A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a little startup called Civvl. Besides following the trend of pretentious startup naming schemes, what Civvl does is less than stellar.

Civvl, owned by parent company QnQall, is aimed towards landlords, and makes a gig economy (think Fiverr or Uber) out of evicting the unfortunate. That is to say that you can sign up to Civvl and expect to move furniture out of foreclosed houses, post notices of eviction and all the other fun things associated with dragging somebody out of a house.

The formation of this company at this particularly money-starved time is no accident. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 13.6 million of Americans are unemployed as of August, and that means missed payments on rent. Even as protections come out by the CDC to protect those impacted by the crisis,  the moratorium expires at the end of the year and does not save tenants from the rent they owe, which will surely accumulate into crippling debt and a lost home.

If you have your doubts about Civvl’s unsavory intentions, This is one section of their website:

To be frank, this is disgusting. People make startups like Civvl because they want to bank on tragedy. Those who need to make ends meet will join up as an agent, and they’ll be paid to take advantage of their fellow working-class people who are unable to pay their rent because of a complete halt of business on a massive scale.

The issue isn’t the halting of business, of course – we must do what we can to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The issue is the lack of mercy these landlords and lawmakers have for the disadvantaged. After all, when Seattle’s lowest average monthly rent price is $1,973 (according to rentjungle.com), what use is a single stimulus check that ranges from $1,200 for singles to $2,400+ for married couples with children? Of course, that’s only for the average joe. How have massive companies been faring?

It seems that even in times of trial and tribulation, the wealthiest among us grow their capital even further. This is because the government has a habit of giving prominent business owners more money than they know what to do with.

When the government passed the CARES act, which gave Wall Street $2.2 Trillion as bailout, a majority of the money went straight to the wealthy. That is over three times the amount of money the U.S. spends on the military a year, only to grow the ever-expanding gap that goes between the top 1% and the rest of us.

When tragedy strikes, it is always those at the lowest that have to pay. All the single parents, all the blue-collar families, all the disillusioned college kids and all those who had been born into poverty and will die in poverty. Those who run the biggest companies in the world, all those who could probably end world hunger if they wrote the right checks, are more concerned with their profit margins and what specific type of Ferrari they want their 30th car to be.

They are the ones that get the tax breaks. They are the ones that add more cash to their wallets as the bailouts pour in. When tragedy grips a nation, it will only be the billionaires who can afford the oil to slip out.