Back Rent

On the day the moratorium on rent paying, enacted during the Wuhan Virus situation, expired, the aggregated back rent owed as a result of that moratorium amounts to some $15 billion.

There is broad concern for the renters who owe the money, and that’s appropriate as far as it goes. But the concern doesn’t go far enough. What’s lacking is any concern regarding the other side of that coin: to whom all that money is owed.

“To whom” are the landlords, most of whom are mom and pop businesses and individual moms or pops who own a house, or two, that they rent out. Those $15 billion are owed to far fewer landlords than they are owed by renters.

Absent the rent payments, those small-time landlords are unable to pay their own mortgages on the rental properties for which they’re responsible, and in many cases, without that income they’re unable to pay their mortgages on their own homes.

Where’s the concern for them? Where’s the help for them?

The silence deafens.

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