Tag Archives: Apartment

When Your Business Is Ruined By Illegal Immigrants

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On Monday, Townhall posted an article updating the situation regarding the apartments taken over by the Venezuelan gang in Aurora, Colorado. It’s not a pretty picture.

The article reports:

A Colorado landlord has agreed to sell an apartment complex because it was taken over by the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. 

According to the New York Post, landlord Zev Baumgarten had been fighting with Aurora, Colorado leadership after the city accused him of allowing Aspen Grove apartments to become a “trash-ridden, gang-infested hellhole.”

…Now, Baumgarten’s company has now agreed to sell, lease, or find some “similar disposition” for the complex. The complex was closed in August, reportedly displacing 300 residents. His company must pay to clean up the site (via NYP):

The article concludes:

Townhall previously reported how the gang had taken over apartment complexes in Aurora, terrorizing the residents.

Despite this, Democrat Gov. Jared Polis called the anger and fear that’s arisen from this situation “imagination.”

Polis’ press office offered the “snarky” statement in response to the New York Post’s reporting on the issue. 

“The Governor has already let the Mayor know that the State is ready to support the local police department with assistance from state troopers and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation if needed,” Shelby Wieman, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor, told The Post.

“But, according to police intelligence this purported invasion is largely a feature of Danielle Jurinsky’s imagination,” Wieman added. Jurinsky is a member of the Aurora City Council and has sounded the alarm on the illegal immigration crisis impacting the community. 

Why are we expecting people who broke the law to come into America to respect the laws of our country once they get here?

President Biden’s Plan For Inflation

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about one way the Biden administration plans to fight inflation. It’s a plan guaranteed to be rife with unintended consequences.

The article reports:

Enough about Joe Biden’s mindless nastiness. I’ll take my cue from Donald Trump and Biden himself and focus on policy this morning.

Specifically, let’s talk about Joe Biden’s mindless and nasty demagoguery on economic policies. Faced with the electoral consequences of his corrosive inflationary wave, especially in shelter costs, Biden has to come up with some promised policy solution. And that is … federal rent control:

According to the Associated Press:

President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords as he tries to show he’s doing something about the high cost of housing, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The proposal, to be announced while the president visits Nevada on Tuesday, is being championed by Biden in the middle of a tense presidential campaign and a time when housing costs have been a major driver of overall inflation.

Hasn’t this man ever studied economics?

Housing costs are a major driver of overall inflation. That is true, but let’s examine why. Interest rates are double what they were under President Trump. According to U.S. News, the interest rate on November 19, 2020, for a 30-year mortgage was 2.72 percent. A loan of $250,000 would be paid back at the rate of $1,016.63 per month. On May 16, 2024, the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage is 7.02 percent. That loan would be paid back at a rate of $1,666.62 per month. The cost of the actual house you would be financing has also increased significantly in the past four years. So exactly what would be the result of federal rent control? First of all, find rent control in the U.S. Constitution. It’s not there. The 10th Amendment does not include rent control.

In January 2020, The Manhattan Institute posted an article about rent control.

Here are some highlights from the article:

Rent Control Makes It Harder to Find an Apartment

    • Cities that implement rent control see substantial declines in the availability of rental housing.
    • Locking people in to existing rental units leaves many renters in apartments much larger or much smaller than they would prefer.
    • In some cities, waitlists for rent-controlled housing are decades-long.

Rent Control Does Not Increase Diversity

    • Rent control benefits incumbent tenants at the expense of migrants hoping to relocate to a city. In New York City, white tenants have disproportionately benefited relative to black or Hispanic tenants, and landlords give preference to older and childless households.
    • Many of rent control’s benefits typically flow to higher-income households even as rent control drives up rents for everyone else.

Rent Control Degrades the Quality of Its Beneficiaries’ Housing

    • Rent control reduces investment in a property’s quality and causes a city’s housing stock to decay.
    • By suppressing property values, rent control also reduces tax revenue to municipalities, hindering their ability to provide essential services.

It will not decrease inflation, but it will increase government control.

I Totally Understand This Story

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English: Wolf spider Deutsch: Wolfspinne Русск...

English: Wolf spider Deutsch: Wolfspinne Русский: Паук волк (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday Breitbart reported that a Redding, California, apartment resident recently killed a wolf spider. The story does not seem particularly newsworthy until you look at the details.

The article reports:

The Redding Record Searchlight reports that the unidentified resident of the Redding apartment complex tried to kill a wolf spider with a torch lighter but ended up setting fire to a mattress.

Fire officials say the fire spread from the mattress to several flags and curtains inside the man’s bedroom. It also torched a bedroom closet but did not spread to any other apartments in the complex.

KMOV reports that other residents unsuccessfully attempted to extinguish the fire with a garden hose before the fire department came.

Firefighters put out the blaze and no injuries were reported. However, the fire caused $11,000 in damage to the resident’s apartment and forced residents to find another place to live after fire officials deemed the apartment “uninhabitable.”

The Redding Fire Department posted a friendly reminder to Facebook warning those trying to kill spiders not to use fire to exterminate them.

I can totally relate to this story and I believe that I have family members who can also relate. Enough said.

Losing Your Rights In Your Own Home

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Fox News posted an article in late June (I missed it. Sorry) about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s plan to end smoking in apartments. That’s right, if you are renting an apartment in New York City, you would not be allowed to smoke in your apartment.

The article reports:

The mayor’s administration is planning to pay four health-advocacy groups $9,000 apiece to press landlords and developers to prohibit lighting up in their apartment complexes so neighboring tenants don’t breathe in secondhand smoke, according to the New York Post. The city has already banned smoking in bars and restaurants, workplaces, sports venues and parks, but has not moved against smokers who practice their habit in the privacy of their own homes.

City health officials emphasized the initiative is voluntary — at least for now.

“Everyone benefits from smoke-free housing. Residents enjoy breathing cleaner, healthier air in their homes . . . while owners see reductions in property damage and turnover costs,” a Health Department spokesman said.

Dozens of buildings containing hundreds of apartments have already kicked the habit, according to the Health Department. The de Blasio administration is actually accelerating an initiative started at the tail end of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure.

I need to make a few things clear here. I am a non-smoker–I never smoked. I grew up in a blue haze in a house with two heavy smokers (both of whom died as a result of smoking-related illnesses). I really hate the smell of cigarettes and love the fact that I no longer have to smell cigarette smoke in restaurants. However, smokers have rights, too. If someone wants to smoke in the privacy of their own apartment, it bothers me that a law could be passed that would make that a crime. I thought Republicans were the people always being accused of wanting to make laws about what people did behind closed doors.

I agree with the idea that if a landlord wants to make his apartments smoke-free, he should be allowed to do so. Hotels have smoke-free rooms. The rooms stay cleaner, and it cuts down on the fire hazard of someone falling asleep while smoking. However, this should be the choice of the individual landlord–not the city government.

Meanwhile, many states are moving to legalize marijuana as they limit the rights of tobacco smokers. It just doesn’t make any sense.