the passage of the bill that will make them happen.  They don't care if there is less money than people actually need so long as they get to be in charge of passing it out. 

Why is this acceptable?  Or more critically, why does our political system allow this state of affairs to obtain?  To answer that, let us refer to a book by Arizona Senator and budding professional troll, Kyrsten Sinema. The book, by the bearer of the now famous "fuck off" ring, is titled Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last, funnily enough. In this excerpt, Sinema relays to us some important lessons she learned serving in the Arizona State Legislature. 

I showed up all right. And for the first several months, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, coming to work every morning full of vim and vigor, ready to face off for justice—which made me rather annoying. I’d stand up four or five times a week on the floor of the house and give scathing speeches about how this bill and that bill were complete and utter travesties of justice, and the paper would capture one or two of the quotes, and then we’d vote on the offending bills and they’d pass with supermajorities. I’d get righteously indignant and head back to my office, incensed that my colleagues could not only write but actually support and vote for such horrid policies!

Meanwhile, everyone else went to lunch. In short, my first legislative session was a bust. I’d spent all my time being a crusader for justice, a patron saint for lost causes, and I’d missed out on the opportunity to form meaningful relationships with fellow members in the legislature, lobbyists, and other state actors. I hadn’t gotten any of my great policy ideas enacted into law, and I’d seen lots of stuff I didn’t like become law. It was just plain sad.

At this point the reader may begin to wonder. Is Kyrsten "just plain sad" that the bad laws are passing? Or is this more about missing out on all those terrific sounding social opportunities?  It's not entirely clear yet, but it's not a great sign that the "offending bills" and "horrid policies" are left undefined while the author's self-image and personal comfort level becomes the center of the narrative. Anyway let's read on.

I spent the summer figuring out what I wanted to change. I knew that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing because it wasn’t working for me and I hated it. I had, without actually planning to do so, fallen quite easily into the role of the loyal opposition, the righteously indignant crusader, the bomb thrower. In legislative lingo, a bomb thrower is a legislator who chooses to yell from the sidelines, cackle at the rest of the body, and generally raise hell from the corner of the room. A person who chooses to be a bomb thrower in the legislature is choosing to remove himself or herself from the work of the body: negotiating on bills, working to find compromises, and sometimes teaming up with unusual allies to promote or kill legislation. This person plays an important role at the capitol because he or she calls out the body on a regular basis (which is needed, especially considering that the general public hears or reads roughly 0.3 percent of what happens each day inside the legislature). However, the bomb thrower has made a choice—whether consciously or not—to be excluded from the actual process of negotiating proposed legislation. You can’t play both roles in the legislature; if you choose to be a bomb thrower, you will not get the opportunity to amend bills, participate in bipartisan meetings to craft good legislation, or work with people on the other side of the aisle to kill bad legislation. I unwittingly chose to be a bomb thrower my first session, which led to my unhappiness and regret.

Over the summer, I consciously chose to reject the bomb thrower role. For me, it was not a hard choice to make. I was miserable as a bomb thrower. And since I hadn’t consciously chosen that role, I was even more depressed when I realized that I had become a bomb thrower and worked my way right into that lonely corner. It didn’t fit me. I do love to give fiery speeches. But I also love people. I love talking with people, working together, and making friends. The bomb thrower doesn’t get to make friends much (understandably so), and she certainly doesn’t get to work with all the people she’s throwing bombs toward.

Remarkably, the younger Sinema was wrong about all of this.  Now at the apex of her career she has figured out you really can throw bombs and make friends at the same time.  As long as you make sure the bombs fall on the appropriate people outside of the Senate, you'll never be lonely inside of it.  

There's a kind of class politics at work here. But it's the politics of a consensus class within the halls of power charged with managing the hyper-concentration of societal wealth into ever more exclusive circles.  That retreat has been going on since the 1970s but it took a significant turn in the response to the 2008 financial crisis. That's when we learned capitalism can sustain itself just by passing around federally guaranteed credit among the wealth hoarding class and leaving a growing class of surplus humans to more or less fend for themselves. As we've tried to show over the past year, the pandemic response has been a continuation of this project. Anyway that's why a completely captured political apparatus can be indifferent to a homelessness crisis and cut off already miserly safety net payments in the height of a pandemic. It's just doing its work of laying down terms of the harsher readjusted social contract. 

