It Was Barack the Betrayer -- Not George II or Trump/Pence -- Who Legalized the Landlords' ALEC-Backed Demand That Tenants Be Forced to Pay All Costs of Bedbug Fumigation

This Lucrative Obamanoid Gift to the Already Obscenely Wealthy Is Alone Sufficient Proof to Forever Damn the Democrats as Betrayers

YEAH, I'M BACK, but not -- as I shall explain in a subsequent posting -- as I had originally planned to be. 

I had promised readers on another website I'd complete an essay on the pagan, anti-patriarchal origins of the Scots ballad "The Famous Flower of Serving Men," which I will indeed do, and I will finish another recently begun essay addressing the unique psychological circumstances -- specifically the subjugated fatalism one might expect to find were our planet nothing more than a galactic death camp -- that increasingly beset us in this the darkest, most hopeless, most potentially apocalyptic of all human eras.

Meanwhile I am reacting to a far more mundane but immediate threat: that of inescapable financial ruin inflicted on every U.S. tenant by the viciously anti-tenant, pro-landlord Obama Administration and the equally vindictive Democratic (sic) Party when they reversed decades of tenant-protection regulations to allow the landlords to force tenants to pay all the costs of bedbug removal. 

I scooped the world on this bedbug story on 23 March 2014; the full text of that report is reproduced below.

Though major media occasionally picks up stories from this website, the most recent example the beginning of voluble advocacy for children imprisoned by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gestapo -- not one publication (not even those on the alleged Left to which I offered it) -- dared touch my 2014 story of Barack the Betrayer's lucrative gift to the landlords. 

Hence we have here -- in how the landlords are now routinely fucking us even more ruinously than they were four years ago -- yet another lesson in the Capitalist reality that has always ensured "American democracy" would never be more than our species' biggest, most dangerous (and therefore almost certainly terminal) Big Lie: USian landlords are so fucking powerful they now under Neoliberalism can pretty much do whatever the hell they want to anyone unfortunate enough to need the nation's ever-more-prohibitively expensive shelter.

As indeed the landlords are now doing to those of us who dwell in the Senior Housing Assistance Group (SHAG) Conservatory Place facility in Tacoma, Washington, deluging us with contradictory double-think: "no of course it's not your fault the bedbugs invaded your apartment -- but yes you still have to pay all the costs of having them exterminated."

Which -- depending on whether you live in an anti-tenant state like Washington or a pro-tenant state like New Jersey (and the magnitude of the infestation and the collective greed of the landlords and the bedbug exterminators they have commissioned) -- could run to thousands of dollars: 

"Some people have even been driven to suicide by bedbugs.

Thus this reprint of my story from 2014 -- again in the hope some media outlet with far more readership than I have will pick it up and at long last treat it as the Page One news it should have been from day one:

Exclusive: Obama Administration
Quietly Declares War on Tenant Rights

(Note: occasionally I still get a chance to do some original reporting, which in days of yore was my most award-winning skill. The following is a genuine scoop. I offered its first refusal rights to Marc Ash at Reader Supported News, but his response was to ignore my query. Hence I'm breaking the story here. Perhaps other media will pick it up and give it the widespread dissemination it deserves.)

***

IN A STARTLING reversal of public policy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has sided with a national landlord lobby that seeks to add the expense of bed-bug extermination – and possibly of all pest control – to tenants' already-soaring housing costs.

The move by HUD may be the first documented instance in which a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was able to reach directly into the Obama Administration to obtain a nearly immediate favor – a favor that is hugely beneficial to landlords and potentially so ruinous to clients it could result in a nationwide wave of evictions.

It may also be another blow against the Democrats' dwindling prospects for success  in the November congressional elections. That's because HUD's new anti-tenant stance is sure to further inflame President Obama's critics on the Left, who already accuse him of deliberately concealing Republican ideology beneath a Democratic disguise.

HUD says its rental facilities shelter about 1.2 million households.  Based on the 2010, two-persons-per-apartment demographics of Manhattan,  where virtually everyone is an apartment dweller, the new HUD policy probably impacts at least 2.4 million people – approximately as many women, men and children as live in Chicago, Kiev or Rome.

