Ideas Floated For Covering The Rent

Covid-19 cost Joshua Van Hoesen’s tenants their paychecks — and their ability to pay rent.

Van Hoesen forgave the rent, then began thinking about what could help landlords and tenants across town in similar straits.

As a result, Van Hoesen faced a dilemma similar to that posed to landlords across town.

He also came up with a partial possible solution —to the landlord dilemma, as well as to other business and civic dilemmas facing New Haven amid the pandemic.

Van Hoesen, a software designer, community management team leader, and local political office-seeker, shared his ideas during an appearance this week on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” He spoke about how New Haveners can address the real estate, neighborhood organizing, and workplace challenges posed by Covid-19.

Van Hoesen moved from Morris Cove to Westville last year. He couldn’t make his money back by selling his house, so he rented it out to a family headed by food-service workers.

They’re good tenants, he said. They also faithfully pay the rent.

Like so many service workers, they then suddenly lost their income when the spread of Covid-19 shut down their places of employment.

Fortunately, Van Hoesen said, he can afford to forgive their rent for the immediate term. But the situation got him thinking about how small landlords like himself will navigate the challenge of paying mortgages and taxes longer term, especially as extended shutdowns loom.

His suggestion: The city could forgive taxes for small landlords who don’t want to evict tenants who temporarily lose the ability to pay rent.

“It’s a difficult thing: The city’s already hurting for money,” Van Hoesen acknowledges. It ​“still has services to pay for.” His own views skew Libertarian; he has run for local office several times as a Republican. So he also has some skepticism about whether government action is always the best way to address a social challenge. Also, landlords don’t usually have just taxes to pay. They have mortgages too.

But these are unusual times, forcing everyone to reexamine or adjust their outlooks.

Asked about Van Hoesen’s idea, Mayor Justin Elicker responded: ​“I’m really reluctant to say we can do that. We are facing a very dire budget situation. We are uncertain of exactly how this crisis is going to impact us from a budgetary perspective.”

Another possibility: Philanthropic organizations are raising millions to help people in need in New Haven. Maybe they could set up a rapid-response hotline to pay rent on behalf of tenants who have lost their sources of income due to Covid-19. (Elicker called that idea ​“worth looking into.”)

But the Community Foundation and United Way, in collecting those millions, distribute those dollars to organizations on the front lines doing the work. So an organization on the front lines would need to be in charge of paying laid-off tenants’ rents to landlords.

New Haven Legal Assistance Association already represents tenants facing eviction. And it has been busy pressing the state to put a moratorium on the filing of evictions. (Click here to read a story about how the state gave homeowners a three-month mortgage reprieve but no such reprieve for renters.)

The state has suspended eviction proceedings in court. But people are still receiving eviction notices — 700 cases filed in the state since the governor declared a public-health emergency. The tenants receiving eviction papers go to the courthouse to find that their cases won’t be heard during the pandemic. Furthermore, they are directed to another courthouse, where they learn they can’t file a response right now — information that was missing from the notices they originally received, noted NHLAA attorney Amy Eppler-Epstein.

In addition, even if landlords won’t be able to throw tenants out for a few months, those eviction cases will still be in the system — and the debts for unpaid rent will pile up. A system to funnel charitable dollars to landlords of evicted tenants might clear the debt while enabling landlords to pay their mortgages and taxes.

“I can think of reasons why we may or may not be the right agency. We certainly would be in favor of philanthropic and government funds” helping pay laid-off tenants’ rents, Eppler-Epstein said. She noted that NHLAA might subsequently be representing those same tenants in future court proceedings, so maybe another organization would be better positioned for such a task. She noted that in the past Liberty Community Services and Community Mediation have conducted eviction-prevention programs.

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“Discord” & Communication

Van Hoesen, who turned 30 in March, doesn’t own other properties. His main source of income is as a lead engineer at a company that develops software for nonprofits worldwide. In that role, too, he has encountered the need to think about fresh challenges amid the Covid-19 lockdown

He and his colleagues are now based at home. As techies, they’re used to remote online work. Since the shutdown, they have been linking up for daily online morning and afternoon meetings (through the Discord app rather than Zoom).

But like other tech companies, they do value encounters and random idea-sharing that usually happens only in person. That’s why they do generally work in one shared space in an office.

To try to compensate for the loss of in-person spontaneous idea-sharing, Van Hoesen has set up a ​“public chat channel” that his team keeps on during the day. Rather than overhearing side conversations in person, they can at least ​“see” those conversations take place online. And dive in with suggestions.

That happened the other day when a staff had trouble figuring out a coding challenge. A customer based in Norwalk wanted a receipt program it uses to show the money it spent both in euros and in dollars, because it does work with companies in Europe but banks here. The staffer was having trouble figuring out how to make that happen, and asked a colleague for advice. Another colleague who had encountered, and fixed, a similar problem ​“overheard” it on the chat channel and stepped in with the fix.

Live! From The CMT …

In his role as co-chair of the Westville/ West Hills Community Management Team, Van Hoesen is working on a similar technological pivot.

Before Covid-19, he had been in discussions with team members about whether to live-stream meetings. As a techie, he understood the value. But he also worried about losing the in-person benefit of group meetings. How, he asked, could the team ensure that an at-home viewer would be an ​“active” voice and ​“not just an ear”?

Covid-19 made that question mootish, for now. The next meeting will probably take place on Zoom, he said. Which enables everyone to pipe up.

And there’s no turning back: He predicted that when public gatherings are safe again, the team will probably set up a camera for live-streaming meetings. ​“I’ve got a lot of extra tech sitting around” that will do the job just fine, he said.

But he promised to make sure to include a monitor in a room so people inside the meeting can see those watching at home — and so people at home can raise their hands and join discussions in real time.

The goal is to have more people participating than before. He doesn’t worry about most neighbors stopping showing up in person at meetings once they’re live-streamed. ​“My community is very fond of hugs and handshakes,” he said. ​“That’s important.”