So that about sets the table for the rest of the year. We're looking at another round of political buck passing to cover for a national policy of austerity and privatization. Locally, this will set off a bonanza of petty patronage delivered through local pub-private and non-profit networks. Come October, the new moratorium will expire. By that time, nothing will have fundamentally changed for the renters facing eviction, and we'll have another version of this same argument. Only by then, Biden will have celebrated the success of his bipartisan Infrastructure Week, Sinema will be back from vacation, and, in New Orleans, the same mayor and  (basically same) city council who are running with no meaningful opposition will be on their way to reelection.  And so at every level of government, the next round of calls to "do something" will be one degree easier to ignore. 

Of course the rent will still be due.  Just like every month.

Declaring victory

When you are loudly proclaiming the success of your very big program and that program, in reality, turns out not to be very successful, or even very big, then people are going to lose faith that anyone or anything is coming to help at all. That's the hole the Biden administration is digging now. 

“June Emergency Rental Assistance Resources to Households More Than All Previous Months Combined,” the headline blared, highlighting the more than $1.5 billion in payments delivered, and triple the number of households helped relative to April. It sounds like a real achievement if you don’t know the denominator; that is, the total amount of rental assistance Congress approved in relief bills last December and this March. That number is $46.5 billion, which means that the June total amounted to a little over 3 percent of available funds.

It’s a simple math equation to get to what Politico figured out, that in the first six months since rental assistance was made available, only 6.5 percent of the funds have been distributed. At this rate, the money would dribble out between now and 2028.

Renters don’t have that kind of time. Next Saturday, July 31, the federal moratorium on evictions expires, and the Biden administration opposes an extension. In a world where rental assistance is flowing and the economy booming, policymakers could rest easy that a spurt of evictions will not ensue. But that reality only exists on charts and unofficial estimates.

The first of the month is coming again.  (There's one every month!) And this one is gonna be a doozy. With seven million potential evictions hanging out there and a new COVID surge threatening lives and livelihoods, Biden opposes an extension of the eviction moratorium. Meanwhile states are rushing to cut off unemployment benefits early.* Joe Biden isn't doing anything to stop them. 

Biden and his team pushed back on the idea that the federal benefits were to blame for a sudden shortage of workers, but they quickly changed course, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki ultimately saying that Republican governors “have every right to” reject the pandemic unemployment money.

That's not the whole story: 22 governors decided they would stop paying the PUA assistance for self-employed workers. As Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., pointed out at the time, “Congress did not grant states the ability to strip PUA benefits away from vulnerable workers.”

Sanders told Biden’s Labor Secretary Marty Walsh that he had an obligation “to ensure this aid gets to workers.” Instead, an unnamed Biden administration official told CNN: “There is nothing we can do.”

There's nothing we can do, it's out of our hands, and the governors "have every right" to screw you over.  But aren't we doing a great job?  We delivered $1.5 billion in payments! If we didn't know better we might think they are actually trying to get people to give up hope.  But we know better. That can't possibly be what the goal is here. I mean it's not like they'd just up and "declare independence" from a pandemic even while it still rages out of control across the globe.  That wouldn't make any sense. 

*Including your very own state!

The first of the month is coming

 There's one every month. 

Now, thanks to the coronavirus aid package passed by Congress in December, DuBois and thousands of others across the state could soon see the crushing weight of debt lifted off their shoulders. DuBois is one of about 4,000 people who have signed up for New Orleans' rental assistance program in the last week, hoping to tap into the first infusion of what is expected to be about $26 million in cash from the U.S. Treasury Department's $25 billion rental assistance program.

$26 million sounds like a lot but it's nowhere near enough to fill the need. So the city will have to ration it.

The city's program, which can be applied for in the coronavirus section of the ready.nola.gov website, is going to pay all past-due rent for qualified applicants, plus one additional month going forward. The guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department allows for up to three months in advance, but given that demand will far outstrip supply, the city decided to pay just one month to help reach more people, Willman said. The city also decided not to use any of the money to pay residents' past-due utility bills, even though the Treasury funds are approved for that purpose as well. 

Willman said the city is working with applicants to get all the necessary supporting documents and once that happens, it will be 10-14 days for payments to be made directly to landlords.