The agency's departure from its long-established pro-tenant policies was revealed during a recent Network for Public Health Law web-seminar entitled “Addressing Bed Bugs through Law: Challenges and Limitations.” The network's post-webinar report cites two official HUD documents that reveal the agency's new opposition to tenant rights – rights that, in many cases, have long been recognized by law.

“In Notice H-2011-20,” says the Network report, “HUD provided guidance to owners, management agents, and tenants of HUD multifamily insured and assisted properties for bed bug infestations. HUD urged owners to develop an Integrated Pest Management Plan (IMP) and to actively engage residents in efforts to prevent bed bugs. The notice set out a timeframe for responding to a tenant’s bed bug complaint and prohibited the owner from charging a tenant to cover the cost of bed bug treatment. An owner was also prohibited from denying tenancy to a potential resident on the basis of the tenant having experienced a prior bed bug infestation.”

“Eight months later,” the report continues, “HUD issued Notice H-2012-5 to supersede H-2011-20, which eliminated the “tenants rights and responsibilities” section, including the timeframe for responding to a tenant’s complaint, the prohibition on charging tenants for bed bug treatment, and the prohibition on denying tenancy to a potential resident because of a prior bed bug problem.

“The National Multi Housing Council (NMHC), which represents owners, claims that HUD made these revisions at its urging and Congressional pressure, because the original guidance created confusion about best management practices, hamstrung the efforts of owners and property managers to prevent infestations and failed to meaningfully address the financial issues to the owner and resident related to repeat infestations. In contrast, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) says the change eliminates important tenant protections and allows landlords to shift the cost of bed bug treatment to tenants.”

Such costs, the public health law network estimates, can run as high as $1,500 to each tenant or tenant family – a sum that for lower-income people is devastating if not impossible, a potential precursor to bankruptcy, eviction and homelessness.

Meanwhile, landlord response to a bed-bug infestation near Seattle, where tenants are being forced to pay the costs of extermination, is validating NLIHC's concerns.

Equally alarming to tenants is the fact an NMHC document states landlords can now “treat resident's possessions as part of an Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM).”  This means – just as has reportedly occurred in the Seattle case – landlords can invoke pest-control rights to confiscate or force tenants to destroy cherished books, artwork, furniture, photo albums, collections of phonograph records and any number of other items that might be deemed bed-bug-infested or capable of harboring such an infestation.

Moreover, NLICH says the new notice allows owners of HUD housing to “take action to deny tenancy or remove residents for causes related to infestations” – in other words, to evict tenants at will, presumably bypassing any legal protections against unjust or retaliatory eviction.

While HUD's new anti-tenant stance has not yet been publicly acknowledged as the beginning of a campaign to require tenants to pay all pest-control costs, some health and housing professionals say privately they believe it might be just that. At the very least, they say, it's part of the ongoing national effort to minimize or abolish tenant rights.

That this is so is suggested by the implicit ALEC involvement. ALEC is an arch-conservative organization that seeks to rewrite U.S. laws at all levels – federal, state and local – to favor the ruling One Percent by imposing additional burdens and disadvantages on everyone else. And NMHC is listed as an ALEC member.

In this context, HUD's favorable stance toward NMHC – proven by the fact the lobbying effort bore fruit within eight months – is a significant revelation of the Obama Administration's internal ideology. So is the boast on the NMHC document cited above: that it took only two letters from Tea Party-identified congressmen to prompt HUD to reverse its former pro-tenant-rights stance. The letters, to Obama-appointed HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, were written by Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill) and Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio). 

Though Dold was not reelected in 2012, he is running for the office again this year. His ideology and Tea-Party connections are described here and here. Stivers' Tea-Party politics are discussed here. 

The Tea Party itself, the controlling faction within the Republican Party, is sustained by lavish funding from rich industrialists and businessmen,  as well as the tobacco industry. But the Tea Party's constituency spans the entire hard-right spectrum, ranging from Wall Street and Big Business to Christian theocrats and white supremacists – and now apparently to the Obama Administration's inner circle as well.

