The Nation's Financial Condition

[SCLaxAttack]

Thank you for your service.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of- ... n-shortage

[MDlaxfan76]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of- ... n-shortage

great article.

More states should be doing this!...and it would make sense to have federal support. Wondering whether infrastructure act included funds for this sort of thing.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of- ... n-shortage

great article.

More states should be doing this!...and it would make sense to have federal support. Wondering whether infrastructure act included funds for this sort of thing.

My old admin assistant has two sons. They were not really interested in college. I suggest that they pursue trades. One became a plumber and the other a metal worker. We worked with clients to get them apprenticeships and ultimately jobs. There are a number of apprenticeship programs in CT and there is real demand. Government contracting drives a significant need. College isn’t for everyone but everyone pretty much needs something beyond a HS diploma.

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of- ... n-shortage

great article.

More states should be doing this!...and it would make sense to have federal support. Wondering whether infrastructure act included funds for this sort of thing.

My old admin assistant has two sons. They were not really interested in college. I suggest that they pursue trades. One became a plumber and the other a metal worker. We worked with clients to get them apprenticeships and ultimately jobs. There are a number of apprenticeship programs in CT and there is real demand. Government contracting drives a significant need. College isn’t for everyone but everyone pretty much needs something beyond a HS diploma.

http://www.ibew.org/Who-We-Are

[Brooklyn]

Job growth totals 253,000 in April, beating expectations even as the U.S. economy slows


https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/05/jobs-re ... april.html



Job growth fared better than expected in April despite bank turmoil and a decelerating economy, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for the month, beating Wall Street estimates for growth of 180,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969. A more encompassing number that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons edged lower to 6.6%. On an annual basis, wages increased 4.4%, higher than the expectation for a 4.2% gain.



Thank you Mr Biden!

[runrussellrun]

r's finally getting real about waste


https://taskandpurpose.com/news/veteran ... t-ceiling/


Speaker McCarthy’s plan to raise the debt ceiling would cut the VA’s budget by 22% next fiscal year, Young said. That would force the Veterans Health Administration to eliminate 81,000 jobs, meaning that veterans would be unable to make appointments for wellness visits, cancer screenings, mental health services, substance abuse disorder treatment, and other healthcare services, according to Young. These cuts would translate into 30 million fewer veteran outpatient visits.

The VA has also issued a statement saying that cutting the department’s budget by 22% would limit the VA’s ability to provide telehealth services by reducing funding for the necessary information technology and support.

Speaker McCarthy’s proposal to raise the debt ceiling would also force the Veterans Benefits Administration to cut its staff by more than 6,000 people, and that would worsen the wait time for benefits by adding an estimated 134,000 claims to the disability claims backlog, the VA’s statement says. That is 22 case/claims, per person. Umm....ok

Who is "Young", according to ?

...raise the debt ceiling.... (as in, INCREASE??

but, this "YOUNG" person claims, even tho the budget will INCREASE, overall.....certainly the VA budget , will...umm...drop ?

During the "lockdowns" of covid, how many (above/italics) of those VA "services" were a thing ? exactly

[runrussellrun]

Thank you for your service.

Wonder if Hunter B. mounted his "honorable discharge" and hangs it on the wall ? crack cocaine and guns.......thank you for your service, indeed.

...that cool $2 billion, unobligated from yet another all in TAATS vote (tRumps CARES and Bidens trillion$ in welfare )....can cover the nut?

Or, that monies can go to "future" pandemic issues. THIS time........we will make sure a Federal judge doesn't blow up our 75 year requests to withhold and documentation regarding our MANDATORY, new drug, thing.

take it....and STFUP about it......

[PizzaSnake]

r's finally getting real about waste


https://taskandpurpose.com/news/veteran ... t-ceiling/


Speaker McCarthy’s plan to raise the debt ceiling would cut the VA’s budget by 22% next fiscal year, Young said. That would force the Veterans Health Administration to eliminate 81,000 jobs, meaning that veterans would be unable to make appointments for wellness visits, cancer screenings, mental health services, substance abuse disorder treatment, and other healthcare services, according to Young. These cuts would translate into 30 million fewer veteran outpatient visits.

The VA has also issued a statement saying that cutting the department’s budget by 22% would limit the VA’s ability to provide telehealth services by reducing funding for the necessary information technology and support.

Speaker McCarthy’s proposal to raise the debt ceiling would also force the Veterans Benefits Administration to cut its staff by more than 6,000 people, and that would worsen the wait time for benefits by adding an estimated 134,000 claims to the disability claims backlog, the VA’s statement says. That is 22 case/claims, per person. Umm....ok

Who is "Young", according to ?

...raise the debt ceiling.... (as in, INCREASE??

but, this "YOUNG" person claims, even tho the budget will INCREASE, overall.....certainly the VA budget , will...umm...drop ?

During the "lockdowns" of covid, how many (above/italics) of those VA "services" were a thing ? exactly

22 case/claims

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”

[SCLaxAttack]

Thank you for your service.

Wonder if Hunter B. mounted his "honorable discharge" and hangs it on the wall ? crack cocaine and guns.......thank you for your service, indeed.