Not that it won't help. It will. But it helps only just enough to keep desperate renters just as desperate. It's really more of a landlord assistance program.

What did we say about the first of the month?

 Was worried something like this was up. 

A woman facing eviction from her Central City apartment complex torched the building Monday night, killing a dog and displacing 26 of her neighbors, authorities alleged.

Police in Hunstville, Texas, on Tuesday captured Jazlynn Major, 25, on a warrant accusing her of 26 counts of aggravated arson following the three-alarm blaze at the Amies Paradise apartments in the 1600 block of Washington Avenue.

This is not a joke. Things are bad and are getting worse.  There are office holders at multiple levels who can do something to stop the tidal wave of evictions about to hit the city... about to hit every city.  Not seeing much action. 

Update: Like we said, could have done this the whole time.  

In an extraordinary move, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is moving to temporarily halt most evictions for Americans struggling to pay their rent due to the pandemic, in a step that’s broader than eviction protections already in place.

Many others could have taken action in various other ways.  But they all waited. Just to see how much pain they could inflict on people.  Well we are starting to find out. 

Court is closed

Looks like Jason will have to carry the weight of his tax fraud indictment all the way through the campaign. 

The federal courthouse in New Orleans will hold no jury trials until next year, under an order issued Thursday that seems to make certain that City Council President Jason Williams will not face trial on tax-fraud charges before voters weigh in on his bid to become Orleans Parish district attorney.

The order from U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, the court’s chief judge, suspends all civil and criminal jury trials in the Eastern District of Louisiana until at least Jan. 1.

Too lazy to look it up right now but I can only assume the municipal courts are following a similar order.  I was actually supposed to start jury duty somewhere back in "Phase 1" but that wasn't possible then and I have to assume it still isn't since no one has called me. 

Eviction court is open though... no idea how that happened.

Craptacular August is here

Well, they did it.  They let the unemployment benefits extension expire.  I know a few weeks ago I wrote that they will definitely do that. But, like most people who also do not know the future, I thought probably there would be a last minute extension just before we all fell over the cliff.  Anyway, we fell over the cliff. So now the task is to climb up out of the ravine. But nobody seems to know how to do that.

Washington (CNN) The US economy, plagued by a resurgent pandemic, is showing signs of sliding backwards. Key deadlines on extending a federal eviction moratorium and federal unemployment benefits have come and gone. Yet lawmakers and the White House, sources say, are as far apart as they've ever been in talks on the next emergency aid package.

As one person involved told CNN on Sunday night: "No clue how we get this done at this point. Just so much outstanding."

Because we do not find it useful to despair, we at least try to find ways to explain how this can be so.  The easy answer is that our elected leadership exists in such an elite and isolated sphere of the upper class that it is profoundly disconnected from the needs of the vast majority of the people. That has been true for long while, though. But even so, until now, there has existed at least a slight incentive to pander.  When things are getting really bad, especially with an election right around the corner, there would be some pressure to give people something, even if it's just a little something.

That's become less true over time.  The change hasn't been sudden. It's been a process of learning just how far they can push things. How much suffering can people endure through ruling class indifference? The 21st Century to this point has been one great exercise in finding out.  They've learned they can get away with leveling whole countries and committing unspeakable atrocities on the people there without ever having to answer for any of it.  They've learned that they can leave a city to drown for weeks after a hurricane while spreading lies about the victims' behavior and situation meant to imply they deserve what's happened to them. They've learned that the whole financial system can melt down triggering millions of home foreclosures and evictions and all that has to happen is some "too big to fail" banks need to be bailed out while everyone else is left to suffer.

So our unaccountable authoritarian state for and by the wealth holding classes has been learning to crawl and then to walk for a while.  And now we are going to see if it can stomp all over everybody as the pandemic-depression begins to hit people full force.  On Friday, the New Orleans Renters' Rights Assembly mustered a protest to stand in the way of  landlords stomping into eviction court.  They can't do that every day.   Unless and until congress makes a move to extend aid to people now, we're in for an especially rough end to 2020. And that rough end begins with August.

What could we do differently that would be better?

In a word, everything.

In mid-April, Representative Ilhan Omar introduced legislation to cancel rents and mortgages for the duration of the public health crisis. The legislation would also offer financial relief to tenants and small landlords, and establish a fund to finance the purchase of private rental housing by local governments, public housing authorities, nonprofits, and community land trusts.

