When our second child went through an amphibian phase, we rescued a bullfrog to keep as a pet. Instead of going to the animal shelter and picking out a dog, we went to the Great Wall Supermarket on Northern Boulevard. Near the front door, next to the tanks of fish, the tubs of crabs and the racks of cephalopods on crushed ice is a bucket of dark green frogs. You pick out the ones you want, they chop off their legs, and you take them home to eat. When I first saw the frog bucket, I said to my wife, “You buy them by the pound but you only eat the legs. The legs are a fraction of their total body weight. That is a scam.” “Shut up”, she explained. On adoption day, Jubjub was near the back of the bucket. She wasn’t the best-looking frog, or the biggest, but she was floating in the water with her eyes just above the surface and the flippers on her hind legs dangling limply, looking at us in a way that showed that she had had our name on her since before she was a pollywog. After the guy in the rubber apron fished her out, he pulled out a cleaver. “Stop!”, we shouted. “We want her alive.” The guy looked surprised. He said,
“Ai-ya. You can get frogs for free at the lake in Corona Park.”
Jubjub looked at us with her bug-eyes. We said,
‘But we want this one.”
So, the guy put her in a plastic bag. She made the check-out girl scream when she jumped out of the bag at the cash register, but she quieted down in the car. Jubjub lived with us for three years. We suspected that she was actually male, because she croaked at night, and males croak to attract females (anecdotal evidence indicates that this approach does not work with female Homo sapiens), but Child Number Two wanted a girl, so a girl she was. She died after three years and was buried with full Ranidian honors next to the other dead pets that litter our property.
Jubjub lived a charmed life. Had we not rescued her, she would have lived another forty-eight hours, seventy-two tops. Her thighs would have been battered and then fried with garlic, salt and basil, and her upper body would have been tossed together with the bodies of her colleagues, stuffed into a plastic garbage bag, and then thrown into a dumpster. Instead, a huge thing with dry skin and a funny-looking grappling hook made of meat picked her up and put her into a cube where she could relax, swim when she wanted, dry herself out when she wanted, feast on meal worms and dubia roaches, and, generally, ponder her good fortune. It was as though she were a chimp who learned which button to press to have the tube squirt glucose into its mouth, or a middle-aged white guy who learned how to count cards. She hit the jackpot.
There is a tenant in my park in northern New York who is as lucky as Jubjub. Her deus ex machina is the eviction moratorium. She has figured out that she can live for free for a long time, if not forever. By doing nothing, she receives the benefit of free lot rent. Since this is a zero-sum game, I lose what she wins.
A state-wide eviction moratorium was put into place in New York in March 2020 and has been extended several times since. It is currently scheduled to expire at the end of August, unless it is extended again. A federal eviction moratorium was put into place by the CDC late last year. After the Supreme Court held that the Executive Branch did not have jurisdiction to impose a blanket moratorium, the CDC moratorium expired on July 31. Under pressure from the progressive branch of the Democratic party, the Administration has imposed another federal moratorium. The current federal moratorium is intended to be distinguished from the original federal moratorium because it only prohibits evictions in counties that are severely affected by COVID. This is now being challenged in the courts because, with the current uptick in infections caused by the Delta variant, that is a distinction without a difference.
Until now, I have ignored the federal moratorium. That is because the New York State moratorium is stricter than the federal moratoria, and lasted longer. But the new federal moratorium is due to expire in October. That is later than the scheduled state moratorium expiration date of August 31, so the federal moratorium now has my attention. Like the state moratorium, the federal moratorium is a terrible idea. The time has passed for both moratoria; the economic downturn has been corrected, jobs are plentiful and COVID is now a pandemic of choice that primarily affects people who are too bone-headed or Republican to be vaccinated. Moratoria require private actors to perform a public service. The state has made a mess of alternative measures, like ERAP. It is disingenuous for the state to expect private actors to pay for the state’s inability to get its shit together and provide these alternative remedies.
Nevertheless, the facts are the facts. Both moratoria are there until they expire or are successfully challenged in court. The Jubjub lady realized this early this year. She has not paid a penny since December 2020. In February, she told me that she would pay lot rent when she received her stimulus payment. After stimulus payments were made, she told me that the government had not sent her the check. After that excuse expired, she just dug in her heels. She provided a prophylactic COVID Hardship Declaration. When asked to pay, she asks that we pour a new sidewalk in front of her home first, or she just says, “No”. She agreed to sell her home to the park in exchange for unpaid lot rent plus some cash a few months ago – but then she changed her mind. She has since said that she might sell the home, but that she will never, ever sell it to the park.
(The COVID Hardship Declaration is signed under penalties of perjury. I suspect that she has not suffered economic hardship due to COVID because the source of her income is SSI payments which have not been cut off. However, that would have to be proved in court – and that would be a time-consuming, expensive process. The moratorium would probably expire before that could be proven.)
Do I have remedies? Few and feeble, but I am doing what I can. I have filed a money suit, and I am locked and loaded to start an eviction proceeding once the moratorium expires. I have asked another tenant to buy her home as a straw purchaser. But anything that happens will take time. That means that she will suck the glucose, eat the worms and dubia roaches, and enjoy the housing provided by the meat-tower for as long as she can. And why shouldn’t she? She is, after all, Rana economica, and that is rational, profit-maximizing behavior.
I enjoyed the frog story. In our world the tenant story is now MUNDANE.
Sad but true.