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...

(To read the rest, go here.)