August 30, 2021
Dear Editor,
Guyanese renters and homeowner small landlords, those of other ethnicities also, in America have been severely affected financially by Covid. The Covid rent moratorium has emboldened renters or tenants of all ethnicities not to pay rents. Some of those rent defaulters are Guyanese. Many Guyanese homeowners are struggling to make ends meet and pay the mortgage while tenants who lost jobs can’t afford to pay rent; some who have been re-hired have not been paying or are behind in rent. Guyanese homeowners could lose their homes when Covid is brought under control and normality returns. The situation is reminiscent of what happened in 2008/09 when there was a real estate meltdown in value and home prices collapsed and homeowners lost value in their home of over $100K per property. Foreclosure was widespread impacting on Guyanese also. Based on my impromptu conversations and interviews with many of them in NY, one in three Guyanese homeowners is owed rent of between $1500 and $3500 monthly going back to April 2020. So the amount of money Guyanese landlord is owed is enormous – somewhere from $24K to $48K for every third home owner for the last sixteen months. The total is tens of millions of American dollars owed to Guyanese American landlords.
The government-issued moratoriums on rental and mortgage payments at the start of the pandemic last year April expired last March and was renewed till end of September. Landlords challenged the moratorium in court and won including at the final appeal at the Supreme Court. The government allocated some $45B last year and earlier this year to help renters. But only some $5.5B was actually distributed to or claimed by renters. Several billions more have been included in a new budget for renters. The money is available from government to pay landlords but it is not getting to them. Renters have to file an application and sign it with the money going directly to the landlord. Several renters, for varied reasons, are unwilling to file the application. Some renters are illegal and don’t want to create a file with the government applying for public assistance although the undocumented is eligible for rental and food assistance. Some renters in default simply don’t care a damn because landlords can’t proceed to evict them till after September. And they know the process will take a minimum six months to evict them. So they will get another six months of free rent. Even if evicted and ordered to pay back rent, there is virtually no way to enforce court rulings.
Sincerely,
Vishnu Bisram
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