How would rent moratoriums work?

Some clever person came up with a way to help struggling homeowners with their mortgages in these trying times: suspend payments, and add them on to the end of the loan. Assuming the lender can hold its breath for several months, this can work.

There have been mumblings about rent relief as well, but, with renters, this model doesn’t work. As between residential landlords and tenants, there is no decades-long business relationship to tweak. Rent is due monthly, period.

We hear talk of a “rent moratorium,” but how would that work? Some unit of government would persuade or coerce all the landlords to hold their breath for several months while not collecting rent. And then what?

Then either the landlords collect all of the rent that they are owed, including the back rent, or else the government that ordered the moratorium will simply have taken that much money — the back rent — from the landlords permanently.

If the landlords are allowed to try to collect all of the rent that they are owed at the end of the moratorium, including the back rent, there will be a wave of evictions and nothing in particular will have been accomplished. If the landlords are not allowed to try to collect the back rent, they will have been robbed of that revenue, permanently, by whatever unit of government ordered the moratorium.

The way around these problems is for the unit of government in question to actually pay the rent in the meantime. I have not seen this strategy suggested anywhere, and I don’t expect to.

I express no opinion about what should be done for renters. I point out that the real options are stealing from the landlords, and paying the tenants’ rent. Therefore, my guess is that nothing will actually happen.

Eric Kuhn, Middletown