POLICY MEMO: COMMERCIAL TENANCY INTERVENTION FOR COVID19 RESILIENCE

How state governments can provide relief and certainty to businesses while allowing landlords to participate in economic resilience.

This policy intervention aims to prevent long-term economic recession by ensuring businesses can hold on and not have to close forever under the social distancing measures introduced this week. 

We support calls for a moratorium on residential evictions to prevent this crisis exacerbating homelessness in our cities. We focus on preventing commercial evictions because of their potential to have massive roll on consequences in the form of further job loss and provoke long-term recession.

This policy package is highly cost-effective and relatively cheap for the future taxpayer when compared to demand-side stimulus payouts direct to commercial tenants.

In brief, the policy consists of three elements: 

1. A moratorium on commercial evictions
2. Cash incentive to landlords: up to 50 cents for every dollar they forego in rent
3. State-issued loans to cover the shortfall.

Download the full memo here.