Any proposal put forward by District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser would not, to say the least, seem likely to be favored by President Donald Trump. The two are at odds over Trump’s takeover of the district’s police and general disdain for D.C. home rule. Bowser on Trump, Trump on Bowser.
But, though she would not likely seek his backing, Trump, both as president and as a housing developer, would almost certainly favor Bowser’s proposal to “rebalance” housing laws in the district. She calls the legislation the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants and Landlords, or RENTAL, Act.
Among other provisions, the bill would do something significantly contrary to current progressive housing policy goals: make it easier to evict tenants who don’t pay their rent. It would, at long last, roll back pandemic-era protections no longer in force anywhere else in the country.
The case for doing so might seem to be both strong and common sense. Per the mayor’s office, 20% of tenants just in nonprofit “affordable housing” are delinquent on their rent. The owners are owed a staggering $147 million, even as their costs have risen. The district’s Apartment and Office Building Association has found that landlord-tenant cases take more than a year to resolve, twice as long as before COVID-19. Foreclosures and deferred maintenance loom. “Unpaid rent,” Bowser asserts, “is destabilizing D.C.’s housing system”. She cites a tenant who told her that the buildings are “falling apart” and “we live here with no security.”
It’s important to understand just how much a departure from progressive housing orthodoxy this is — and yes, even “Trumpy.” The White House has proposed a rule to speed evictions for those owing back rent in public and subsidized housing. But progressives have come to view eviction as a fundamental threat to tenants, no matter the reason.
The view can be dated at least to the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by the sociologist Matthew Desmond, who blames eviction for a range of ills, including job loss, poor credit, mental health problems, and the perpetuation of poverty. He has built an academic career on tracking evictions’ extent, with the implicit goal of reducing it, through the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which he heads.
He might want to discuss eviction policy with Bowser, a progressive mayor in a deeply liberal city. Her proposal recognizes that the threat of speedy eviction forces tenants to prioritize paying their rent. In Desmond’s book, he tells the stories of tenants who decide instead to put a drug habit first. Bowser also understands that eviction can reduce the threat tenants can face from other tenants — she would authorize eviction if a tenant were charged with a violent offense.
This is the sort of sanction the president would surely approve of — although Bowser would not likely welcome his backing in her looming battle to gain approval for the RENTAL Act from a recalcitrant D.C. Council, which has long backed the district’s rent control and stringent tenant protections that have deterred new housing investment.
As the Apartment and Office Building Association notes, housing developers “reported an unwillingness to invest in future projects because of the policy climate and inability to collect rent. Layered on top of this, rental housing providers have been hit with new costs associated with the surge in criminal activity.”
The combination of delayed eviction and rent controls not only deters new investment but inevitably leads to maintenance problems in existing low-income apartments. The lack of a reliable stream of adequate revenue has led to the deterioration of public and subsidized housing across the country. Low-income housing has historically looked good when the ribbons were cut — but crumbled over time.
Laws meant to protect tenants, in other words, can do the opposite — and have done so in Washington. Bowser has recognized that in ways that go beyond eviction policy. She would roll back the current right of tenants to purchase their buildings when they come up for sale. Tenant ownership is not only inherently impractical as a management matter, but the right of first refusal is another deterrent to new housing investment in the district.
The RENTAL Act faces a final vote in the D.C. Council, likely in mid-September. Its provisions, notably those providing for the eviction of tenants charged with violent offenses, may face amendment to weaken them. Bowser has expressed concern about amendments that “will wreak havoc on our already severely stressed housing market.”
TO FIX THE HOUSING CRISIS, BRING BACK BASIC STARTER HOMES
At a time when both the White House and Congress have threatened to revisit the concept of home rule for the district, the vote on the RENTAL Act, an example of sensible policy proposals by an elected mayor, will be a crucial test.
It is just a new chapter in a long, sad history of subsidized public housing: Absent a reliable revenue stream, buildings that were beautiful when the ribbons were cut quickly deteriorate. Bowser would “streamline the court process” — that is, speed evictions.
Howard Husock is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.