Coronavirus: I asked my landlord for a ‘rental-holiday’ to help me through this Pandemic. They agreed and gave me 4-months rent-free.

Here is why and how you can too.

It’s the beginning of April, a new month, which means that for over 35% of Americans, rent is due.

Rent is due.. If you are like me, you are probably stuck in a house you don’t own reading that phrase and cringing as you see money disappear from your bank account to line somebody else’s pocket or likely, cover your landlord's mortgage.

Well, in the age of COVID-19, that feeling can be one of desperation for many people in the renter bracket who now also find themselves out of work and wondering how they can piece enough money together to cover those essential expenses that keep their way of living intact.

As a renter myself, I was wondering the same. Self-employed and relying on a functioning global shipping industry and healthy consumer economy to pay my bills I certainly am not ‘recession-proof’.

As the fallout from this Pandemic started hitting home, it came to my attention listening to a podcast of NPR’s coverage of the coronavirus that, many homeowners have been given a lifeline on their mortgage payments. I dug further and discovered that yes, many homeowners can apply for mortgage relief during the Coronavirus pandemic to help ease the financial burden during these uncertain and scary economic times!

Wow. That’s great! If you're a homeowner…

What about relief for the demographic of people who rent those homes and pay those mortgages?

Representing over a third of the US population, renters, on average are in a far more vulnerable position financially than homeowners. A large population of us are service industry workers living virtually paycheck to paycheck without a safety net and scarier yet, many of us have no ‘get out of jail free’ card in the form of financially stable and supportive family members to fall back on in a time of crisis. So what about us?

Unfortunately, during times of hardship such as a global pandemic and what inevitably looks like a recession to follow, good, honest and hardworking renters don’t fare so well. Had America had a functioning government there might be some better news but as of the time of writing this, we are on our own.

So I decided to advocate for myself, and the good news is, you can too!

The following is a template of a letter I sent out to my landlord this week basically asking him to call his mortgage lender on my behalf (his tenant) and ask for a mortgage holiday.