In addition to its legislative cosponsors, the bill has been endorsed by over three dozen community and labor organizations.

A statement on Omar’s website emphasizes that “due to layoffs and mass unemployment, renters and mortgage holders are accruing mountains of debt, despite many not having a steady income for the foreseeable future. We must take bold action now that extends the same financial assistance and protections to our struggling citizens as has been offered to profit-driven corporations.”

Unlike many of the mitigation proposals advanced by other lawmakers, Omar’s bill not only addresses the cause of the current eviction crisis, but lays out a path to eliminating housing insecurity and ensuring housing as a right. That’s exactly the right approach. Unless we cancel rent and mortgage obligations during the pandemic and enact policies to guarantee housing for all, we will be placing the burden of the coronavirus pandemic on those who can least afford it.

Don't really see anyone advocating for that sort of land use policy locally.  Maybe ask the nearest "founding entrepreneur" what they think. 

It's going great

Everybody fired. Everybody being more than previously reported.

Recent news analyses have sketched out a dire picture of the scope of the jobless crisis in Louisiana and the extent of the expected damage that the state’s economy as the federal boost to unemployment benefits lapses.

But the true picture is actually worse than some of those reports have outlined. For instance, a Sunday story in The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate noted that more than 313,000 laid-off Louisianans had filed for state unemployment benefits as of July 18, the most recent data for which the state provided complete data. But that figure didn’t include the thousands of freelancers, independent contractors and so-called “gig” workers thrown out of jobs by the coronavirus crisis.

That latter group includes more than 152,000 out-of-work Louisianans who, although not normally covered by the unemployment insurance system, have been able to file for jobless benefits under a special federal expansion of the program to address the massive job losses during the pandemic.

Oh boy.  That's just Louisiana, of course. But this story cites a Brookings report that says New Orleans will be the third "hardest hit" metro in the country by the looming benefits expiration. On the other hand, the rest of the country is... well, it's not going so great there either. 

The number of Americans filing new claims for state unemployment benefits totaled 1.43 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

It was the 19th straight week that the tally exceeded one million, an unheard-of figure before the coronavirus pandemic. And it was the second weekly increase in a row after nearly four months of declines, a sign of how the rebound in cases has undercut the economy’s nascent recovery. Claims for the previous week totaled 1.42 million.

For those of you who are among the ever-dwindling number of still employed persons, let's try an exercise.  Please raise your hand if you have been obligated out of fear or lack of options to keep going in to work during the pandemic while becoming more frightened and demoralized with news of each death or of the rate of spread.

Okay well if your hand is up, Mitch McConnell says your boss should sue you now. 

The most obnoxious provision of the GOP proposal is one that shifts the liability in COVID cases from the employer to employee. This provision allows employers to sue employees or their representatives for bringing a claim for a COVID infection and offering to settle out of court.

Most specifically, the measure mentions "demand letters." These are communications to a prospective defendant setting forth the facts of the claim, evidence assembled by the plaintiff, a reckoning of the potential damages and a statement of how much the plaintiff would accept to make the case go away. Here's a sample letter published by the San Francisco law firm Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn.

These documents are often designed as an opening brief in a negotiation; since neither side in an injury case really wants to go to trial, they make sense. The GOP bill would make anyone offering to settle, either through a demand letter or otherwise, liable to be sued for damages if the case they're making is "meritless." That's another term that's undefined in the measure.

Unlike the limitation on damages elsewhere in the bill, by the way, the punitive damages that can be awarded to employers bringing these lawsuits aren't capped.

The measure also gives the attorney general the right to bring his own lawsuit in such cases. As a result, Kennerly observes, Atty. Gen. William Barr would get the right "to sue unions, labor activists, lawyers, doctors — everyone involved in coronavirus claims."

Congress is choosing to send millions of people off of a cliff right now because 1) Republicans are openly hostile to everyone except the bosses and millionaires and 2) Democrats are running an election campaign based on the hope that they can get away doing nothing if everyone is miserable enough, because they just might blame the Republicans for it.

The first of the month is coming. (There's one every month!) But this time we're going in while deliberately cutting off everyone's income. Also the federal evictions moratorium is expiring and the courts are open.. or are they?