***

Additional Notes:

(1)-HUD's policy-reversal is likely to (further) devastate Democratic Party chances in the November elections. Firstly, the afflicted people, mostly lower-income and/or minority urbanites who are a substantial demographic in progressive politics, are now (again) told – this time with unmistakable ferocity – the Democrats have turned against them and no longer want their votes. Secondly, local Democratic Party politicians who have remained faithful to the humanitarian principles of the New Deal are now (again) besmirched by association with by a national party that is increasingly right-wing and thus increasingly indistinguishable from its Republican counterpart. Voter turnout will suffer, and the flight of alienated voters to third parties will (again) be accelerated. Indeed, it seems Obama and his national Democratic apparatus are determined to facilitate Republican victory in the U.S. Senate, reinforce Republican domination of the House and foster Republican triumph at state and local levels as well.

(2)-A HUD policy-reversal of this magnitude – particularly given its dire implications for the fall congressional elections – would have required upper-echelon White House staff approval, if not approval by the president himself. Therefore it is not unfair to regard it as yet another example of the president's obviously premeditated shape-shift from Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer, and his historically unprecedented Big Lie of “change we can believe in.”

(3)-The new HUD policy and its context – landlords seizing upon the bed-bug plague to nullify tenants' rights – is a classic example of shock-doctrine capitalism in action. Quoth Naomi Klein: “That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster...puts the entire population into a state of collective shock...Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.” (The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism; Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company: 2007; pg. 17.) It's precisely how Shock-Doctrine Obama,  HUD and the landlords are using the shock of the bed-bug plague to force tenants to give up their right to landlord-provided pest control. Which of course makes the HUD properties with their disempowered tenants all the more attractive for sale to real estate profiteers.

LB/18 July 2018(w/reprint from 23 March 2014)

-30-

 

  

 

 

   

 

(Note: occasionally I still get a chance to do some original reporting, which in days of yore was my most award-winning skill. The following is a genuine scoop. I offered its first refusal rights to Marc Ash at Reader Supported News, but his response was to ignore my query. Hence I'm breaking the story here. Perhaps other media will pick it up and give it the widespread dissemination it deserves.)

***

IN A STARTLING reversal of public policy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has sided with a national landlord lobby that seeks to add the expense of bed-bug extermination – and possibly of all pest control – to tenants' already-soaring housing costs.

The move by HUD may be the first documented instance in which a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was able to reach directly into the Obama Administration to obtain a nearly immediate favor – a favor that is hugely beneficial to landlords and potentially so ruinous to clients it could result in a nationwide wave of evictions.

It may also be another blow against the Democrats' dwindling prospects for success  in the November congressional elections. That's because HUD's new anti-tenant stance is sure to further inflame President Obama's critics on the Left, who already accuse him of deliberately concealing Republican ideology beneath a Democratic disguise.

HUD says its rental facilities shelter about 1.2 million households.  Based on the 2010, two-persons-per-apartment demographics of Manhattan,  where virtually everyone is an apartment dweller, the new HUD policy probably impacts at least 2.4 million people – approximately as many women, men and children as live in Chicago, Kiev or Rome.

The agency's departure from its long-established pro-tenant policies was revealed during a recent Network for Public Health Law web-seminar entitled “Addressing Bed Bugs through Law: Challenges and Limitations.” The network's post-webinar report cites two official HUD documents that reveal the agency's new opposition to tenant rights – rights that, in many cases, have long been recognized by law.

“In Notice H-2011-20,” says the Network report, “HUD provided guidance to owners, management agents, and tenants of HUD multifamily insured and assisted properties for bed bug infestations. HUD urged owners to develop an Integrated Pest Management Plan (IMP) and to actively engage residents in efforts to prevent bed bugs. The notice set out a timeframe for responding to a tenant’s bed bug complaint and prohibited the owner from charging a tenant to cover the cost of bed bug treatment. An owner was also prohibited from denying tenancy to a potential resident on the basis of the tenant having experienced a prior bed bug infestation.”

“Eight months later,” the report continues, “HUD issued Notice H-2012-5 to supersede H-2011-20, which eliminated the “tenants rights and responsibilities” section, including the timeframe for responding to a tenant’s complaint, the prohibition on charging tenants for bed bug treatment, and the prohibition on denying tenancy to a potential resident because of a prior bed bug problem.

“The National Multi Housing Council (NMHC), which represents owners, claims that HUD made these revisions at its urging and Congressional pressure, because the original guidance created confusion about best management practices, hamstrung the efforts of owners and property managers to prevent infestations and failed to meaningfully address the financial issues to the owner and resident related to repeat infestations. In contrast, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) says the change eliminates important tenant protections and allows landlords to shift the cost of bed bug treatment to tenants.”