...that cool $2 billion, unobligated from yet another all in TAATS vote (tRumps CARES and Bidens trillion$ in welfare )....can cover the nut?

Or, that monies can go to "future" pandemic issues. THIS time........we will make sure a Federal judge doesn't blow up our 75 year requests to withhold and documentation regarding our MANDATORY, new drug, thing.

take it....and STFUP about it......

A comment made because of expected attempts to reduce the VA's budget, and somehow you try to move it to Hunter Biden. No wait! Welfare. No wait! Pandemics. No wait! Drug companies.

Your neck must be killing you, what with your head on a swivel.

Mr. Contrarian, indeed.

[Farfromgeneva]

On bank funding from FRBNY

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkf ... ing-cycle/

They’re arguing it was mainly the regional/super regionals that got hit on deposits rather than smaller or the largest banks which some including myself had intuited previously. Community banks live and die off “spread” between cost of money and loan yields, very little fee income or other ways to make money so they are more conservative (and dumb) on lending/credit extension and hold retail core local deposits more closely than transactional larger banks. They also have more solvency issues when the cost of money skyrockets compares with the coupons on the loans they have on their books especially term lending (CRE and equipment mostly) because they’re only fee income arena have been mortgage, SBA lending and wealth Mgt (local financial advisors who throw you in mutual funds basically in a wrap account). Larger banks that have transactional fee income will be more likely to fund loans with wholesale or at the market prices funding because they have more ways to generate fees from BTB swaps, IBanking, loan syndication and sales etc. They also take far less Asset/Liability risk in general.

Bank Funding during the Current Monetary Policy Tightening Cycle

Stephan Luck, Matthew Plosser, and Josh Younger

decorative photo: image of the outside of a silicon valley bank building.
Recent events have highlighted the importance of understanding the distribution and composition of funding across banks. Market participants have been paying particular attention to the overall decline of deposit funding in the U.S. banking system as well as the reallocation of deposits within the banking sector. In this post, we describe changes in bank funding structure since the onset of monetary policy tightening, with a particular focus on developments through March 2023.

Trends in Aggregate Deposits and Borrowings

We begin by describing the cumulative change in bank deposit funding and other sources of bank borrowing since the start of monetary policy tightening in March 2022. Aggregated data on commercial bank balance sheets is provided by the Federal Reserve to the public on a weekly basis in the H.8 release—Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States. The “deposit” line-item pools all deposit types irrespective of maturity and counterparty. “Borrowing” pools various sources of bank wholesale funding, such as advances from Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs), other types of wholesale borrowings in the private market, and credit extended by the Federal Reserve.

Banks Have Replaced Deposit Funding with Other Borrowing


Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States – H.8.
The chart above reveals that deposit funding gradually declined by around $500 billion over the year ending in early March 2023 as the fed funds target rate rose. The initial decline is at least in part due to the fact that banks increase deposit rates more slowly than the federal funds rate, making deposits relatively unattractive for some depositors, as discussed in prior posts. Significant deposit inflows during the COVID period likely exacerbated this effect. Over the few weeks prior to the FDIC receivership announcements on March 10 and 12, the banking sector lost another approximately $450 billion. Throughout, the banking sector has offset the reduction in deposit funding with an increase in other forms of borrowing which has increased by $800 billion since the start of the tightening.

Deposit Flows Across the Bank Size Distribution

To explore the heterogeneity underlying the aggregate trends, we leverage data collected in form FR 2644, the microdata used to construct the aggregates observed in the H.8 release. The data are an unbalanced panel that consists of a random stratified sample of roughly 850 banks and participation is voluntary. We segment the data into more granular cohorts than the public H.8 release: small banks (less than $5 billion in total domestic assets), regionals ($5 to $50 billion), super-regionals ($50 to $250 billion), and large banks (greater than $250 billion).

The right panel of the chart below summarizes the cumulative change in deposit funding by bank size category since the start of the tightening cycle through early March 2023 and then through the end of March. Until early March 2023, the decline in deposit funding lined up with bank size, consistent with the concentration of deposits in larger banks. Small banks lost no deposit funding prior to the events of late March. In terms of percentage decline, the outflows were roughly equal for regional, super-regional, and large banks at around 4 percent of total deposit funding.

Deposits Flowed from Super-Regional Banks to Large Banks following the Run on Silicon Valley Bank


Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, H.8 microdata.
Notes: Banks are categorized by the size of their domestic assets: small banks—less than $5 billion; regional banks—$5 to $50 billion; super-regional banks—$50 to $250 billion; large banks—greater than $250 billion.
The blue bar in the left panel shows that the pattern changes following the run on SVB. The additional outflow is entirely concentrated in the segment of super-regional banks. In fact, most other size categories experience deposit inflows. The right panel illustrates that outflows at super-regionals begin immediately after the failure of SVB and are mirrored by deposit inflows at large banks in the second week of March 2022. Further, while deposit funding remains at a lower level throughout March for super-regional banks, the initially large inflows mostly reverse by the end of March. Notably, banks with less than $100 billion in assets were relatively unaffected.

