I really don’t want this to sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but with the $2 Trillion COVID-19 Stimulus package looking like it is about to pass, I feel like I should have been telling this story to as many people as would listen.
I do some property management on the side. I only have a few properties. One of them has five young women living in it. They are only a couple years removed from college. Two of them let me know that the restaurants they work for have temporarily laid them off and they weren’t sure if they would be able to make the rent. By the way, these restaurants closed six days before the mayor had issued a “Safer At Home” order, just to point out that individuals and business will act quicker, faster, more responsibly than government’s. So no. Even in a pandemic, we don’t need government.
Now this situation was still early so I told them we will see how things go and I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, the owner of this house is an Army buddy of mine. He is out of the military and going to school. Except for a little bit of money from is GI Bill for school, and whatever he gets from disability from the VA, he isn’t really making any money. I knew he used any profits from the rent to live off of, but I didn’t know how much he could stand to lose. Unlike the government, I wasn’t going to try and tell him how to live his life.
I sent him an email explaining the situation. I told him that I didn’t know how much his mortgage was or how much of his profits he needed, but he might want to consider how much he would be able to drop the rent depending on how events played out. After taking a couple days, he decided that he would be willing to lower the rent for April to $2,000, down from $3,000. He did stipulate that he wanted them to provide proof that they were out of work and that they had signed up for unemployment. Both of the women promptly responded with the requested documents.
My buddy didn’t do this out of benevolence. He did an assessment of what he could live with, knowing that getting something would be better than nothing. He also sees the future value in keeping these five women as tenants moving forward. They have been responsible and dependable tenants and immediately reached out when they knew things might be a problem. These are tenants that the owner would like to keep. These are also unusual circumstances. I think that goes for anyone these days.
Neither my buddy, the five tenants, nor myself needed a government bail out, directions from leaders, or the ire from outsiders to come to this conclusion. We all acted in our own self-interest and reached a conclusion that was as beneficial for all parties as could be reached given these interesting times we find ourselves in. Just imagine how many people would do the same thing if they weren’t waiting and expecting the government to solve the problem. Wall Street’s zombie corporations certainly wouldn’t need a bail out, and neither would everyday Americans.