Time for New Jersey squatters to go (Opinion)
There are so many good hearted people in New Jersey. Those who really feel for the homeless, the indigent, the down-on-their-luck. I’m one of them. But there’s a difference between feeling for them and allowing them to step on you. That’s why if you’re a landlord, you should have every right to swiftly and unilaterally get a non-paying tenant out.
We gave people slack on their rent during the coronavirus shut-down, instituting rent forgiveness and government checks to help them out, but that was temporary. An editorial on NJ.com written by Paula A. Franzese, Michael McNeil and Connie M. Pascale is very sweet and soft hearted. It warns of “a tragic wave of evictions about to occur in New Jersey.” Yes, there are a lot of tragedies associated with this pandemic. A tragic wave of deaths, a tragic wave of severe illnesses, not to mention a tragic wave of livelihoods lost. But we can’t fix that.
The editorial implies that we need legislators to do more. Like what? More programs? More money? More sympathy for those who can’t pay rent. What about sympathy for the landlord who counts on that rent to pay his mortgage?? The editorial goes on to say that “The implications of this reality are clear and unavoidable: when the eviction moratorium now in place in New Jersey is lifted, hundreds of thousands of the state’s 1.2 million renter households will be at risk of imminent eviction.” The operative word here is UNAVOIDABLE. Yes, kids there are some things that are unavoidable. And that’s what life is.. a combination of great things and tragic things.. some preventable, some fixable, Some not.
The sooner we as adults learn (and teach our children) that bad things happen and some problems simply cannot be solved, the better off we will be—the less victimhood, finger pointing and the more personal responsibility. And from those impossible situations, we’ll learn to triumph in other ways—to become tougher and better and more resilient people.
We’ll start to learn lessons from life. Because life is not about being saved from all bad things. Life is a healthy mix of good things and tragic things. And the government cannot and should not be responsible for either.
The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi's own.
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