I don’t disagree completely, but we’re all doing the same thing here: we pull up some edge case to “prove” our point.

Big corporation? fk you — I didn’t plan for this, but neither did you. If nobody’s paying me, then I’m not paying you. You’ll get “assistance” (a handout) from the government and you’ll be fine. I’m trying to figure out how to make $1200 last for (at least) 3 months to feed my family.

Mr. 70-year old retired John Smith? I’m guessing we’re talking about very few units here AND John Smith has been smart about this from the get-go and has maintained open lines of communications with his tenants — let’s talk openly and come up with a way for all us to get through it together instead of stonewalling behind legal documents.

How about this? (and I can’t claim this idea as my own) Big banks, who prepared for this downturn by partying like 18-year basketball players with their first pro contract will take the next 3 months loan payments and just tack ’em on at the end of the original term, while take no payments during the next 90 days. The government, instead of writing big checks to big banks, distributes it to the folks who actually need it, for you know, food and rent. Everybody eats, Mr. John Smith gets his rent payments and everyone gets by. No one get rich, but no one goes hungry.

Of course the big cry is that “someone will take advantage of this, so we can’t just hand out money to actual people” so we do what we’ve always done under the (very) misguided notion that our large institutions will be more responsible with the cash. BS — we’re so afraid that someone making minimum wage will get an extra grand or two that we hand out billion dollar checks to fund stock buy backs and bonuses. We’ve tried “top down” so many times in the past and keep falling for it — let’s reverse it and see how the money flows “up”.