Too much world burning down at once

Sorry this space has been a bit sparse as of late. I took the whole weekend to just try and catch up on various projects and got zero of them accomplished. I'll get it all straight soon. I think. I did prove that a person can get drunk on a Saturday night despite there being zero bars in operation so that's something, at least.

Seems like a useful skill to have in the coming weeks when all hell really starts to break loose.

Kudlow, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," said the 70% wage-replacement formula would be "quite generous by any standard."

But Pelosi predicted that the need for an individual calculation of benefits for each jobless recipient would quickly gum up states' unemployment systems, already groaning under the weight of 20 million to 30 million jobless claims. In many states, including California, workers have waited weeks to start receiving benefits.

"The reason we had $600 was its simplicity," Pelosi said. "So why don't we just keep it simple?"

They don't want to "keep it simple," though.  The bosses are trying to win the pandemic.  The more thoroughly they can destroy any sense of security in what's left of the social safety net, the bigger the win for them.

The whole point is to keep as many workers as desperate as possible. Without a true system of public benefits to rely on, workers are at the mercy of the boss for whatever wages and terms of employment there are to be had. And when there are none, they have nowhere to turn for aid except to... "philanthropy" outlets under the private management of the same class of bosses they're already begging from.  Is it really any surprise to find such offerings inadequate to the need?

"We have been leaning in to raise the money and get it out the door as quickly as we can," Greater New Orleans Foundation CEO Andy Kopplin said. "But it’s impossible for philanthropy to close the massive gap that would come from the expiration of federal unemployment assistance."

The philanthropic group has raised more than $3 million for low-income families and the nonprofits who serve them since the pandemic began, but Kopplin said that's a drop in the bucket compared to the need.

Of course it's a drop in the bucket. That's the whole point. There is no one coming to help. We're just supposed to get used to it.

That and the evictions. August is always the shittiest month of any year. This one is gonna be one for the record books.

The rent is too damn high

The first of the month is coming.  How is your piggy bank holding up?

People looking for a two-bedroom apartment in New Orleans need to earn about $20.73 an hour to live comfortably, according to a report released Tuesday, well above what most renters make in the city even before the economic disruptions stemming from the coronavirus.

The average renter in New Orleans earns only $16.25 per hour. And if you're only earning the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage, you'd have to work almost three full-time jobs to afford that two-bedroom space, according to the report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Meanwhile, there is still no guarantee that congress is going to do anything about extending unemployment benefits. If it happens, don't be surprised if Republicans take it out of your Social Security on the back end.  Locally, there is still no sign the state or the city has any interest in reinstating an evictions moratorium.  Probably still trying to find some "balance" for our "smalltime landlords"

Oh well, fingers crossed someone will come up with something.

First of the month is coming back around

There's one every month.  But this one will be worse if unemployment benefits are not extended and if evictions are allowed to proceed.  In the meantime, this state relief program is already out of money. It was never going to be enough in the first place.

The housing advocacy group HousingLOUISIANA said the inundation of the program was to be expected, given an estimated 142,000 unemployed renters across the state who are in need of its services.

"(HousingLOUISIANA has) said from the beginning that $250 million is the minimum amount needed for rental assistance through the end of 2020,” the group said in a written statement.

The group’s president, Andreanecia Morris, said when the program was unveiled Thursday that most Louisiana renters, particularly those in New Orleans, were already making below the salaries they needed to afford the costs of living across the state before the pandemic.

Election day

Unfortunately those of you who were trying to take advantage of Kyle Ardoin's plan to get you a mail-in ballot may have to mask up and go vote in person anyway.

Orleans Registrar Sandra Wilson tells WDSU that some 4,000 applications for mail-in ballots were discovered July 1 at a New Orleans post office. She didn’t know how long they had been sitting there, but Wilson says postal workers delivered them to her office at City Hall that day.

The registrar’s staff worked overtime to put ballots in the mail to voters whose requests were delayed, Wilson said Thursday.

Mail-in ballots must arrive before 4:30 p.m. Friday to be counted in Saturday’s election, which consists of presidential party primaries, state party contests and a few municipal races.

Voters could request a mail-in ballot as late as July 7 – four days before the election. Even if they received a ballot the next day, it would give the post office just two days to get the ballot to the registrar’s office.

