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This is fine for people like me that can work from home, no problem. But most of my neighbors are freaking out because they are not getting paid and have no way to pay bills, rent, etc. I can't see how this will not end up as the most major worldwide depression ever.

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Hence they're trying to hand out cash to people (means tested), reduce our delay taxes, etc. Other countries have enacted similar measures.

Unfortunately, most of the bills thus far are means tested which means inevitably, people will fall through the cracks.

$1000 for a month isn't quite enough to keep the lights on for middle class families living paycheck to paycheck.

Hopefully in addition to monetary grants there will also be suspension of rent, mortgage, utility, and student loan repayments while this is ongoing.

Suspension of rents seems like one of the biggest things I see missing across the board. Suspended mortgages are great... for those wealthy enough not to be renting. $1k/adult will cover rent for many couples outside of tech hotspots, but it won't go a lot farther, and that doesn't begin to address singles.

Rental companies are already sending "we won't evict you" / "please speak to us if you have financial hardship" communications. These help, but the bills will still pile up and the government check won't cover 100% of expenses.

Precisely.

I'll keep looking for when my landlord says anything close to this, if anything at all.

A significant percent, (I want to say most, but I don't have the numbers), of rental properties are covered by mortgages or other financing. "Pausing" mortgages can be done in a fairly centralized manner. Pausing rent is almost impossible because everyone has an individual contract and there isn't a central clearing house. It's a hard problem.

All it takes to pause rent, is passing a bill that says so. The reason why landlords can collect rent is because the government will enforce their property right and help them evict tenants who will not.

Every expense is income to someone else. If I stop paying my mortgage it means some pension fund doesn't have the income to pay their retirees.

There's no real way out of a months long shutdown. Our economic out put will be cut ~10% on an annual basis for every month. Thats real economic production gone forever. And theres no pause button on the economy. Stopping it means businesses fail and the relationships/organization that generates economic value will go away with them.

Per adult with more per child...

Based on 2018 tax return. But if you are out of work in 2020, well... too bad.

Massachusetts about to do the same, in addition to whatever federal measures. One time payment (to basically every households that signs up), then additional monthly payments to those who qualify, for as long they feel it needs to happen.

Here's the bill as it was submitted to the State House: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/HD4950

The money they are proposing won't cover a single month of rent in California.

Rent and mortgage moratoria, and eviction bans, are also active initiatives. Several already imposed, more proposed, regionally andnationally.

That's the silver lining here. With sheriffs and legislators not enforcing evictions, we can pretty much squat in our apartments until the situation changes if rent money completely dries up. The landlords are out-numbered by the tenants and can't reasonably expect to find another tenant while on lockdown.

The lessors won't take not receiving rent quietly, and will certainly pull every card to threaten tenants, but they're ultimately empty threats. The landlords' hands are tied.

> The lessors won't take not receiving rent quietly, and will certainly pull every card to threaten tenants, but they're ultimately empty threats. The landlords' hands are tied.

Or...they'll just resign themselves to "we're all in this together" and accept they will have to suffer a bit too.

I just can't imagine an SF landlord passively resigning themselves to not getting paid rent, apocalypse or not.

Why not?

I was just reading about Arizona evictions (for, umm, a friend) and it seems the courts are just not going to serve any notices for the foreseeable future so they can't really do anything about it no matter how they feel.

Things will get sorted out, landlords will get a bailout, everyone will be happy.

I'm not saying the courts and police will be evicting people if ordered not to, I'm saying I doubt the landlords will be happy about their income suddenly getting slashed. And furthermore, believe that they will still threaten evictions with their trademark red, bolded nastygrams and loanshark-level harassment, even if it doesn't have any legal teeth.

Or are you earnestly suggesting that slashing someone's income will not result in them vocally trying to recover that income? We're under pandemic, not in a bizzaro universe. Landlords are gunna landlord.

> Or are you earnestly suggesting that slashing someone's income will not result in them vocally trying to recover that income?

Pretty much, yeah.

The states are declaring state of emergency, calling up the National Guard and other various things so any landlord who starts in with the heavy-handed tactics is going to end up on the news --> https://kfor.com/health/coronavirus/norman-renter-says-he-is...

That kind of proves my point. Even with the bad press, landlords are gunna landlord.

Most landlords face personal bankruptcy if they don't get the rent. This doesn't just apply to the landlords who are still paying mortgages on their properties. Insurance, maintenance, and taxes are all large expenses.

A lot of people in San Francisco seem to think landlords are evil, but they provide the majority of the housing.

Any law that protects tenants from eviction but does not protect landlords from their expenses is going to set people against each other in a struggle for survival.

Keep in mind that if you get an eviction notice in your record, that can make it harder to find a place to stay the next time you want to get a new place. In 2009 when I could no longer afford to pay rent, I chose to leave my apartment voluntary to avoid getting an eviction notice. That was critical a couple months later when I got a dumpy-but-better-than-nothing place to stay that checked to see if I had previously been evicted.

This won’t apply to private rentals. You’re out on the street if you can’t make your rent.

Their $1,000 offer doesn’t go very far in California. It only pays for 2 weeks of rent. Or maybe 3 months of grocery for one person.

