Time to dust off this policy for the 21st Century.

Rent and mortgage moratorium relief for small business and farmers and families. And it doesn’t cost the taxpayers a cent.

San Francisco Chronicle
A rent and mortgage moratorium can stop the next Great Depression
By Hillary Ronen and Matt Haney 3/26/2020

You know the city has put a pause on evictions, but it hasn’t put a pause on debt.
“….If the pandemic continues for at least three more months — which most scientists say it will — on average, if you live alone, you will be $11,000 in debt to your landlord. If you’re one of the lucky workers who is eligible for unemployment, the baseline benefit is up to $450 a week (with another $600 in the federal stimulus deal), and if most of your income was in tips, then you’re getting nowhere close to that amount. Do you just stay in your apartment facing insurmountable debt, or do you break the shelter-in-place order to find work?

Meanwhile, the restaurants, salons, nightlife venues and clothing stores that used to employ you also have been closed down. And if that continues for even a few months, most of these small businesses, already under enormous financial stress from a decade of rent hikes, won’t reopen at all.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/a-rent-and-mortgage-moratorium-can-stop-the-next-great-depression/ar-BB11K22y

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/local-leaders-calling-for-stop-on-rent-and-moratorium-on-mortgages-during-covid-19-crisis/ar-BB122BcI

You are an inauthentic fact-finder, and quote whatever suits your personal wishes. Then you use emotive language to describe ‘lefties’ who seem to be all those people who are concerned about how the virus is progressing and decimating our world. This from you is not fact, just smart-arsed and ignorant.
You lefties feel like gullible dicks yet knowing that this harmless flu is actually just being used as a distraction from the huge financial shifting if wealth going on behind your backs?

My smart-arsed reply is you don’t know your A from your E, and wouldn’t know what goes on in hospitals either.
At the moment. It would surprise and shock you. Many are empty with staff on the ready and nothing to do.
Have a look at that situation, think about it, work out a possible plan to put to the Covid-19 manaters, and perhaps some day-surgery can be done, provided people sign a waiver against blaming government if there is some mishap and they get Covid-19 despite best attempts to prevent that. Get your sharp teeth into something real, and don’t waste time sitting at home sharpening them biting into our hides. That approach achieves nothing and spreads despondency and anger. Thanks for your input so far – Not!

And Andrew with your bite into education policy and knowledge. Your teeth are broken and need some high quality repair attention.

Trev, that is utter rubbish and seems to be your pet subject. Take me for example, Parents well off, intelligent did everything right etc etc. Only 2 kids and both of us broke and struggling despite qualifications and good work ethics. Try another tack will ya. The rest of your comments I agree with.

Trev is a bit of a Canary in a coal mine on this…he is right that there is a whole layer of people not accustomed to the reality of where the old 1964 Social Security Act is really at in the 21st century. Job Seeker Allowance is not easy to obtain, but easy to get cut off or sanctioned from. There is a whole world of pain awaiting small business people suddenly cut adrift from an income stream. Stand Downs, 70 cents in the dollar abatement rates on part time work, and you were going to mention your assets, relationships and partner still working?–uh huh…

Our glorious ex leader John Key was raised on a Widows Benefit in a warm, dry, state house. Went on to free tertiary education, and a career in international Finance Capital. A generation later he was saying “beneficiaries need a kick in the pants”.

The easy way to fix all this and retire “bennie stigma” is to disestablish WINZ/MSD, and expand IRD to administer a Basic Income around National Super level for most with some optional add ons. Food banks should not exist in this country.

The rarely mentioned deadly combo of neo liberal individualist pyschology and “anything goes” post modernist philosophy, have lot to answer for.