Sometimes people are forced into becoming a landlord. They bought an affordable condo in an affordable city (think 5 digit prices). The market dies and they can't sell. They lose their job. They have to go back to school. So they move in with friends and rent out their place just to cover the mortgage they can't get out of. Bankruptcy would ruin their chance to dig themselves out.
I really feel for both renters and small-time landlords. I've been in and/or known people who've been in tough spots on both sides. But I have limited empathy for those who have no empathy.
I've been in the position of owning a condo with an underwater mortgage with difficulty finding work. It was fucking awful and it made my life hell for years. When I finally sold it it was for less than 2/3rds the remaining value of the mortgage.
I still had more viable options and was in a better place than most people living paycheque to paycheque are if they're renting and their ability to work is interrupted for months.
All these situations are not equal, and if your 'empathy' tries to force them all into the same bucket, that's a problem.
Especially in times like these, we should be trying to find common ground with one another, not putting up walls and saying "you aren't allowed to think you understand what I feel" or "your problems are insignificant because mine are worse".
We're in a thread where people are talking about just "canceling rent". If the landlord doesn't pay the mortgage, the renter is out (and possibly the landlord too). If the renter doesn't pay rent, the landlord doesn't pay the mortgage, and the renter is out. They're both in a bind. A landlord with a mortgage is not a property owner if the mortgage isn't paid.
If they work together as human beings they might find a solution that works with the means of each party, but if they start a hardship contest then they both lose.
So, I started this particular thread on cancelling rent and I started it with a proposal that both rent and mortgages go on a holiday and a universal income supplement be enacted for the duration of the emergency. This is an arrangement that enables all three of renters, landlords with mortgages, and landlords without mortgages to have a shot at getting through this without bankruptcy.
And yet every reply comes in crying about mortgages, which I said right in my first post should have a holiday as well because otherwise there's conflict.
There's a knee-jerk reaction of empathy for people holding property that isn't being extended to renters here in this thread. It's showing in where people stop reading and hit the reply button. If you can't read past "rent holiday" to see the next part, you aren't spreading your empathy evenly, let alone fairly (which is not necessarily the same thing).
I really feel for both renters and small-time landlords. I've been in and/or known people who've been in tough spots on both sides. But I have limited empathy for those who have no empathy.