Such costs, the public health law network estimates, can run as high as $1,500 to each tenant or tenant family – a sum that for lower-income people is devastating if not impossible, a potential precursor to bankruptcy, eviction and homelessness.

Meanwhile, landlord response to a bed-bug infestation near Seattle, where tenants are being forced to pay the costs of extermination, is validating NLIHC's concerns.

Equally alarming to tenants is the fact an NMHC document states landlords can now “treat resident's possessions as part of an Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM).”  This means – just as has reportedly occurred in the Seattle case – landlords can invoke pest-control rights to confiscate or force tenants to destroy cherished books, artwork, furniture, photo albums, collections of phonograph records and any number of other items that might be deemed bed-bug-infested or capable of harboring such an infestation.

Moreover, NLICH says the new notice allows owners of HUD housing to “take action to deny tenancy or remove residents for causes related to infestations” – in other words, to evict tenants at will, presumably bypassing any legal protections against unjust or retaliatory eviction.

While HUD's new anti-tenant stance has not yet been publicly acknowledged as the beginning of a campaign to require tenants to pay all pest-control costs, some health and housing professionals say privately they believe it might be just that. At the very least, they say, it's part of the ongoing national effort to minimize or abolish tenant rights.

That this is so is suggested by the implicit ALEC involvement. ALEC is an arch-conservative organization that seeks to rewrite U.S. laws at all levels – federal, state and local – to favor the ruling One Percent by imposing additional burdens and disadvantages on everyone else. And NMHC is listed as an ALEC member.

In this context, HUD's favorable stance toward NMHC – proven by the fact the lobbying effort bore fruit within eight months – is a significant revelation of the Obama Administration's internal ideology. So is the boast on the NMHC document cited above: that it took only two letters from Tea Party-identified congressmen to prompt HUD to reverse its former pro-tenant-rights stance. The letters, to Obama-appointed HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, were written by Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill) and Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio). 

Though Dold was not reelected in 2012, he is running for the office again this year. His ideology and Tea-Party connections are described here and here. Stivers' Tea-Party politics are discussed here. 

The Tea Party itself, the controlling faction within the Republican Party, is sustained by lavish funding from rich industrialists and businessmen,  as well as the tobacco industry. But the Tea Party's constituency spans the entire hard-right spectrum, ranging from Wall Street and Big Business to Christian theocrats and white supremacists – and now apparently to the Obama Administration's inner circle as well.

***

Additional Notes:

(1)-HUD's policy-reversal is likely to (further) devastate Democratic Party chances in the November elections. Firstly, the afflicted people, mostly lower-income and/or minority urbanites who are a substantial demographic in progressive politics, are now (again) told – this time with unmistakable ferocity – the Democrats have turned against them and no longer want their votes. Secondly, local Democratic Party politicians who have remained faithful to the humanitarian principles of the New Deal are now (again) besmirched by association with by a national party that is increasingly right-wing and thus increasingly indistinguishable from its Republican counterpart. Voter turnout will suffer, and the flight of alienated voters to third parties will (again) be accelerated. Indeed, it seems Obama and his national Democratic apparatus are determined to facilitate Republican victory in the U.S. Senate, reinforce Republican domination of the House and foster Republican triumph at state and local levels as well.

(2)-A HUD policy-reversal of this magnitude – particularly given its dire implications for the fall congressional elections – would have required upper-echelon White House staff approval, if not approval by the president himself. Therefore it is not unfair to regard it as yet another example of the president's obviously premeditated shape-shift from Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer, and his historically unprecedented Big Lie of “change we can believe in.”

(3)-The new HUD policy and its context – landlords seizing upon the bed-bug plague to nullify tenants' rights – is a classic example of shock-doctrine capitalism in action. Quoth Naomi Klein: “That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster...puts the entire population into a state of collective shock...Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.” (The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism; Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company: 2007; pg. 17.) It's precisely how Shock-Doctrine Obama,  HUD and the landlords are using the shock of the bed-bug plague to force tenants to give up their right to landlord-provided pest control. Which of course makes the HUD properties with their disempowered tenants all the more attractive for sale to real estate profiteers.

LB/18 July 2018(w/reprint from 23 March 2014)

-30-