I live downtown in a coastal city. What I’m seeing is a lot of young men living in the streets. This is the other side of this story some young adults don’t have a home to go back to after job loss and eviction. We’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg. I expect a lot more social upheaval in the coming years. Social services are going to get severely strained.
This has been the case in California for a long time. Unless we just forgive rent until a vaccine is out, many people will never catch up.
If 'we' forgive rent owed landlords, will 'we' also forgive the mortgages those landlords owe the banks? Will 'we' also forgive the obligations the banks which owe to other banks and their investors? Will 'we' also forgive the obligations those investors owe, for example to pensioners? Will 'we' then step up and pay for those pensioners' food and … rent?
An economy is a gigantic web of interlocking relationships. It takes years (one might even say centuries!) to build and develop all of those, but it takes far less effort to destroy them. It is computationally impossible for anyone to understand all of an economy, and thus impossible for anyone to make good decisions on behalf of an entire economy.
If we are worried about folks without resources, we should give them some. Yes, that runs the risk of encouraging those who want to get those resources (e.g. student financial aid encourages the growth of the academic industry, mortgage assistance encourages the growth of the real estate industry &c.): we should probably just give the poor some amount of money and let them make their own decisions about it. Call it unemployment or UBI or whatever.