By Erika Hernandez, Inclusiveaction.org

Excerpt: I recently attended a “Protecting and Empowering Commercial Tenants in the Age of Coronavirus” zoom workshop hosted by the Sustainable Economies Law Center and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Moderators gave guidance about what commercial tenants should say when writing to their landlords. For example, tenants should explicitly mention: 

• COVID-19;

• Governor Newsom’s business closure order;

• How their businesses have been impacted by COVID-19;

• Why this impact has prevented them from being able to pay their rent in full; and

• Their plans to re-open their businesses as soon as possible. 

The workshop also included different strategies for negotiating rent payments, like postponing rent due, reducing rent payments for a period, or offering to give landlords a percentage of net revenue after expenses. More notably and in true “not me, us” fashion, however, were the reminders of our interdependence. Business owners who rent from small landlords were encouraged to empathize with their landlord’s financial struggles and express their willingness to advocate for a mortgage freeze.

Read the full article here.

(Originally published May 4, 2020.)