Far-left Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who have both been vocal critics of landlords and supportive of the eviction moratorium that prevents them from collecting rent indefinitely, made tens of thousands of dollars themselves collecting rent last year, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Tlaib disclosed in a recent financial statement that she made between $15,000 and $50,000 from rent out of a property she owns in Detroit, even after she had recently criticized “landlords and bill collectors” and said that Americans needed to be protected from them “in the midst of a pandemic.” Pressley made roughly $15,000 from 2019 to 2020 off a property she owns in Boston. Pressley has denounced landlords for trying to collect rent during the pandemic, claiming it to be “literally a matter of life and death.”
Both congresswomen, along with others in the so-called “squad” and other congressional Democrats, were supportive of extending the eviction moratorium that has forbidden landlords across the nation from collecting rent, ostensibly to provide financial relief to Americans who cannot pay their rent due to losing their jobs to lockdown orders. The Biden Administration extended the eviction moratorium through October, after the original moratorium implemented last September by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was set to expire earlier this year.
Both Tlaib and Pressley, among others, have introduced legislation that would completely cancel all rent and mortgage payments in the country, which would ultimately force the federal government to directly compensate landlords.
“Cancelling rents and mortgage payments for the duration of the COVID-19 virus pandemic would relieve financial pressure, allow residents to stay home from work without the added concern of losing their housing, and limit the spread of the virus,” Tlaib claimed in March of last year.
There have been repeated warnings that the inevitable expiration of the eviction moratorium could lead to a new housing crisis that could be on par with, if not even worse than, the housing crisis in 2007 and 2008, with both renters and landlords facing the possibility of total financial ruin. The American economy is already in a fragile state as inflation continues to rise, following an infusion of government spending with the $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed earlier this year.