We study the destination of funds flowing out of super-regional banks using Fedwire data, which capture depository institutions as well as a number of other participants (for example, FHLBs, domestic financial market utilities, and the U.S. Treasury). The chart below shows significant net cash transfers from super-regionals to large banks over a roughly three-day period in March. Altogether, the patterns indicate that some depositors initially shift their holdings to larger banks in the immediate aftermath of the SVB receivership announcement, but invest outside of the banking system soon thereafter, thus contributing to the aggregate outflow of deposits in March.

Net Payments by Super-Regional Banks to Other Institutions, Based on Fedwire Funds Data


Sources: Federal Reserve Financial Services; authors’ calculations.
Notes: “Other” includes DFMUs, GSEs, the Treasury General Account, and other accounts held by non-depository institutions. Banks are categorized by the size of their domestic assets: small and regional banks—less than $50 billion; large banks—greater than $250 billion.
A Search for Precautionary Liquidity

Next, we investigate how banks raise funding to replace deposits that are leaving the banking system. We first combine consolidated commercial bank balance sheet data with the Fed’s H.4.1 release (Factors Affecting Reserve Balances), which, among other items, discloses extensions of credit by Reserve banks. Prior to the failure of SVB, new borrowing did not fully offset deposit runoff, consistent with banks having excess funding following the deposit inflows experienced during COVID. However, during the most acute phase of banking stress in mid-March, other borrowings exceeded reductions in deposit balances, suggesting significant and widespread demand for precautionary liquidity. A substantial amount of liquidity was provided by the private markets, likely via the FHLB system, but primary credit and the Bank Term Funding Program (both summarized as Federal Reserve credit) were equally important.

Deposit Runoff versus Other Borrowings for Domestically Chartered Commercial Banks in the U.S.
Change since January 4, 2023


Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, H.4.1 and H.8
In the chart below, we show that prior to March, large banks increased borrowing the most, which is in line with deposit outflows being strongest for larger banks before March 2023. During March 2023, both super-regional and large banks increase their borrowings, with most increases being centered in the super-regional banks that faced the largest deposit outflows. Note, however, that not all size categories face deposit outflows but that all except the small banks increase their other borrowings. This pattern suggests demand for precautionary liquidity buffers across the banking system, not just among the most affected institutions.

Borrowings before and after the Failure of SVB


Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FR 2644.
Notes: Banks are categorized by the size of their domestic assets: small banks—less than $5 billion; regional banks—$5 to $50 billion; super-regional banks—$50 to $250 billion; large banks—greater than $250 billion.
Wrapping Up

We show that the banking system has seen a considerable decline in deposit funding since the start of the current monetary policy tightening cycle in March 2022. The speed of deposit outflows increased during March 2023, following the run on SVB, with the most acute outflows concentrated in a relatively narrow segment of the banking system, super-regional banks (those with $50 to $250 billion in total assets). Notably, deposit funding amongst the cohort often referred to as community and smaller regional banks (that is, institutions with less than $50 billion in assets) were relatively stable by comparison. Large banks (those with more than $250 billion in assets), which had been subject to the largest deposit outflows before March 2023, received deposit inflows throughout March 2023. Throughout, banks were able to replace deposit outflows by making use of alternative funding sources.

[OCanada]

Thank you for your service.

Wonder if Hunter B. mounted his "honorable discharge" and hangs it on the wall ? crack cocaine and guns.......thank you for your service, indeed.

...that cool $2 billion, unobligated from yet another all in TAATS vote (tRumps CARES and Bidens trillion$ in welfare )....can cover the nut?

Or, that monies can go to "future" pandemic issues. THIS time........we will make sure a Federal judge doesn't blow up our 75 year requests to withhold and documentation regarding our MANDATORY, new drug, thing.

take it....and STFUP about it......

A comment made because of expected attempts to reduce the VA's budget, and somehow you try to move it to Hunter Biden. No wait! Welfare. No wait! Pandemics. No wait! Drug companies.

Your neck must be killing you, what with your head on a swivel.

Mr. Contrarian, indeed.

“Thank you for your service indeed” seems likely to have been written by someone unfamilar with service or the toll it extracts. Bow many vets committed suicide lin the last 10 years? How much will services to Vets be cut undrr the GOP fake budget? The toll is sognificant esp among the special ops community.

Vet X leaves his special ops unit. Shortky after he orders a catered dinner to his house. He also hires a harpist to play throughout dinner. He leaves the table at the end and goes to another room; closes the door and a bang is heard. There are more stories of that genre than people realize. But hey let’s cut vet services we can’t afford anymore. These minds of issues are not limited to just vets either

Hunter was not a special ops guy bit clearly had issues beyond his ability to control but he is far from unique or a disgrace

[SCLaxAttack]

Thank you for your service.

Wonder if Hunter B. mounted his "honorable discharge" and hangs it on the wall ? crack cocaine and guns.......thank you for your service, indeed.

...that cool $2 billion, unobligated from yet another all in TAATS vote (tRumps CARES and Bidens trillion$ in welfare )....can cover the nut?

Or, that monies can go to "future" pandemic issues. THIS time........we will make sure a Federal judge doesn't blow up our 75 year requests to withhold and documentation regarding our MANDATORY, new drug, thing.

take it....and STFUP about it......

A comment made because of expected attempts to reduce the VA's budget, and somehow you try to move it to Hunter Biden. No wait! Welfare. No wait! Pandemics. No wait! Drug companies.

