Last week we identified a potential rent strike brewing among the working poor in New York City. Many of these folks are planning to skip out on May 01's rent payment to their landlords:
"With so many New Yorkers unable to pay rent for the foreseeable future, the current crisis is unsustainable and demands action," Housing Justice for All and New York Communities for Change said in a recent statement. "Many tenants have no ability to pay rent, and landlords can't collect rent from tenants who are broke."
Lena Melendez, a rent strike activist, said landlords "have gotten taken care of" by the government, suggesting that poor people who are quarantined in their apartments or homes do not need to pay rent because they have no money.
And of course, the virus pandemic, triggering mass quarantines and economic depression, has exposed America's second housing crisis. We recently noted that as many as 30% of Americans with home loans – about 15 million households – could stop paying if lockdowns continued through summer.
What's more important at the moment is that landlords expecting May's rent next week could be for a rude awakening. Mostly because "rent strike" searches across the internet have exploded in April.
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6 comments:
MD is NEXT!
Why cant they pay? People are getting more then the usual
Unemployment, (When unemployment starts cutting checks.)
No reason why they cant pay their rent.
It’s like when the thugs riot, it’s just an excuse to be an animal.
If you had no pay for 6 weeks, and you’ve been consumed with how you will eat, rent is secondary
Come on 705, get real.
Unemployment only pays so much, then there are other expenses not to mention family members.
Really you don't understand? Sad.
It is hard to collect rent from people when times are good, let alone when they are bad. And people watch the news and think they don't have to pay. Crazy! The govn't will just create money and make it free.
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