If this is a test run for holding a Presidential election in November, well, there's a lot of work to do between now and then. 

Believe it or not there is a ton of stuff on your ballot Saturday.  You will probably want to brush up. 

If you look at nothing else, please see the Antigravity guide.  They made an effort to survey and research every single OPDEC or DSCC candidate.  I don't know if anyone has done that before. There's a ton of information in their guide.  Do yourself a favor and look through it.  I can't speak for their recommendations, though. My line as always is identify the office seekers you most want to vote AGAINST. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're voting FOR any sort of progress ticking any of these boxes.

Remember also there is a First City Court election on the ballot. This is particularly important because that court handles evictions which are likely to begin piling up as the federal moratorium passes and if Congress really decides not to extend unemployment benefits at the end of the month.

Also there is a zombie Democratic Presidential Primary question on the ballot.  It seems rather unsatisfying at this point but... well.. let's quote from the New Orleans DSA recommendation. 

Many of his supporters were disappointed with (Sen. Bernie) Sanders’ refusal to be aggressive against Joe Biden, and with his capitulation to the will of the moderates in the Democratic party in endorsing Biden without fighting for concessions. He has also not been as strong and supportive a voice for the current movement to defund the police as we would like. While he has tweeted “every police department violating people’s civil rights must be stripped of federal funding” and supported banning tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray on protestors, he also has pushed for better training and more resources for police departments as solutions, rather than the radical shifts in our so-called justice system that are long overdue.

However, it is necessary to contrast Sanders’ response to the national uprising for Black Lives with Joe Biden’s which has been nothing short of shameful. Biden has met the demand to defund police with a proposal to increase police funding by $300 million. Biden’s prescribed solution to the scourge of police violence has been to encourage cops to shoot people “in the leg instead of in the heart.” Add to this Biden’s long and troubling record as a proponent of mass incarceration, his support for American imperialism up to and including support of the Iraq War, his close alliance with the financial industry, and his steadfast refusal to embrace health care for all, and the moral imperative to cast a vote against Joe Biden — even at this late point in the primary calendar — could not be any clearer.

Happy voting. Be safe out there.

What are they even doing there

Kicking people out of their homes in the middle of a pandemic/depression must be essential work. Otherwise, we wouldn't force people into dangerous conditions in order to get it done.

Tenant advocates said this week they’re also worried about conditions inside the courtrooms. Anderson-Trahan’s docket quickly became backlogged. One case that was scheduled for 11 a.m. was still being heard at 6 p.m. At one point, there were 24 people inside a small courtroom that doesn’t have working AC. One woman nearly collapsed in the heat.

The judge tried to cut down on the number of people in the courtroom, only to announce minutes later that an overflow room was also crowded.

There were clear signs that the court took some precautions: temperatures were checked at the door and masks were required — but the judge ordered litigants who stood a few feet apart from each other to remove the masks so the court reporter could hear them.

The landlord police are already de-funded

There's barely anything you can say to them. All these judges can do is ask them nicely to wait a few days.

“We gotta be aware and cognizant of the reality of life right now,” Judge Monique Morial said during one of the hearings. “Given the situation that we find ourselves in, the last thing that I want to do is contribute to an already dire homelessness problem in our community. I understand that landlords are entitled to their property. But I think also in the circumstances we find ourselves in we need to be a little bit compassionate in how we deal with these situations.”

In a typical “rule absolute” ruling, Morial gave tenants two days to move out. A notice would be put on the property the day after the ruling, which informs tenants they have 24 hours to vacate. But Morial urged several landlords to agree to give tenants extra time to find new housing. She said, however, that this was only a request she could ask of landlords, not an order she could impose.

“It doesn't mean that I can always force a situation, but I can ask you, because of what we’re dealing with, if you’re willing to give her a couple weeks notice to vacate,” she said. “Because it’s not gonna be easy for her to find another place to live.”

The first of the month is coming again. (There's one every month!)  The next few firsts of the next few months are going to be worse than this one. Unless somebody does something. Who can do something?

DeDecker, like Mabery, thinks that formal eviction filings will nonetheless rise over the coming months. Not only will CARES Act eviction protections expire, but the additional $600 federal supplements to unemployment benefits will run out at the end of July. Without those supplements, the maximum unemployment benefits that Louisiana residents can collect is only $247 a week — inadequate to cover the costs of living in New Orleans, critics argue.