Your neck must be killing you, what with your head on a swivel.

Mr. Contrarian, indeed.

“Thank you for your service indeed” seems likely to have been written by someone unfamilar with service or the toll it extracts. Bow many vets committed suicide lin the last 10 years? How much will services to Vets be cut undrr the GOP fake budget? The toll is sognificant esp among the special ops community.

Vet X leaves his special ops unit. Shortky after he orders a catered dinner to his house. He also hires a harpist to play throughout dinner. He leaves the table at the end and goes to another room; closes the door and a bang is heard. There are more stories of that genre than people realize. But hey let’s v
vut services we can’t afford anymore. They ate not limited to just vets either

Hunter was not a doecisl ops guy bit clearkly had issues beyond hos ability to control but he is far from unique or a disgrace

I think you missed the sarcasm. Just before I posted "thank you for your service" someone posted about the GOP putting the VA on their chopping block.

In addition, don't make assumptions. My son-in-law's career army. Before moving back to FA to become first a battalion XO and then the brigade XO of the world's largest field artillery brigade, he spent six years in USASOC, and if you know anything about USA special forces suffice it to say that time wasn't in an "everyday" SF SOG or a Ranger Regiment. Next month he moves to the Joint Staff. I was fortunate that I never had to serve. My dad was a B24 tail gunner in WWII. 35 missions. DFC for kicking free an undelivered bomb through the bomb bay door so he and his crew could land back in England and not have to ditch in the North Sea. I know plenty about vets.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Interesting:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1658519929534939155

[youthathletics]

Interesting:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1658519929534939155

Wait....you are not allowed to post just the word 'interesting, that is not fair. Oh wait, you lean left, so it acceptable.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Interesting:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1658519929534939155

Wait....you are not allowed to post just the word 'interesting, that is not fair. Oh wait, you lean left, so it acceptable.

Didn’t think it needed explanation.

[Seacoaster(1)]

The Debt-Ceiling Cudgel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/opin ... -poor.html

"Seen from outside Washington, the debt ceiling battle might seem like an abstract argument between the political parties over federal spending and deficits. But for millions of low-income Americans who depend on the federal government for health care and basic nutrition, the debate is about their very lives. That’s because Republicans have singled them out, yet again, as a prime target in this year’s extortion scheme.

The bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy muscled through the House last month would impose tough new work requirements on Medicaid, food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and welfare for needy families. The demands would effectively cut off health care for 1.7 million low-income people and cut off food stamps for 275,000 people. House Republicans say that if their demands are not met, they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling, plunging the country into an unprecedented default and almost certainly creating a recession.

It’s not that there is some crisis or scandal gripping those federal programs; Republicans are making these demands simply because the debt ceiling gives them the opportunity to do so. And they are going after the same group of people their party has demonized for decades.

“I don’t think hard-working Americans should be paying for all the social services for people who could make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes,” said Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. (Mr. Gaetz’s deep concern about excessive spending didn’t stop him from requesting a $141.5 million earmark for a helicopter training hangar at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in his district.

“Couch potatoes” isn’t that far from the “welfare queen” myth conjured by Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich’s 1994 claim that a system of orphanages was necessary because low-income babies were being dropped off balconies or showing up in dumpsters. None of these slurs had any significant basis in reality, and all were intended to whip up fears among members of the white middle class that they were being played for fools by people of color who were lazily living it up on taxpayer dollars and ignoring their family responsibilities.

But these largely racist attacks, very much including the one now on the table, persistently ignore the little-mentioned fact that a vast majority of the people receiving these benefits are already working or are unable to work. In 2021, 61 percent of the 25 million people on Medicaid were working in full- or part-time jobs. The rest were retired or disabled or taking care of small children or in school. Similarly, most food-stamp recipients work, and able-bodied adults younger than 50 are required to work in order to get more than three months of benefits in three years, unless they are taking care of children.

The existing work requirements don’t get discussed by the drill sergeants who want to whip the vast army of couch potatoes into shape; they want more people to work and to work longer hours. Mr. McCarthy’s bill would require adults 50 to 55 to work at least 20 hours a week to receive food stamps, no matter that people in that age bracket often find high barriers to employment.

The bill would also require many adults 19 to 55 to work 80 hours a month to receive federally subsidized health coverage from Medicaid. (States could pick up the cost of those who are cut off, but many would not.) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, this requirement would particularly hurt low-income beneficiaries in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and seems designed as a backdoor way of undermining the expansion. Republicans couldn’t repeal the act through the front door, so they are using the leverage provided by the debt ceiling to try to achieve their ideological aim. It’s yet another illustration of why the ceiling needs to be abolished.

It’s been clear for years that these kinds of work requirements don’t actually put people back to work; they just pry people away from the benefits they need. In 2018, Arkansas became the first state to impose very similar work requirements on Medicaid, before a federal judge ended the experiment the next year. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 13 percent of Medicaid recipients there lost their health coverage — about 17,000 people — but that there was no significant change in employment.

