Lincoln Eccles, who is in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn, New York, owns a 14-unit building, claims it is flooded with unwanted telephone calls, texts and e-mails from investors. Sales would provide some relief—the pandemic placed him behind taxes and gas bills for a year. But he'd like to move the building to his first son, born this month, acquired by his Jamaican father immigrant. real estate agents in qatar
Headaches are still mounting. One tenant owes more than $40,000 in back rents, five units are empty and Eccles can't replace or even fix a boiler in March that collapsed again. The rental relief program is of great help. He is unlikely to receive government grants covering losses from a tenant who left owing $96,000 in November.
Small owners are hit from many directions, said Roy Ho, who heads the Greater New York Property Owners Association with 800 members mainly Chinese. Some have retail companies or commercial landlords that are struggling to keep afloat with shops, nail salons and restaurants.
Some of their residents left the city during the pandemic and left vacancies, while others paid late or not, Ho said. The situation can be difficult if owners and renters live in the same building.
“It’s difficult to have a complete breakdown when one is living upstairs and the other downstairs,” he said. "But they talk less because of Covid."
Property owners are restricted by government prohibition of evicting tenants who missed rent in the pandemic. Unless President Joe Biden extends this moratorium again, the federal moratorium expires on 30 June.
Some landowners say eviction bans leave tenants saddled with criminals before the pandemic. But many renters are in the same boat as landlords, says Cea Weaver, New York's Housing Justice For All campaign coordinator.
"The ban on eviction is a blunt tool, but it is necessary," Weaver said.
Even as payments progress, there are other challenges ahead. The way Congress allocated the money gave smaller countries with a low rent population an outsize share.
For example, New York's $2.4 billion portion of the funding is anticipated to cover less than 80 percent of the state's back rent, utilities and late charges, according to Moody's Analytics estimates in March. It's only 45 percent in Illinois. However, Vermont receives an allocation of about $350 million, enough to pay for the need of the state more than nine times over.
While Congress authorized the Treasury to fix any inadequate funding, the reassignment could not occur for several more months.
Lending aid to tenants and landlords was slow because it was a massive company involving multiple layers of government, said Stockton Williams, Chief Executive of the National Council of State Housing Agencies.
Governments are trying to distribute a pot of money much higher than the rental assistance of about $4 billion some countries and towns struggled to provide last year. Now, they will have to comply with regulations laid down by the Congress as to how money can be spent, together with additional requirements.
"It's really tough to start a brand new program like this and to get out of ASAP," Williams said. He said that some countries, including Alaska, Kentucky, and Virginia, moved rapidly. California and Texas, big countries with large allocations, were at first slow but they got faster, he said.
Brandon McCall has had to put away his student loans and cut food and other expenses after the $2,050 a month rent fell behind his condo tenant in Los Angeles. Now he's pinning his government hopes. In early April, the tenant applied for rental assistance shortly after the city relief program started. But there was no answer from late last week.
"Every month I lose money," said McCall. "And I can't buy myself a place to live.