By Hadassa Kalatizadeh
As unemployment rises rapidly in the U.S., due to Coronavirus, tenants rights groups and community nonprofits are uniting to rally in hopes of canceling rent and mortgage payments due for the month of May. The groups have been using social media as well as sporadic in-person protests to persuade the government to halt upcoming rent and mortgage payments during this time of widespread economic hardship.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York’s liberal Representative, is enthusiastically endorsing the effort, which is known as #CancelRent in online video rallies. “It’s not that it’s impossible to do and it’s not that we can’t do it,” said Ocasio-Cortez in a live video on her Facebook page. “We lack enough politicians with political will to actually help people who are tenants and actually help people who are mom-and-pop landlords.”
As reported in the NY Times, groups across the country are encouraging tenants to withhold May rent payments, in hopes of adding pressure to attain tenant-friendly legislation. Needless to say, landlords are pushing back, saying they are struggling to pay their bills as well. Further, as many tenants already haven’t been able to pay rent they say the consequences for an escalation could be disastrous. They maintain that property owners too have mortgage payments to make, property taxes to pay, and expenses in maintaining buildings.
For the federal government to get involved in canceling rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the shutdown, it would require extensive and far-reaching legislation in the housing and financial markets, which many say may be unconstitutional. Chances for an all-out bill being rolled-out remain slim but that hasn’t stopped the groups from amassing a good size army of followers, even including some progressive members of Congress. “It’s a moment that people are literally rising up for real transformation in the housing market,” said Cea Weaver, the campaign coordinator at Housing Justice for All, a New York group.
Jittery landlords too have bonded saying that before the government can demand anything from them, elected officials would first need to act to wave looming property taxes. Recently, a report by the NYC’s Rent Guidelines Board showed that roughly 30 percent of landlord’s expenses for rent-regulated apartments go towards paying property taxes in NYC. Joseph Strasburg, the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which embodies 25,000 NYC landlords, cautioned that a strike on rent payments would “create an economic and housing pandemic.” “The city and its residential housing landscape will crumble into an economic abyss worse than the 1970s, when New York was the national poster child for urban blight,” said Mr. Strasburg.
In April, overall rent collection was not far below last year’s level, but that was because many renters paid by credit cards, and some landlords did allow concessions.