“Landlords are also among those waiting.”

What!?

Landlords are THE ones waiting, these tenants have been living in these units for free for years at the direct cost of the landlords. Property tax better be paid on time, municipal utilities better get paid on time, but the landlords are legally required to allow a non-paying tenant to occupy their property against their will and depend on the clerical aptitude of said tenant and then endure the incompetence of the state of California byzantine bureaucracy just to get paid what the tenant was contractually committed to pay, dating back multiple years?

And then you write this?

“But even if she wins her appeal, that check would go to her former landlord. That might improve her credit history, but it wouldn’t secure her a new place to live.”

What the …?

Of course it should go to the landlord, why is that even a question?

Listen, everybody wants equality and dignity and respect.

You want that?

Pay your bills. Pay your rent. Do what you promise to do or work something out with the person you made those commitments. With personal agency comes personal responsibility.

All the state of California has done is infantilized adults, taken away their agency, convinced them they don’t need to meet their responsibilities while scapegoating the people that have to carry the tenant’s water for years. And now you have a mess on your hands. It’s not just these 70000 unprocessed applicants. You have evictions, ruined credit histories, more units under corporate landlordship like Zell’s Equity Residential, a reduction in units, and much higher rents. You made a huge permanent mess in these people’s lives due to your certainty, resentment, envy, ignorance and arrogance.

This was predicted from day one. You thought you were dumping on landlords, you were so smug and happy to watch them suffer, you even convinced yourself of the justice of cancelling rent. But we told you tenants would pay the price in the end as the state would let them down like they always do.

You laughed.

Who’s crying now?

Shame. On. You.