If you’re following the news, you could easily get the impression that being a landlord is like being trapped in a horror movie, with the tenant in the role of that terrifying psycho who thrives by inflicting suffering.

Last summer, the tabloid New York Post was abuzz with stories of tenants — some of them Instagram influencers — partying decadently in the Hamptons while refusing to pay rent or leave their homes, while their middle-class landlords struggled with college tuition and medical bills. In one Miami homeowner’s nearly yearlong “nightmare,” a tenant owing more than $6,000 in rent won’t pay and won’t leave, the Miami Herald reported late last month. In the San Francisco Bay Area, landlords made similar complaints to the Mercury News including, in one case, even a subtenant who changed the locks and refused to leave. In New York, the Albany Times Union quoted landlords complaining of tenants who take their kids on Las Vegas vacations to playoff football games while skipping rent. A Staten Island couple told CBS New York they couldn’t get rid of tenants who hadn’t paid rent since May 2019, despite Instagram evidence of “lavish” parties. Albany’s WRGB-TV featured landlords frustrated that they couldn’t get rid of badly behaving tenants, with one renter even “smearing feces all over the walls in common areas.”

The eviction moratorium is explicitly the policy villain in these stories. During the pandemic, the federal government and many states have paused evictions since so many are struggling to make rent, a victory for organized tenants’ groups and affordable housing advocates. While some small homeowners are indeed struggling, “it’s too hard to evict people during a pandemic” is an unconscionable emphasis in the midst of a massive crisis of potential displacement and homelessness.