(NewsGlobal.com)- Many members of the ultra-progressive “Squad” in the House fought long and hard for rental relief during the pandemic.
Yet, recent filings have shown that many of those same Squad members were racking in income from rental properties they owned.
Annual financial disclosures recently reviewed by Fox News Digital show that Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib collected rental income that fell between $15,001 and $50,000 for 2021, and that’s the same amount she collected in 2020.
Tlaib owns a rental property in Detroit that the Detroit News reported is valued between $100,000 and $250,000.
So, at a time when Tlaib and many of her cronies were arguing that renters needed significant relief from their tenants — and that they should be protected from being evicted — she was collecting rent from her own tenants.
A Detroit News article last year quoted Eric Ventimiglia of Michigan Rising Action, who argued that the fact that Tlaib was bringing in rental income was an “insult to every landlord who is unable to collect rent from tenants to make ends meet.”
The bills that Tlaib and others touted and pushed through allowed tenants to not pay rent during the pandemic if they were unable to, while facing no threat of being evicted. Yet, Tlaib herself continued to collect that rent, not giving her tenant any relief at all, apparently.
A spokeswoman for Tlaib, though, defended her collecting the rent. As Adrienne Salazar told The Detroit News:
“There is no contradiction between advocating for an eviction moratorium and rental relief and having a great relationship with a long-term tenant in a single rental home.
“Rep. Tlaib is an unwavering advocate for tenants, has worked to get rental assistance out to landlords to keep people housed, and remains focused on advocating for residents during this pandemic.”
Tlaib was one of the main members of the House who pushed for the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act early on in the pandemic. That never went through, but they continued to push for further bills that would cancel rental payments for up to a year.
One of the co-sponsors of that bill, Massachusetts Ayanna Pressley, also brought in rental income in 2020. Fox News reported that she brought in between $5,000 and $15,000 from a property she owns in Boston.
The rhetoric at the time was that people needed housing, and that they should never have to choose between putting a roof over their head or food on the table. Yet, that’s exactly what Pressley and Tlaib did to their tenants.
They could say that there was no law in place to stop them from collecting the rent, and they’d be right. But, if they wanted to truly lead, they should’ve led by example and voluntarily not collected the rent from their tenants.
Would it have hurt them financially to forego the rent from their tenants for a short period of time during the pandemic, as they were asking millions of other landlords to do?
