A large portion of the people who have been displaced by foreclosures following the collapse of housing prices have been renters. This fact has largely been ignored by the media, presumably because it has also been largely ignored by politicians. Of course an independent press is supposed to report on what is important regardless of whether it fits the agenda of politicians at the time. Today, the Washington Post had a front page article noting the large number of tenants who have been displaced by foreclosures. The article includes a great quote from an expert at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, a research institute that was widely known for denying the existence of a housing bubble: "It's only now that the renter's dilemma is bubbling up to the top." Those experts who recognized the housing bubble had been raising this issue for some time. [Addendum: Based on the discussion below, I want to make two points about the plight of tenants. While I am in general sympathetic to the plight of homeowners losing their homes, they did sign a mortgage that got them into trouble. I understand how mortgages can be complex documents and that mortgage issuers were often deliberately deceiving homeowners, but they still had some control over the situation. By contrast, the tenants are being evicted because their landlord didn't pay their mortgage. The tenants had no recourse in this story, unless they had somehow been able to analyze the financial position of their landlord. The second point, is that contrary to some assertions in the comments, renters often can have pets. My wife and I are renting with two fine pound hounds. If we had to look for another unit that allowed pets, it would be a serious problem for us or for any renter who had pets, as many do.]
--Dean Baker
