Should Americans Not Have To Pay Rent During The Coronavirus? One Big City May Pass A Law To Help Renters

A Chicago alderman on Monday called on landlords to allow tenants unable to pay their rent because of the coronavirus stay-at-home order a year to catch up. Elsewhere, calls for rent moratoriums were mounting as local and state officials ordered the suspension of evictions and rent freezes.

In the past four weeks, 22 million Americans filed initial unemployment claims, and though the $1,200 sent to taxpayers making less than $75,000 was helpful, it won’t stretch very far with average rent in January at $1,463.

Chicago Alderman Matt Martin said he would introduce an ordinance this week to provide relief to those who have lost income as a result of the pandemic, which has killed 877 people in Cook County. It also would prevent landlords from showing property to prospective tenants, Martin said in a press release

It was unclear, however, whether the city has the power to impose the restrictions.

Martin also called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to pressure mortgage lenders to offer to suspend or reduce mortgage payments for at least three-months and waive late fees for people who have lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 44 million households are renters. The National Multifamily Housing Council reported Monday 16% of U.S. renters had not paid their April rent 12 days into the month, compared to 10% in the same period last year.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has called for a moratorium “on financial payments, including rent, mortgages, credit card payments, taxes and utilities” in addition to the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions approved by the Federal Housing Administration and the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package.

In the Seattle area, two King County councilmembers have called for a freeze on rent and mortgage payments, not just locally, but nationally, saying the moratorium on evictions is not enough.

“Thousands of King County residents are terrified. Not only of COVID-19, but of losing their livelihood and their homes. An eviction moratorium is a great first start, but it doesn’t address the mounting debt that will be waiting,” Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Jeanne Kohl-Welles said.

New York University Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Assistant Professor H. Jacob Carlson wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times Congress should “enact an immediate, 90-day national rent moratorium … [to] keep families in their homes before other dominoes start to fall” and offset the costs by providing government-funded reimbursements to landlords.

“A rent moratorium would be a direct and rapid infusion of resources to the households where they are needed the most,” the pair wrote, adding there should be no requirement to prove the renter had been affected by the pandemic.

“A rent moratorium should be thought of as a bailout for the most vulnerable,” they said.