Andrew from Los Angeles County

I have been operating a sober living in the San Fernando Valley for 17 years. I have been part of the deputies out reach program, enjoy attorney client visits without appointment whenever I want to go to jail to interview a potential resident, and have supervised hundreds of people for the Department of parole and Department of probation.

Following all the guidelines set down by the state regarding Sober Living’s, we are required to have a written contract with each resident. We do not refer them as tenants because they are participating in a recovery environment and they are residents seeking help. They in the past have not enjoyed landlord tenant protection. At the advent of this fake emergency, the police, who had previously assisted in expelling someone Following all the guidelines set down by the state regarding Sober Living’s, we are required to have a written contract with each resident. We do not refer them as tenants because they are participating in a recovery environment and they are residents seeking help. They in the past have not enjoyed landlord tenant protections. At the advent of this fake emergency, the police, who helped previously assisted in expelling someone for rules violation 30 days earlier, now are telling me that I am a landlord and then I have to evict. The governor is not only telling me that I cannot evict anyone but I cannot even try to for a full year after he, who is not a medical expert and only uses the sources that support his agenda for advice, decides who can make money and who cannot. This is a totalitarian state. We are at war and we have no weapons. The results of his direct actions are making small landlords, sober living, assisted living and board care facilities at risk of losing everything. While they are at the same time paying 75% of hotel fees which are crazy to begin with, to put homeless people indoors, they are offering nothing to the private landlord who has one property and relies on that for his entire existence. That would be me. And others. Not just me but thousands in the San Fernando Valley alone. I’ve worked all my life to have the one property that I have now and prior to this it’s supported me in my life completely.

The PPP loan doesn’t apply to me because I’m a one-man operator. The mortgage for Barents, doesn’t apply to me because like 60% of the country, my mortgage was funded by a private equity firm and they are not required to follow any federal guidelines because they are not federally backed. Telling someone they don’t have to pay rent and they don’t have to show cause and not only that but they don’t have to pay rent for a full year after this emergency ends, is criminal. We have no recourse. The courts are closed. Criminals are allowed to literally kill people and not go to jail. Last night a woman ran over somebody and then fled the scene. She killed the pedestrian and fled the scene. That’s murder. They took her to jail fingerprinted her booked her and then released her. On what would’ve been $1 million bond she’s out drinking and driving again.

But the most insidious part is when they admit that they are jockeying the numbers that are being reported. Hospitals are incentivized to attribute every death to cover it. If someone is admitted to a hospital and it’s called covered, they get $13,000 just for treating. And I mean like the emergency room plus all those other fees that they ludicrously add anyway but that’s a $13,000 bump just for going to the hospital with a fever. Then, they get $39,000 if they put someone on a ventilator. The ventilators are killing people.

So we’ve set up a perfect storm of incentivizing a continued violation of our constitutional and property rights, a continual violation of tortuously interfering with existing contracts which is not only against California’s constitution but against federal law. And we have no court system to prosecute them through. And if we did, it would cost millions to go after the government which they’ve taken away from everybody by depriving us of work.
That’s all, we’re fucked. Have a nice day.