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that it’s very difficult for the subjects of these cruel experiments to report their employment or their search for a job to the state. Many people in Arkansas didn’t know about the work requirements or didn’t understand the rules or lacked internet access, the study found. But since the goal of Republicans is cutting spending, not putting people back to work, the burdensome rules do save billions through human suffering. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the work requirements in the McCarthy bill, which the speaker said on Tuesday were a “red line” for his caucus, would save $120 billion over 10 years.

Once President Biden made the unfortunate decision to negotiate on the debt ceiling with the House hostage takers, the work requirements were on the table, and the president has not been clear about his intentions. On Sunday he told reporters that he had voted for work requirements currently in the law, apparently referring to cash welfare, and was waiting to see what the Republican proposals were. That was not exactly a comforting sign, particularly because the proposals are quite clear, though he did suggest that Medicaid changes were off the table. After progressives raised concerns, he issued a tweet on Monday condemning the harsher requirements for food benefits.

But with the default clock ticking and lives on the line, Mr. Biden needs to do more than send out a tweet. The most important thing the White House could do right now is say explicitly that using the debt ceiling as a cudgel to change federal safety net policy is unacceptable and inappropriate and will not be the subject of negotiation. Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be the only one at the table with red lines, particularly when the health of millions of people is at stake."

[cradleandshoot]

So there are 10s of thousands of illegals storming the southern border that liberal America tells us are chomping at the bit for a chance to work hard. It's a good thing they are unaware of the ingrained culture of people who believe they are entitled to suck off of the government teet. The nerve of people that expect these people to do something for the free money being thrown their way. Maybe these lazy slugs should be inspired by the stories of another generation of immigrants.

[Farfromgeneva]

The Debt-Ceiling Cudgel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/opin ... -poor.html

"Seen from outside Washington, the debt ceiling battle might seem like an abstract argument between the political parties over federal spending and deficits. But for millions of low-income Americans who depend on the federal government for health care and basic nutrition, the debate is about their very lives. That’s because Republicans have singled them out, yet again, as a prime target in this year’s extortion scheme.

The bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy muscled through the House last month would impose tough new work requirements on Medicaid, food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and welfare for needy families. The demands would effectively cut off health care for 1.7 million low-income people and cut off food stamps for 275,000 people. House Republicans say that if their demands are not met, they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling, plunging the country into an unprecedented default and almost certainly creating a recession.

It’s not that there is some crisis or scandal gripping those federal programs; Republicans are making these demands simply because the debt ceiling gives them the opportunity to do so. And they are going after the same group of people their party has demonized for decades.

“I don’t think hard-working Americans should be paying for all the social services for people who could make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes,” said Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. (Mr. Gaetz’s deep concern about excessive spending didn’t stop him from requesting a $141.5 million earmark for a helicopter training hangar at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in his district.

“Couch potatoes” isn’t that far from the “welfare queen” myth conjured by Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich’s 1994 claim that a system of orphanages was necessary because low-income babies were being dropped off balconies or showing up in dumpsters. None of these slurs had any significant basis in reality, and all were intended to whip up fears among members of the white middle class that they were being played for fools by people of color who were lazily living it up on taxpayer dollars and ignoring their family responsibilities.

But these largely racist attacks, very much including the one now on the table, persistently ignore the little-mentioned fact that a vast majority of the people receiving these benefits are already working or are unable to work. In 2021, 61 percent of the 25 million people on Medicaid were working in full- or part-time jobs. The rest were retired or disabled or taking care of small children or in school. Similarly, most food-stamp recipients work, and able-bodied adults younger than 50 are required to work in order to get more than three months of benefits in three years, unless they are taking care of children.

The existing work requirements don’t get discussed by the drill sergeants who want to whip the vast army of couch potatoes into shape; they want more people to work and to work longer hours. Mr. McCarthy’s bill would require adults 50 to 55 to work at least 20 hours a week to receive food stamps, no matter that people in that age bracket often find high barriers to employment.

The bill would also require many adults 19 to 55 to work 80 hours a month to receive federally subsidized health coverage from Medicaid. (States could pick up the cost of those who are cut off, but many would not.) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, this requirement would particularly hurt low-income beneficiaries in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and seems designed as a backdoor way of undermining the expansion. Republicans couldn’t repeal the act through the front door, so they are using the leverage provided by the debt ceiling to try to achieve their ideological aim. It’s yet another illustration of why the ceiling needs to be abolished.

It’s been clear for years that these kinds of work requirements don’t actually put people back to work; they just pry people away from the benefits they need. In 2018, Arkansas became the first state to impose very similar work requirements on Medicaid, before a federal judge ended the experiment the next year. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 13 percent of Medicaid recipients there lost their health coverage — about 17,000 people — but that there was no significant change in employment.

One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that it’s very difficult for the subjects of these cruel experiments to report their employment or their search for a job to the state. Many people in Arkansas didn’t know about the work requirements or didn’t understand the rules or lacked internet access, the study found. But since the goal of Republicans is cutting spending, not putting people back to work, the burdensome rules do save billions through human suffering. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the work requirements in the McCarthy bill, which the speaker said on Tuesday were a “red line” for his caucus, would save $120 billion over 10 years.

