Two rent payments ago, Donald Trump announced what he termed some “really positive things” for millions of people who were nervous about evictions during the economic shutdown. “Landlords are going to take it easy!” he said. This was not rhetoric: Trump International Hotel, in Washington, D.C., soon asked for rent relief from its own landlord, the federal government, which has yet to announce a decision on whether to grant it. (Evictions continued apace at the real-estate firm owned by Jared Kushner.) Despite the news, rent was still due on April 1st for most American renters, and nearly a third of them couldn’t pay. More were expected to fall off the books for May.
“I have seven hundred and seventy-three dollars in my bank account,” Winsome Pendergrass, a Jamaican-born domestic worker, said at the end of last month. “My rent is nine hundred and fifty-eight dollars and sixty-five cents. I paid in April, but now I can’t. I call it Can’t-Pay May.”
Pendergrass, who is sixty-two, sat on a sofa in the two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in Brownsville that she shares with her daughter, her granddaughter, and a lot of plants. She is trying to turn missed rent payments into a movement. She belongs to New York Communities for Change, a group that has organized a rent strike among its five thousand members. “We try to encourage our members: Have a conversation with your landlord,” she said. “But many landlords are pushing papers under their doors saying, ‘Your responsibility is to pay.’ ”
New York State has banned evictions until mid-June, and a bill proposed in the City Council seeks to extend the grace period to April, 2021, in the five boroughs, but renters will have to make up missed payments. Pendergrass and her group have called on Trump and Governor Andrew Cuomo to cancel rents and mortgages permanently for the duration of the stay-at-home order.
Pendergrass was getting ready for a rent-strike meeting, held on Zoom, for renters across the city. She wore red lipstick and earrings in the shape of leaves. Around dinnertime, video feeds started popping up on her screen. Fifty-eight people attended the last meeting. This time, there were a hundred and eighty-eight.
People shared their stories. Peggy Perkins (1 BR, $1,336, Hempstead, mold problems) said she’d been homeless, with three children, before finally finding financial stability. She’d just registered a name for a beauty parlor she planned to open: Luxurious LaBelle Hair and Spa. She was applying for a loan when the coronavirus hit. No more haircuts, no more income. She tried talking to her landlord, but he wouldn’t negotiate. (He said he needs the money to pay his employees, such as the building’s superintendent.)
Another woman, Donnette (1½ BR, $1,700, Canarsie), had been working as a home health aide but lost her job on April 12th, when her client, who was ninety-eight, died from the virus. Donnette stayed with the woman at her nursing home, because her family wasn’t allowed in. “I refused to leave her,” she said. “It was a choice. It was no longer employment, but it was duty.” Donnette said she could get by for a few months, if she zeroed out her savings. She didn’t expect to receive a stimulus check, because she is an undocumented immigrant, from Jamaica. “I’m trying to do the math, and I can’t make sense of it,” she said.
“She’s not a lazy person,” Pendergrass said of Donnette, after the meeting. “As they say, a Jamaican’s always got three jobs. And is going to school. But the hammer is over her head.” Pendergrass is now a U.S. citizen. She thought her own three-job days were over, but she figures that, without assistance, she’ll have to start working extended hours, seven days a week, to keep her apartment. Recently, she called her life-insurance company to ask about taking money out.
A man in an oversized gray shirt began to speak. He was nervous about the strike. “All the people I know are very scared,” he said, in Spanish. “We’re not going to pay rent for two or three months? O.K., that’s fine, but what about after? We’re going to be in debt.”
Pendergrass jumped in. If they couldn’t pay, she said, they were better off not paying together. “We are just forcing Albany to address renters,” she said. “We are the sufferers.”
People kept talking and listening, and, inside their little Zoom squares, they went about their evening routines. A woman fried tortillas. A man wearing a gold chain hugged a Teddy bear. A woman brushed a girl’s hair. On the walls were portraits of Jesus, graduation photos, and finger paintings. The sun went down and lamps turned on. The apartments were neat and messy and nice and dingy, but they were all, for the moment, home. ♦
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May 02, 2020 at 05:14PM
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The New York Renters Who Can’t Pay May - The New Yorker
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