Nine out of 10 bars and restaurants did not pay full rent in August | The NY Journal
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Only 60% of landlords have partially or fully forgiven their rent at some point in the pandemic
Outdoor service has not allowed the entire food industry to survive.
Photo:
Fernando Martínez / Impremedia
Nine out of 10 bars and restaurants, increasingly, have not been able to pay full or full rent for the premises they occupy in New York City.
This has been verified by the organization that brings together most of these establishments, the NYC Hospitality Alliance, which in the monthly survey it does on the occasion of the problems posed by COVID-19, has found that last month 87% of they owed the landlord the month of August, partially or completely.
And this is added to the fact that in June it was 80% who were in this situation and in July 83%.
The Alliance recalls that these are numbers of companies that have operations abroad but whose owners are “desperate” because September 30 arrives and with it the openings inside the premises. When it is possible to enter a restaurant, it can only be done at 25% capacity. The bars still have no opening date.
Restaurant owners want to know what the roadmap is for expanding this capacity since most of them cannot reach profitability unless the capacity is above 70%.
The viability of a good part of the restaurants is compromised by this uncertain future and a past with debts to the landlords, most of whom have not opened their hand. According to the same survey by the Alliance, carried out between the last week of August and the first days of September, 60% of landlords have not forgiven their rent during the pandemic and those who have, only a third of them have reduced More than 50%.
90% of those surveyed have not been able to renegotiate the rental contract due to the pandemic. The Alliance executive director, Andrew Rigie, explained in a statement that the bar and restaurant industry is “financially devastated.” A sector in which a good number of Latinos and immigrants work but in which there are also many entrepreneurs from the Latino community, already had certain difficulties before the pandemic, but now the situation is extreme.
“We are seeing continuous closures and approximately 150,000 workers are still unemployed when the vast majority of those who remain open cannot pay their rent,” laments Rigie before recalling that this is an essential activity of the economy. The alliance urgently calls for relief in rents, an indefinite expansion of street service and a calendar for expanding operations within restaurants.
In addition, insurers are required to cover business interruptions, something they probably will not do because most of them only do so if there has been physical damage to the establishment that prevents its operation.
The eviction and embargo moratorium extended
The governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced on Monday the extension until October 20 of the moratorium on eviction and seizure of business premises for non-payment. This moratorium began on March 20 when the state activated the “pause” to lower the rate of contagion of COVID-19.
It is a little more time for tenants and mortgages to reach an agreement or pay some of the pending bills.
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