Once President Biden made the unfortunate decision to negotiate on the debt ceiling with the House hostage takers, the work requirements were on the table, and the president has not been clear about his intentions. On Sunday he told reporters that he had voted for work requirements currently in the law, apparently referring to cash welfare, and was waiting to see what the Republican proposals were. That was not exactly a comforting sign, particularly because the proposals are quite clear, though he did suggest that Medicaid changes were off the table. After progressives raised concerns, he issued a tweet on Monday condemning the harsher requirements for food benefits.

But with the default clock ticking and lives on the line, Mr. Biden needs to do more than send out a tweet. The most important thing the White House could do right now is say explicitly that using the debt ceiling as a cudgel to change federal safety net policy is unacceptable and inappropriate and will not be the subject of negotiation. Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be the only one at the table with red lines, particularly when the health of millions of people is at stake."

The funniest thing is when the daddy’s boy idiot in FL once levels a charge that I must not work hard because I post at 6am and 11pm never understood that this is precisely the pattern of someone who does work a lot of hours…that’s the person accusing others of not working hard. Mentally deficient and morally bankrupt.

Ironically it’s the day posting that’s time suck but easy on a phone to fire off ten posts in ten min for those unfamiliar with modern life.

[Farfromgeneva]

The Puzzling Case Of NYC's Vacant Apartments Exposes The Divides At The Heart Of The Housing Crisis

When New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a new program last month that would give $10M of taxpayer money to apartment owners to fund repairs of run-down, vacant rent-stabilized units, it wouldn’t seem to be the type of news that would elicit a barbed response from landlord groups.

But that is how deep the fault lines go in the increasingly bitter debate over housing in the United States’ largest city, where there are major gaps in understanding the cause of the ongoing crisis — with record levels of homelessness and rents at an all-time high — and figuring out who or what is to blame.

Placeholder
Landlord groups say New York state law has prevented owners from making repairs on more than 20,000 affordable NYC apartments, keeping them vacant and off the market.

Adams called for applications for landlords who would get $25K to fund repairs at 400 “distressed rent-stabilized homes” that are vacant and unavailable for rent. The Unlocking Doors program would “focus on the small number of rent-stabilized apartments that have been chronically vacant and need significant repairs to become safe and habitable,” according to the mayor’s announcement.

Landlord industry groups claim the number of apartments that fit that description is closer to 20,000, and they called the Unlocking Doors program “completely unrealistic.”

An Adams spokesperson told Bisnow there is “disagreement” over how many chronically vacant units there actually are in the city, and the administration hopes to use the applications for the program to understand the truth.

That disagreement cuts across tenant advocates, residents, small-property owners, powerful real estate lobbyists and city and state lawmakers. Some say the problem runs into the tens of thousands. Others say it is more likely closer to hundreds. Tenant advocates claim landlords are deliberately keeping units off the market in order to force changes in the existing laws, a practice they have deemed “warehousing.”

Many in real estate bristle at the term, claiming the state’s rent reform laws passed in 2019 have effectively rendered anything beyond basic repairs a money-losing enterprise. But whether they use it or not, “warehousing” has become emblematic of the bitterness and ideological differences in the battle over New York housing policies.

“With incomplete data from multiple sources on the different drivers of vacancies, interest groups are free to pick out whatever number best serves their argument,” Mark Willis, a senior policy fellow at New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, said in an email. "What we need now is the collection of more detailed data on why units are vacant, e.g., is the unit vacant because of normal turnover or are the vacant units market rate unit where re-renting during a temporary fall in demand would leave the owner with a unit with a lower preferential rent."

‘You Can’t Just Put Paint On It’

For the last 17 years, Ann Korchak has been helping her mother-in-law run two 10-unit apartment buildings her husband’s family owns on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In 2021, a tenant who she said had lived in one of the stabilized apartments for more than 50 years died, leaving her with an empty apartment in need of extensive repairs. The total costs of those renovations, she said, would run between $206K and $290K because of the need for lead paint remediation, fixing the floors and ceilings, and electrical and plumbing work.

Placeholder
Courtesy of CHIP

This Bronx apartment is an example of a rent-stabilized unit that landlord group CHIP says is vacant because the landlord can't raise rents enough to afford the needed repairs.

The legal rent for the apartment, she said, is just over $1,100, and by her calculations, she could only raise the rent by less than $90 in order to pass on the costs.

“You can't go to a bank and say, ‘Lend me money. I want to do this project, my return on investment is $87,’” she said. “They’d just laugh at you. And it’s not just slapping a coat of paint on, which is the kind of comment I hear on Twitter. ‘Just put some paint on it.’ You can't. You can't just put paint on it.”

Korchak, who is the board president of advocacy group Small Property Owners of New York, said the unit is sitting empty and will remain so for the foreseeable future, although she would far prefer to be able to fix it up and rent it out.

“We are able to get by without that rent,” she said. “I couldn't if we had two or three empty ones. They'd have to sell. This is a third generation running the properties. My husband and his brothers don't want to be the ones that have to close up shop.”

Had this apartment become vacant before June 2019, it would have been a different story. Sweeping rent reform laws passed that year drastically changed laws around how landlords could pass on the cost of renovating units when they emptied out. Before the reform, landlords were allowed to permanently increase rent by claiming Individual Apartment Improvements, known as IAIs, with no spending cap.

