A growing number of landlords are looking to aid their tenants during the coronavirus outbreak. 

WKBN 27 reports Ohio property owners Jon and Adrienne Howell, who own seven properties in Youngstown, will be reducing their rent by $200 in April. 

“Due to our current state of affairs, people are hurting, people’s income has been reduced, so we just want to help people,” Jon said. 

He detailed that he would like his tenants to use that extra $200 for things they need such as food or healthcare costs. Jon said he hopes to see not only other landlords, but other community members give back as well. 

“Meeting human beings at the point of their deepest human needs is something my wife and I love and live to do,” Jon said.

In Maine, 46-year-old landlord Nathan Nichols waived April’s rent collection completely for his tenants and is hoping to inspire other property owners to join him in doing the same.

Nichols made the announcement in a viral Facebook post from March 13 following his concerns that two groups of renters living in his duplex in Portland might be affected by lost wages as hourly workers. 


“I have two units and one of the units there is a young family who have a one or 2-year-old child. They’re on a single income and I know that they’re really living on the edge,” Nichols told People. “My other tenants are millennials who work at some venues and I knew they would also be impacted.”

Paul Schumann, a property owner in Cleveland, is working with his sons to make sure their business is able to support tenants during the pandemic and will forgo April’s rent collection as well. 

Although Schumann acknowledges the strain it will have on his finances, he said in a Fox 8 interview that he wants to extend this policy to all 21of his units on the west side of Cleveland.


“This applies to all my tenants. This is across the board. I have some people who don’t work in restaurants and are still able to work. But as long as I’m doing it, let’s do it across the board,” Schumann said.

Property owners in the business sector are also working to provide relief to their tenants, particularly in the restaurant industry. 

According to the Providence Journal, a landlord in Newport, Rhode Island, with four tenants on a commercial corridor is offering a 25% discount on rent to the restaurants in his buildings for April.

Meanwhile, Young Investment Company in Arkansas announced Tuesday night that it would “not expect its Restaurant tenants to pay April rent.”


Instead of paying rent, the company's founder Clay Young requested owners to “pay your employees and take care of your family.”

Elsewhere in the country, Philadelphia’s municipal courts announced that they would be suspending evictions for two weeks over the weekend, Whyy reported. Additionally, the Homeowners Association of Philadelphia (HAPCO), the industry’s largest lobbying group in the city, encouraged its members to embrace the eviction moratorium and be as lenient as possible.

“This is not us or them [the tenants], we are trying to work through this together,” HAPCO Vice President Victor Pinckney said. “We can’t be mad at them. It’s not their fault. They didn’t do this. It may cost you money, but some things are more important than money.”

As Blavity previously reported, New York state officials have also suspended evictions indefinitely as more than 700 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the state.

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