And, if you make too much money, you won’t get any assistance. You’re screwed both ways.

Housing courts will likely not be processing evictions. You'll be incurring some nasty debt (and so will your landlord, probably) but not physically transferring possession.

The worst ever depression is a gross exaggeration in any imaginable case. During the world wars, most of the earth essentially devoted all of its resources trying to kill each other for years. How is some people not going to work for a few months going to be nearly that bad?

People were getting paid to try and kill the other side.

So how about paying them without the killing?

Exactly. This is what unemployment is for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Workers aren't allowed to work but landlords are still allowed to collect rent.

Keep looking up stream. The landlords have to pay property taxes and often their own mortgages on personal or commercial properties. Anyone with a balloon mortgage is probably feeling very anxious about now. The rental market is big business and many thousands of rental communities around the country are operated by corporations capitalized through big bank creditors with the power to unmake poor performers; if prospects of collecting rent look grim investment capital will dry up and these companies will be facing bankruptcy. It's times like these when you really need a good leader that's empowered to act but also capable of seeing the big picture.

Exactly. Programmers and other tech people can work remote all day. But what about truck drivers, service industry workers, hair dressers, and more? People like this Twitter [0] use seem to suggest a shut down wouldn't have any negative effects because they can work from home.

[0] https://twitter.com/kvlly/status/1240819015095930880

There's nothing in that tweet or the thread its a part of that suggests the authors don't understand the seriousness of asking for a shut down. It also doesn't suggest they wouldn't support exceptions for all the hardworking people who can't work remotely.

So why link to it? Even if it wasn't your intention, it seems like the primary effect would be to direct abuse towards the author of the linked tweet.

Does it suggest they're aware of the consequences though? Not suggesting that they don't understand seriousness of asking for a shut down doesn't suggest that they do. The "seriousness" of a shut-down shouldn't be silenced.

Sure, if you want to go around the internet complaining that people didn't explicitly say they were aware of something they didn't happen to mention, go for it. I think you'll find that unfulfilling.

If you want to help remind people of the seriousness of a shutdown and how many people couldn't abide by one without society crumbling, then do that directly. Don't attack other people who probably don't even disagree with you to try to bolster your point.

A lot of those jobs are exempted as essential workers. Even residential housing construction workers are exempted.

And yet, they are not working.

really? I just walked by a residential construction site near my house today and saw it proceeding as usual.

Yeah, it’s all anecdotal. I have neighbors in similar jobs that are out of work. My next door neighbor is hospital staff (which you would think would be safe) but our state has cancelled all non-emergency hospital work, so a large percentage of the hospital staff has been furloughed, including my neighbor.

This will be the fastest economic decline ever (by fiat!) but not the longest. One way or another it will be over in a couple years max. Perhaps much sooner if we develop an effective vaccination, treatment, or tracking program.

That's downright frightening to imagine - much more even than the infection itself. For all of the zombie apocalypse movies, books & video games we have seen - our world & economy is just not prepared to operate like this..

It's likely more people will die from economic hardship than the virus

There is no reason we can't ensure they have food and a house for the duration.

There is no reason we can't. But we won't. Rather, politicians will almost surely choose not to do anything until it is far too late.

They literally passed a stimulus bill in the Senate this week with $500B for individuals. It heads to the House now.

I’ve been avoiding the news. How much will each American get? Will it be per individual, or only adults? Will people with children get more? Will it be more for more children? How many months worth of expenses should it cover?

$1200/person, $500 per child with phase out.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-republicans-prepare-thir...

There's a good chance the house will revise aid for individuals upwards

It's a maximum of $1,200 per individual plus an additional $500 per child. The amount is based on your 2018 AGI. The amount you receive begins to decrease at $75,000 and if you made more than $99,000 in 2018 you don't receive any money.

This is also not just the government cutting a check, it's a rebate from your 2018 taxes. You won't get back more than you paid in taxes, unless you're part of a carve out meant to protect low income seniors, which still requires a minimum income of $2,500 in 2018 (including social security).

So it's something of a mixed bag. It won't help the truly destitute, and it won't help people who had a good year in 2018 but recently lost their job due to the virus (though those should qualify for unemployment benefits). The means testing is also not normalized by any kind of cost of living metric, so people in low cost of living areas will probably qualify disproportionately, even though the areas worst affected by the virus directly are urban, high cost of living.

In a big enough depression, even "the one percent" might not produce enough to cover that sort of expense. Where else where you go? This has a global reach, so you can't really borrow from the next country over. Can't really sell bonds to Americans, because that reduces liquidity further. Inflate and you'll kill what savings Americans have left and risk stagflation. So, how do you pay for it? Forget taxing certain people more or less, past a certain point, the money simply doesn't exist; there's no bottomless pit of money on which the gov't can draw in a second great depression.

The food exists the houses exist.

I think about 70% of economy just serves the boredom of people with disposable income. We have plenty of capacity to provide essentials for everybody.

This is Mao-esqe nonsense. You can't turn off the economy the imagine government is going to divvy up whatever stuff needs dispersing. The Soviet Union tried that.

Remember the War?

Remember the massive inflation in the 70s? We survived.

Yeah, but they had crappy information management.

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