Dear Landlords,
I am writing today to urge you to consider your rent practices for the next one to three months. We in the small business community are immediately feeling the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are regrettably faced with laying off staff and trying to imagine how we will pay our bills, and they theirs.Â
The largest expense most of us have is our rent. A great many of us cannot weather another financial storm. The net results of this are the same. Our thriving downtown could be all but a memory and rebuilding in the face of the looming global recession will be quite uncertain. There is a real opportunity at present to help protect and preserve Healdsburg, its entrepreneurs and its residents by considering temporary rent abatement, rent subsidy and forbearance. We need a sense of economic patriotism to survive as a community.
In these extraordinary times, we are taking extraordinary measures to keep ourselves, our friends, families, and colleagues safe. The extraordinary measures that you take now can protect our community from the worst financial impacts this pandemic will have on our town, as well as allow us to recover efficiently when this storm has finally passed. Please help to preserve our business and residential community with your forbearance.
Christina Stafford
Healdsburg