“Extra unemployment is going to expire and the CARES Act protections are going to expire, and we are going to see a huge public health and housing crisis the likes we haven’t seen since immediately post Katrina,” DeDecker said. “Ultimately, reopening eviction court without ensuring that tenants can actually deal with their accumulated rent debts is a disaster. We need the state government, we need the city government, we need the federal government to step up and cancel rent and mortgages and supply enough funding to make sure people can pay their bills.”

Otherwise, a whole lot of renters are about to get the cops called on them. And the orders to vacate won't be delivered with anything like the deference the judges show to the landlords.

The Dread Index

A little over a week ago, in keeping with the (obviously very well thought out, very safe and successful) "Phase 2" reopening process, the First and Second City Courts of New Orleans once again began accepting evictions filings from landlords. The response was...  impressive.

Last week, some courts and justices of the peace accepted eviction requests, but didn’t begin assigning them court dates. Badon waited until Tuesday, the first full day after Edwards’ order lifted.

Badon said his clerks on Tuesday received 63 requests for evictions, compared to about 25 on a normal day.

And that's after having turned away an apparently sizeable number of landlords who are still constrained by the federal rules that pause evictions on certain properties until August 25.  The city courts had been urged to push back their moratorium to match the federal guidelines but they decided to move ahead anyway.

It's hard to know what the reasoning is there. But there has obviously been pressure from property owners. We know they've been talking to the mayor, at least. In this interview back in April she was already talking about the coming eviction crisis in terms of having to "find a balance" with the needs of "our landlords."

She must have still been thinking about "our landlords" this week when she extended the deadlines for short term rental license applications and permit extensions. This extension even applies to STR licenses that were set to expire anyway due to a recent change in city regulations. It's basically using COVID as an excuse to keep STRs operating even while we are allowing people to evicted from their homes. That's one hell of a way to strike a "balance."

Anyway thanks to these policy decisions our leadership has made on purpose, a wave of evictions is coming soon.

NEW ORLEANS, La. (WVUE) - As the coronavirus pandemic persists it is feared that many low-income families in Louisiana and around the country could face eviction soon and as a result homelessness.

The Center for Planning Excellence of Baton Rouge and Urban Footprint released their analysis of the housing crisis amid the pandemic.

Camille Manning-Broome is President of the Center for Planning Excellence.

“In Louisiana, our development patterns are increasing the likelihood of this, of homelessness and high-risk burden because many areas your combined housing and transportation costs had up to more than 50 percent of your income,” Manning-Broome said.

The analysis found that Louisiana ranks 3rd in the nation for having a high risk for evictions due to job losses. Further it says 130,000 households across Louisiana are at risk of evictions and it shows the parishes most in need of rental assistance beyond July 31 when federal protections and assistance expire are in order of need, Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, Caddo, Lafayette, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Calcasieu, Ouachita, and Bossier.

For further context, here is a cheering analysis of the Census Bureau's "Household Pulse" survey which finds:

Based on the Household Pulse Survey results released on June 17, which examined responses between June 4 and June 9, almost one-third of all households expect to experience a loss of employment income over the coming four weeks. Fully 10 percent of American families—that’s 25 million, half of which have children at home—did not have enough food to eat in the prior week. Even more disturbing, one in five households—over 50 million in total—are doubtful that they will be able to afford sufficient food in the coming month. And of the nation’s 65,000,0000 renters, almost 20 percent were unable to pay their rent last month and an even higher percentage—close to 30 percent—doubt that they will be able to pay their rent in the coming month. 

This week, another one million plus new unemployment claims were filed.  So it's staggering to think how many households are currently trying to calculate, according to their savings if they have any, how much time they might have between the day they are laid off and the day they are evicted. Call it the Dread Index.  And it's a frighteningly short number now that the courts are ready to hear evictions again.

The first of the month comes around every month

July 1 is coming. The first day of the rest of the year.  Get ready to process some evictions.

New Orleans’ First and Second City Courts, which handle the majority of the city’s evictions, won’t start proceedings for newly filed eviction cases until July 6, according to courts spokesman Walt Pierce.

