By: Mark Glennon*
Nothing in Gov. JB Pritzker’s emergency orders on COVID is more egregiously unjust, tyrannical and arbitrary than his moratorium on residential evictions. Pritzker, in his sole discretion, has effectively forced landlords alone to pay the cost of a free housing program. It’s that simple. His eviction ban prevents even mom and pop landlords from collecting rent they need to pay their mortgages and property taxes, and often to provide income they live on.
The United States Supreme Court last week struck down a federal moratorium on residential evictions. The ruling was based on the absence any authorization for the moratorium by Congress, not on broader constitutional issues like property rights, contract rights or due process. Therefore, as a strict legal matter, the ruling does not apply to Pritzker’s own eviction moratorium. It’s based on Pritzker’s emergency powers, as he sees things.
So Pritzker has been free to extend his emergency order again, as he did last week. And he will probably do so for an indefinite period of time. With COVID breaking through vaccinations at a much faster pace than originally hoped, it’s clear that COVID will be with us indefinitely. That means Pritzker will claim his authoritarian emergency power also extends indefinitely.
But with just a few short questions in his written concurrence with last week’s ruling, Justice Brett Kavanaugh showed why eviction bans at any level, from any perspective, are so crassly dictatorial and irrational. If the Centers for Disease Control can, through a federal eviction ban, force landlords the pay for free housing, what can’t they do? Here’s how Kavanaugh put it:
Could the CDC, for example, mandate free grocery delivery
to the homes of the sick or vulnerable?
Require manufacturers to provide free computers to enable people to work
from home?
Order telecommunications companies to provide free high-speed Internet service to facilitate remote work?
Yes, they could – if you accept the absurd thinking behind eviction bans. Pritzker likewise could do the same things at the state level – and dictate countless similar actions – if you accept that thinking behind eviction bans.
Kavanaugh’s questions must be put to Pritzker by Illinois reporters. Please do so, reporters.
Put up your answers, Governor.
And, Governor, don’t say that property owners are being reimbursed by the relief programs for landlords and tenants. Those programs were designed and are being executed with incompetence exceeded only by America’s Afghanistan withdrawal.
Illinois’ program to help landlords has been botched from the start. It’s fundamentally flawed because it requires an application jointly made by the tenant and the landlord, which recalcitrant tenants won’t cooperate on. The program was “too little, too late,” as explained here. Most of the federal money supposedly available to help sits unused, as recently reported by NBC Chicago.
It’s not like the gush of federal cash shouldn’t be sufficient to take care of deserving tenants and landlords. Federal “pandemic relief” sent to Illinois now exceeds a mind-boggling $160 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Some tenants need no help and are just thumbing their noses at landlords, but for those who need and deserve help, there’s no excuse for why some of that $160 billion hasn’t been made available to unpaid landlords. If deserving tenants are still in need of help, that’s just another indictment of the entire misdirection of federal assistance.
Most of the “pandemic relief” has ended up merely inflating financial assets – stocks, bonds, real estate funds, cryptocurrencies – everything that only people with means hold, and robbing working people through inflation. So-called progressives should be most disgusted with that result, but they are responsible.
Finally, don’t expect Illinois courts or the General Assembly to be of any help. Their wholesale abrogation of responsibility is the most frightening aspect of the whole affair. Legislators should have intervened and put some sense into how the pandemic is being addressed. Courts long ago should have struck down eviction bans as unconstitutional seizures of private property without just compensation or due process.
They have failed in their most essential roles.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
I had a tenant that we tried to help. She has done her best threw the pandemic. I filled out my part and she did hers. Then we both got an email stating it was too late?? Was filed in time. Tried to respond but of course nothing. This state is just like the government its going down the tube. Why can’t we the people get him out??? And by the way I just paid over 80k in property taxes to this disgraceful state. Guess who’s on the short list.. Thankfully most of my tenants are great. But my year… Read more »
These swamp rats need to go!-including that fat lil swamp rat JB!
Increasing of lawlessness is very fashionable among authorities now. It won’t be much longer and they will be 100% freestyle, just like the Nazi SS, just like Sodom & Gomorrah.
Relying on the US Constitution is like resting against a wall for support only to be bitten by a snake.
Strong proof that the US Constitution has less value in the real world than toilet paper.
Great article, Wirepoints. Even people who pay attention and are aware of the Supreme Ct decision might not be aware of these questions asked. And you raise a terrific point. Why pick on landlords? Why not my car payment? How about my credit card payments–heck, they carry a 18-22 percent interest rate and that would give me some terrific relief. Or why not my medical bills? They are outrageous from the get go. It’s a great lesson on selective punishment of people who have property being penalized simply for ownership.
