Reasonable Reimbursement for Tenant During Floor Repairs

[Linda J.]

Trying to figure out what is reasonable to offer to tenant, and would welcome your thoughts - this is the situation: my family has a 1BR rental unit, and a reliable and responsible tenant who has been there for many years. Earlier this summer, there was a major water issue in the bathroom that caused water damage to the unit. Not anyone's fault - just a truly unfortunate set of circumstances. The insurance company even specifically said it was not negligence. Water damage was worse because it happened in the middle of the night, and it meant we have to replace some flooring, and the vanity in the bathroom, after taking a bunch of measures to make sure the water damage doesn't cause any more problems. Because of COVID supply issues, contractor availability, and sorting things out with insurance, the work is just taking far longer than anyone could have possibly anticipated.

Eventually things got moving, and on the repair side, the drywall and painting is done, and the vanity will be replaced within the next few days, giving him a fully functional bathroom. The kitchen is fine. The only thing left is the floors - we are running into major supply issues there - but it's just some baseboards out of place, and one can still walk around the unit. I realize this is totally inconvenient, and no one's fault, and I'm certainly not asking him for rent while the unit is like this, but I will also say that our contractor keeps pointing out that in other situations like this, people just live there through this kind of thing.

Our tenant is insistent that the unit is unlivable. Due to everything taking so long and being uncertain, he is about to reach his max reimbursement on his renters insurance in a couple weeks, and is understandably frustrated (as are we) at the issues we keep running into with repair timeline, and are probably still a few weeks out. He asked what we might be willing to help cover so he can stay elsewhere.

I'm not about to force him stay there, even if I would, since he really has been an excellent tenant who has lived there for many years, and unlike our family, he obviously is just a renter.  I'm also willing to work with him on some amount of reimbursement or rent credit, but I'm trying to figure out what is appropriate here beyond what we're already doing. My inclination is to offer him a set amount based on a few months rent, either as a max amount for reimbursement or rent credit, and give him the choice of whether to use that set amount of money to stay somewhere else or just deal with the unit or some combination of both. 

I know there's lots of experienced landlords here though, so what would you do?