That limitless cap, which wasn’t overseen by any state agency, could be passed on over three to five years, depending on the size of the building. But the 2019 laws capped the amount landlords could raise rents after an IAI at $15K over a 15-year period.

Further, IAIs no longer increase the legal rent but now “burn off” after 30 years. The result has been catastrophic for landlords who own these sorts of properties, industry groups say, drawing a direct line between their passage and a rise in the number of units off the market.

“We would agree that there were some bad actors who were participating in unfair practices with the IAI programs, and we argue that the best way to do that would be to fix the IAI program,” Community Housing Improvement Program Executive Director Jay Martin said in an interview. “It was virtually eliminated by capping it down to $15K. That was the means of what units were being renovated and put back online before, which virtually stopped after 2019.”

Placeholder
Courtesy of Community Housing Improvement Program

Jay Martin, executive director of Community Housing Improvement Program

CHIP estimates that since 2019, some 20,000 to 30,000 apartments have become available but are still vacant because their owners don't have the means to renovate.

It defines these units as apartments renting for $1K or less per month that have been occupied for three decades or more and need at least $100K or more of renovation to bring them to a rentable state.

Martin said CHIP reached that 20,000 to 30,000 estimate in two ways. First, its staff looked at historical data of the city's housing vacancy survey, which is run every three years to establish if there is a rent emergency to justify keeping apartments stabilized. Based on that survey data, around 500 stabilized units come off 30-year occupancy in New York every month he said.

From there, CHIP concluded that tens of thousands of apartments, rented for decades, would have become vacant since 2019 and not been re-rented. CHIP surveyed its members, too, and according to the group, the responses line up to support the conclusion.

CHIP has video of around 150 apartments that are in this condition, but that is “scratching the surface,” CHIP spokesperson Michael Johnson said.

What is not known is if the landlords are telling the truth that the condition of the apartments is truly beyond a simple repair and not fixable within the $15K cap. Johnson said there is plenty of public data to back up the landlords’ word, like the tens of billions it is estimated that working through NYCHA’s maintenance backlog would cost.

The issues at those buildings, especially around stringent lead paint remediation, aren't dissimilar from the chronically vacant rent-stabilized units. Martin said asking landlords to rent out these units without doing expensive repairs would amount to endorsing a safety hazard.

“There are owners out there that I guarantee are renting apartments right now that are in violation of lead laws, electric efficiency standards, asbestos abatement laws, because they're not listening to me and our organization,” Martin said. “They're listening to the lawmakers who are telling them, ‘It doesn't matter. Get it back out on the market as cheap as you possibly can.’” ​​

CHIP’s claims are far from widely accepted. Adams’ press release described the number of units that fall into this category as “small.”

Public data on the number of apartments that are chronically vacant or warehoused has been written, scrubbed out and rewritten a number of times over the last 18 months, with each version showing a different picture. But it is clear that there are tens of thousands of apartments in the city with no one living in them. How many tens of thousands and the reasons for their vacancy are at the crux of the dispute.

Last year, news that 61,000 rent-stabilized units were registered by landlords with the state as vacant in April sparked fury among tenant advocates, who accused the city’s landlords of holding those units "for ransom."

New York City’s data, collected every three years by the Census Bureau, returned an even more startling number — some 88,830 rent-stabilized apartments were vacant in 2021, according to Department of Housing Preservation and Development data reported in October by local publication The City. That figure amounted to about 1 in 10 rent-stabilized apartments, and HPD Chief Research Officer Lyz Gaumer told The City that while nearly 43,000 units were deemed “unavailable,” some tens of thousands of the units had been found as “available for rent.” HPD representatives told the publication that city data is more accurate than the state's.

But the following month, the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, released data for 2022 showing that by its count, vacant rent-stabilized homes had dropped to a total of nearly 37,000, in line with 2019 numbers.

State representatives told City Limits the 2021 numbers were a “pandemic-height outlier.” Of the apartments tallied by the state, about 10% — some 3,800 — have been registered as vacant every year since 2019, according to HCR data. A total of 3,200 were registered as vacant every year since 2020, but most were listed as empty for the first time this year, the state said.

An HCR spokesperson told Bisnow that the number of vacant units in its most recent survey is in line with historical norms.

Judith Goldiner, the attorney in charge of Legal Aid’s Civil reform unit, said there is no evidence that suggests there is an abnormally large number of apartments sitting vacant because the 2019 rent laws now prevent them from making needed repairs

“There is not great data out there, I'd be the first one to say, but the data that we've seen does not reflect that claim,” she said. “There are certainly, I believe, some landlords who are holding apartments in the hope that a contiguous apartment will become vacant, but it's not clear to me that it's a widespread problem.”

Placeholder
Bisnow/Miriam Hall

Legal Aid's Judith Goldiner

She was pointing to a loophole in the 2019 laws, which allows a building owner to combine adjacent apartments into one unit and remove it from the rent stabilization roll. The practice, often termed "Frankensteining," is reportedly taking place at buildings around Manhattan, although data on its frequency is even harder to come by.

New York state Sen. Brian Kavanagh, a Democrat representing Lower Manhattan and the chair of the Senate Committee on Housing, said he is working to close the Frankensteining loophole but agreed with Goldiner that landlords are inflating vacancy numbers to push their cause.

