Amid record-breaking new unemployment claims, a movement to “cancel rent” is spreading across the country, Many renters are negotiating deals with landlords—or refusing to pay altogether, joining strikes that have already “popped up in Chicago and San Diego.” More than a dozen states have prohibited evictions for some period, but landlords, who operate “within thin margins, have been sending out notices ranging from polite to threatening.” Some “backof- the-envelope math” suggests the cost of a rent moratorium for 44 million renters would be $66 billion per month, That’s a huge loss for landlords to absorb, but the alternative would be devastating. If renters emerge from eviction moratoriums with months of back rent to pay, “other dominoes would start to fall.” We’ll see a swift rise in foreclosures and evictions and “huge shocks to the housing market.” To prevent this, the U.S. should decree a suspension of rent payments for 90 days, with government-funded reimbursement to smaller landlords.

It’s not just residential tenants who need a break, “The great majority of small businesses will have trouble making their payments” as well. The U.S. has promised aid, but “it seems unlikely that the machinery of government can move fast enough to process applications from millions of businesses.” Millions of commercial tenants will be looking to renegotiate their contracts. The best way to solve this is a standard onepage addendum for commercial leases stating that “rent payments are suspended from April through June,” with some percentage of deferred payments “spread equally over the first six months of 2021.” The alternative is a flood of lawsuits and evictions far bigger than the courts can handle.

Landlords are already “squeezed,” and they’re trying to gauge which tenant demands are reasonable. One property owner in Berkeley,“a tenant threatened to withhold rent because of a new ban on evictions,” even though the renter is retired and saw no change in income. her tenant requested a 40 percent rent reduction despite making $172,000 a year at a major tech firm. Nearly threequarters of all apartment properties in the country are owned by “mom-and-pop investors” who manage two to four rental units, These owners are also liable for the mortgage, “utilities, insurance, taxes, and payroll for staff and contractors they employ.” Faced with eviction moratoriums and rent strikes, “they’ll lay off workers, miss their own obligations, and possibly wind up forfeiting their properties.” If you want to offer relief to renters, offer it to landlords too, so they don’t “carry the brunt of the pandemic’s blow to the economy.”

source : Who should get a break on the rent? - vikilix

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