In the meantime, I wrote a story about rent, which has puzzled me so greatly. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/business/economy/coronavirus-rent-landlords-tenants.html

The first week of the shutdown, something like a third of renters didn't pay. Then, bam, the stimulus and unemployment money went out, and things stabilized really quickly.

Then, weirdly, things got BETTER in May. I've talked to something like 40 landlords over the past three weeks, and sat in on most the big REIT earnings, and the numbers are just perplexing.

Anyway, so, as the NYT and economists like @p_ganong have showed, something like 2/3 of people eligible for unemployment benefits should be getting more than they would when they were working.

And this appears to have stabilized things to a degree I frankly didn't think possible, given that 40% of HHs can't afford an emergency $400.

The question is what happens next. My biggest fear is the loss of what housing wonks call "naturally occurring affordable housing," which is a euphemism for old, cheap apartments that anyone can just get. No citizen tests, no sitting on a list or enduring a lottery.

This housing, which is disproportionately owned by smaller landlords with little financial cushion - and is basically the only place lower-income undocumented people can live w/out crowding to unsafe levels - has fallen dramatically.

Now there's a huge fear it could get worse. This means small landlords and low-income tenants are in a symbiotic relationship. If the small landlords fail, they'll lose their places, and the already precious stock of NOAH will be further depleted.

It's not a political statement to say that it's unlikely that stock gets preserved w/out some form of government backstop for smaller landlords and tenants. The exact form that takes is politics, but the math is pretty simple and dire.