“I am committed to finding the solution for the relatively modest number of apartments that really need very significant amounts of capital in order to keep them, to make sure they're habitable and they meet the standards,” he said. “It does not require a major retooling of the rent law, and property owners who talk about this are talking about it because they want to undo the work we did in 2019, and that's not going to happen.”

He said he thinks there are hundreds, not tens of thousands, of apartments that are derelict and in need of repair — some of which he says he has seen with his own eyes.

“It is certainly not on the order of tens of thousands of units that sometimes the advocates both for property owners and tenants say, because we have data,” he said. “The data does not support that.”

While Kavanagh said a discussion on indexing IAIs to inflation would be worthwhile, he said he wouldn’t consider any form of “radical” change to the laws.

“[Rent reform] has done what it was supposed to do, which was to stabilize the rent-stabilized housing stock and eliminate the loopholes,” he said. “There were widespread assertions that the entire rental real estate market was going to be bankrupted, and the only folks that I'm aware of who went bankrupt were severely overleveraged.”

'Misinformation' And 'Moral Outrage'

While some lawmakers have dismissed warehousing of chronically vacant units as a nonissue, others are pushing to find solutions — although those depend on what they think is to blame for an untenable situation.

At the city level, Council Members Carlina Rivera, Gale Brewer and others have introduced bills that would require the yearly registration of vacant apartments, including rent-stabilized ones. Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who runs the state Assembly’s Housing Committee, has introduced a bill that would impose a fee on landlords who have residential dwelling units vacant for an “extended period of time.”

A more landlord-friendly measure aimed at the issue has also been introduced at the state level.

Sen. Leroy Comrie and Assembly Member Kenny Burgos introduced a bill last week that would allow landlords to raise rents on any unit that has been vacated by a tenant who lived there for 10 years or more to a level “agreed to by the owner and first tenant after such restoration.”

Tenant advocates immediately got to work pushing back against it, claiming they had gotten some legislators to withdraw their sponsorship, The Real Deal reported.

In a statement Wednesday, Martin said the group is “happy that some elected officials are taking this issue seriously” but accused some organizations of “spreading misinformation” and “falsehoods.”

Jodie Leidecker — an organizer at Cooper Square Committee, which was formed to oppose Robert Moses’ slum clearance — said in the last two years, she has helped arrange multiple protests outside buildings where she believes landlords are keeping units vacant they could readily fix up and lease out.

She said she is working with city lawmakers on proposed legislation that would "allow tenants to be able to call 311 and trigger an inspection of these empty units that are causing problems."

“What choice do people have but to go out on the streets and rally and push their elected officials to do more to support them?" she said. "We're seeing almost like a repeat of what's happened in history. People are being pushed to the brink.”

Edward Ratliff, who lives on East 26th Street, said his landlord held apartments off the market for renovations in order to combine them. He said he heard the argument that landlords keep apartments vacant because of the cost of renovations, and he doesn’t buy it.

“Well, if there are between 30,000 and 80,000 warehoused regulated apartments, if you need money, why don't you rent them out?” he said. “These owners of rent-regulation buildings act like they’re singer-songwriters who are having a hard time making a living. If they think real estate is such a bad investment, they should get a real job.”

Adams' Unlocking Doors program, which aims to get more apartments back on the market, opens for applications in the summer. The expectation is that it will soon be clear what the response is, shedding light on just how many apartments need work.

The issue of vacant apartments, however, is just one piece of the broader issue of housing that pits the basic need for shelter against the right to own property.

While Kavanagh, one of the driving forces behind the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, argues the reforms did their job in halting the flow of stabilized units into the free market, there is no doubt the debate of housing is more fractious than ever before.

All of these debates are raging while rents have continued to climb, hitting new records across New York City last month while the number of people living and dying on the city's streets is also at all-time highs.

More than ever, the crisis has become a story of two sides — housing advocates on one and the landlords on the other, both accusing their opponents of misrepresenting facts and manipulating data and anecdotes to build a narrative for their case.

The gap between each side is widening. This month, the Rent Guidelines Board provided preliminary increases of 2% and 5% on one-year leases in rent-stabilized units and between 4% and 7% on two-year leases – which would amount to the biggest hike in a decade. Protesters and progressive council members reportedly stormed the stage, chanting “Rent rollback! Rent rollback!” while Mayor Eric Adams released a statement describing a 7% increase as clearly “beyond what renters can afford.”

Landlords of rent-stabilized units, whose buildings’ average net operating income dropped nearly 14% between 2016 and 2021, according to the RGB, claimed the proposed hikes wouldn’t even come close to covering costs.

Last week, a group of landlords, including CHIP, officially took the rent reform laws to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that they are unconstitutional because of the government burden they put on private property. Housing advocates argue removing stabilization would devastate the city and exacerbate the homelessness crisis.

The soaring costs and the fiery political environment have set a backdrop for something like housing vacancy to become even more divisive.

“It is a moral outrage in a time like this to be holding these apartments off the market,” Leidecker, the tenant organizer, said.

But what is moral isn’t relevant, CHIP’s Martin said.

“This isn't a question of morals, this is a question of, ‘This is a business,’” he said.