The courts will, however, start eviction proceedings on Monday for the backlog of evictions filed before the court suspended them on March 13. That order put 106 eviction cases on hold that were already scheduled between March 13 and March 30.

The state moratorium ended on June 15.  There is also a federal date of August 25 dictated by the CARES Act which applies only to properties where federal assistance is involved (Section 8, FHA, etc.)  Earlier the City Council had asked the courts to wait until then for everything in order to avoid confusion.  But apparently the City Courts are moving forward anyway. 

The catch there is most tenants (and possibly even a few landlords) may not be aware of the federal moratorium or if it applies to them.  From the looks of things a number of landlords have already shown up to court unprepared to answer that question.  (Or maybe to lie about it.)

Instead of putting off all evictions, First and Second City Courts are requiring all landlords to submit affidavits swearing that they don’t participate in any federal programs that would prevent them from evicting tenants prior to August 25.

“I support the affidavit,” Adams said. “I think it’s a way to notify all parties that a detailed inquiry will be done to ensure that the CARES Act doesn’t apply and the eviction isn’t done in violation of federal law.”

Badon said that he’s seen many people turned away from filing an eviction after finding out they would need to submit the affidavit prior to the court hearing.

“I was at the front door personally myself having to explain it to them,” Badon said. “I had to spend some significant time with certain individuals to explain it to them. They thought they could come here and be done with it but they didn’t know about the affidavit.”

Of course they'll be back soon enough... unless congress is ready to fire up the money gun... or, even less likely, everyone is back to work and making tons of money by August somehow.  There's a first of the month every month, you know. 

Well it is the first of the month

How is that eviction moratorium coming along?

In a move that mirrors the state's latest coronavirus shutdown order, New Orleans judges on Thursday extended a temporary ban on evictions to May 18, but didn't say whether they will impose a longer moratorium.

Housing advocates last week asked the judges to extend a moratorium to Aug. 24 to match a federal law that effectively bans many evictions until then.

The city court judges have yet to answer to the request, according to Veronica Reed, the executive director of the Jane's Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.

August 24 is probably too soon, actually. But May 18 is extremely too soon and it would be much worse if the judges really do leave it that way.  My understanding is the city court judges are waiting to see if they get some guidance from the state supreme court so... we'll wait another couple weeks to see where that goes. 

Someone is going to have to step in.  The mayor seems to be wavering.  Earlier in the week, Mayor Cantrell spoke with Washington Post reporter Bob Costa about a number of things related to COVID recovery. The video also includes an interview with Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms. Cantrell's is in the second half. There is a transcript here and the Advocate pulls this same quote.

When asked about evictions, Cantrell says she's working with the judges but immediately launches into a bit about how "we need to find balance" with the landlords.

MR. COSTA: Just in the final few minutes here, Mayor, I would appreciate your perspective on the economy, to follow up on your thoughts. There's an order about evictions in your city--suspending evictions. It's set to expire, as you know, at the end of this month. Should city courts or your office take action to extend that eviction freeze?

MAYOR CANTRELL: Well, we're actually--we're doing that right now. We are working with the courts on this. We do want to prevent evictions. And at the same time, there needs to be balance there, making sure that we're working with our landlords, even our smalltime landlords, so that they are made whole as well. So, it is a win-win, and there's a balance of the people who need the housing--and we definitely do not want to push them out of housing--but also the landowner who needs some subsidy as well. So, we have activated rental assistance in the city, utilizing public money as well as private, again, wanting to strike that balance to help both, because it does touch--it touches both the economy as well as the tenant who needs the housing.

Notice how she qualifies that they are looking out for, "even our smalltime landlords," implying that the independent mom and pop type landlords we might actually sympathize with are actually an afterthought to her. But apparently the landlords "that we're working with" are more big time than that.

Which is curious since it's really the independents who need attention.  There's a danger here going forward that smaller property owners could fall victim to foreclosure leaving only mega-corporate landlords in control of more and more rental property. This in turn exposes renters to further abuse and much greater chance of being evicted by an uncaring land management companies based thousands of miles away.

It's much easier to bring the interests of small time landlords into "balance" with renters. All that takes is a freeze on mortgage payments to match the freeze on rent. I wonder if Mayor "Not Talking About Taking From The Rich And Giving To The Poor And All That Kind Of Crap" actually cares about any of that.