— Disaster Relief Maps (@disastermapping)If You Pay or Receive Rent for a Home or Business How Much Did you Pay or Receive in May?
May 5, 2020
(Poll) If You Pay or Receive Rent for a Home or Business How Much Did you Pay or Receive in May?
A new Insider poll found 23% of Americans who owe a rent or a mortgage payment on Friday aren't sure they'll be able to pay it.
While 77% of respondents said they were set to make this month's payment, 12% said they don't have the money and 10% said they aren't sure if they'll have all of it.
Housing data previously found that about a third of renters did not pay rent to their landlord for the month of April.
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In what is likely the largest coordinated rent strike in the U.S. in recent history, people affected by the coronavirus shutdowns are telling their landlords not that they’ll pay rent later, but that they won’t pay at all.
The situation has led to the largest coordinated rent strike in the U.S. in decades: On May 1, tens of thousands of tenants are expected to join together as they tell their landlords they can’t pay rent. Some tenants who still have jobs will participate in solidarity. But for most, “this isn’t a matter of choice,” says Peter Meyer Reimer, an organizer with the groups Five Demands Global and Rent Strike 2020. “Thirty percent of Americans didn’t pay any rent at all last month, and this month it’s only going to be worse. A lot of those people are involuntary rent strikers. We’re trying just as quickly as we can to connect them up with other people so that they have some political cover, and so they have a chance at getting out of this without being saddled with debt for something that’s not their fault.”
In L.A., membership in the Los Angeles Tenants Union grew from 3,000 tenants before the pandemic to 8,000 by the middle of April; those tenants are all expected to strike. In New York, nearly 12,000 people have pledged not to pay rent on May 1, and some have coordinated building-wide strikes. Nationally, nearly 200,000 renters may participate.
More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last six weeks, and millions more have tried but failed to file claims—and as overwhelmed unemployment offices are slow to pay benefits, many people don’t have the money to pay rent. Millions of people still haven’t received their stimulus checks; in cities like New York, where the rent for a typical one-bedroom apartment is nearly $3,000, a stimulus check for $1,200 won’t go far.
