Discussion: Maryland Lawmaker Sponsors 'Jared Kushner Act' To Limit Tenant Arrests

Great move, Mr. Ali!

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Love it! Decriminalize poverty.

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Well as a person who’s wife, brother in law and sisters in law inherited rental property, $5000 could be a shit load of money especially if the property is old and needs constant upkeep and is already in the hole from previous repair. I can appreciate people being poor and having a hard time paying rent, but some of us landlords ain’t got enough money to be able maintain a place to let people stay for free. If it weren’t for the fact that this rental property is supposed to provide money for my wife’s stepmother we all be ready to sell the property and be done with the constant drain it’s been financially and mentally. A lot of renters suck!

You can be jailed for, essentially, owing money? WTF?!?

It’s quaint that Taylor would absolve the Full Metal Jackass of any participation yet Westiminster is a subsidiary of Kushner Companies. To think Kushner Cos. was unaware of these strong-arm tactics is pretty rich. And then use the “they all do it” defense.

Still, the most precious bit of information is that Kushner received $1.6 million from his holding in what can only be described as a vicious, callous company.

Now I wonder, Did Ivankatoinette always want to marry a humanitarian or did she just get lucky?

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Tossing tenants in arrears into prison is sort of counterproductive. (If they’re in prison, they won’t earn any money to try and pay off the rent they owe.) Part of owning rental real estate is deciding on the likelihood that the prospective tenant will be able and willing to pay the rent. At some point, if you don’t get your rent, you go to court and get an eviction order. This is a nuisance (even after you’ve evicted the tenant, you need to try to collect the rent and most people in this situation have no assets to collect.

This isn’t some small landlord. This is a large company which can make decisions about balancing the various policies. Arresting people doesn’t give Kushner any extra rent. The likelihood of a tenant not paying and the cost and delay of evicting the tenant are something you take into account. Unless you are a gangster from a family of gangsters.

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This article started the ball rolling. Pottersville has nothing on Kusherville. Or Kushner So Vile.

Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law.

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I appreciate the work that goes into trying to run rental properties, but at some point you’ve got to decide whether the money you’re making is worth the effort to keep the income, um, coming in. Unless there’s some kind of stipulation in the will that says you absolutely can’t sell the property, why not dump it on someone else? And if there is a stipulation, let the place go empty until that provision expires (lifetime of the stepmother?).

On Kushner’s end, though, there’s no way he’s in the same situation, although it sounds like he’s saddling his renters with substandard housing, then socializing the risk of being a landlord by sending his tenants to jail.

I wonder what it would take to turn one of his buildings into a poorly-run meth lab?

Wow. He’s everything I thought he was — and more!

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I was floored when I read it. NYT ran the ProPublica article at the time it came out, and I’ve been astonished but not completely surprised that other media haven’t taken it up. PP sucks up way too much media oxygen leaving little breathing space for other equally important coverage.

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