Give Pritzker and the Leftist Democrats time. Confiscating, i.e. ‘borrowing’ private property gets easier the more you do it.
Single party, supermajority rule all over – how ya like them apples Illinois?
Is Illinois still a State!? I wonder.
Little China
Just like the mess at IDES, who knows if the IHDA afscme hero’s are even on the job filing the claims in a timely manner? Astoundingly, as far as I know, JB still hasn’t ordered the state workers back from working remotely indefinitely? No outside vendor was brought in to pickup the slack and bang out the claims (like IDES did by hiring Deloitte)? Also, interestingly, a couple of days ago I had to call 311 to report abandoned car on my block and the CPD recording phone prompt while your on hold offers several options–“press # for rental assistance”,… Read more »
Semi retirement for all with govt jobs I guess, for the next 30 years at least, probably forever. Its like the work ethic of the whole state is suddenly gone.
SHAME on the so called legislators for continually allowing this joke of a governor to get away with mandate after mandate,its just as much thier fault as it is governor lumpy!!
Excellent article!
he needs a slap down!
JB is pure scum!!!!
How many landlords voted for this guy!
Your property rights can be diminished or impaired.
this guys not only an overweight stooge,but also an ego maniac,at what point did illinois become completely ruled by one person?-thought thats what the legislature is for but,nope,whatever jb decides to mandate is the law of the land
What legislature? All those suckasses are on his payroll. Play nice and around of raises will blow your way.
YEP,including these suck ass judges,all politics,mike madigan and ed burke cronies!!
I feel just like that POW, sick of demon-inspired people.
isnt that burke and madigan in the nazi uniforms!?
Down voters can’t handle the truth: their big-government is even worse than they thought.
I would add some more questions to Kavanaugh’s list… Can the CDC compel banks to suspend mortgage payments with no interest accrual? Can the CDC compel local government to suspend all property taxes? Can the CDC compel the federal and state government to forgive all income taxes for the duration of the pandemic?
sounds like he’s looking to scoop up property that these landlords may lose………….
what is he doing with the 160 billion???
The question should be “Is there anything Governor Pritker can’t do?”
He will answer nothing or to anybody until he is forced to by someone of higher authority, maybe by the Supreme Court oh but not Illinois supreme courts, checks in the mail boys.
With the state in control by the powers in charge, and they are operating against the best interest of the citizens, how is this not a violation of their oath of office? All of them? What is the punishment for violating your oath of office?
We’re now in situation where entitlement programs provide the savvy parent the means to legitimately replicate (not resorting to illegal activities) a middle-income lifestyle without need to maintain gainful employment. Supposedly these entitlement programs are now equivalent of $30/hour job with full benefits, with added bonus that there’s no “job time” involved, and beneficiary has 24/7 freedom from all typical time-constraints of employment upon their personal life.
Pritzker is buying his re-election votes with his “covid free rent” program. Simple calculus: more tenants than landlords, ergo, cater to tenants at expense of landlords.
Also, follow the money: bet that Pritzker Family investments aren’t vested in residential rental building-stock.
It is incredible that only one county judge from a rural area south of Arcola IL has questioned the Pasha’s authority and insisted the General Assembly has a role to play in legalizing Fatso’s mandates.
GR8 ARTICLE, MARK !!!!! So true! This is clearly another Leftist “progressive” Democrat tactic, since 1933 — buy votes from takers using tax money from the makers, redistrube income from takers to makers, punish corporations for same, said, tactic, eventual effect is screw up the economy and make people with jobs, and small & large businesses…Less prosperous. This is and always was, NOT the purpose of our federal government. Truly truly sad. PS: FDR plagiarized and misused the campaign phrase “the forgotten man” as someone who is down and out, and the federal govt should help. The original phrase was… Read more »
Oops, too late to Edit….but of course the federal govt redistributes income from Makers to Takers. Medicare is hugely such a tax scheme but so is the SS system….higher paids get much smaller pension , as % of pay than low and average wage earners. Itsya massive redistributive scheme.
Until one of these want to be dictators at any level is handcuffed and thrown in jail for showing contempt to the laws and the courts and the people, they will continue to rule as if they were Kings. Are there any adults with any authority left in the country?
King Pritzker is not to be bothered by questions of legality! It is he, and he alone that shall decide what is best for the peasants. Now, what was that you said about free grocery delivery?