SOCIAL Development Minister Donna Cox is asking landlords not to evict tenants who cannot afford rent.
But should the State not do more than simply beg for acts of charity?
'While there are no pandemic-related orders to protect tenants from being evicted,' Ms Cox observed on Thursday, 'we want to ask landlords to have some compassion for their tenants during these unprecedented and challenging times.'
Yet the State must by now realise such protection orders are needed precisely because of these unprecedented and challenging circumstances. There should be a moratorium on evictions.
Ms Cox's appeal is the latest in a long line of attempts by the State to use moral suasion to address an issue that no longer merits or is adequately met by such an approach.
Last month, Tobago's Secretary of Health Tracy Davidson-Celestine issued what she described as 'a special plea' to landlords to delay evictions in cases when the tenant has applied for rental assistance.
Last year, at the start of this pandemic ordeal, the Prime Minister asked landlords to 'have a heart' and said it was time to see 'the milk of human kindness.'
But more than a year later, amid another lockdown and with a dangerous delta covid19 variant now upon us, the milk of human kindness, like landlords' and tenants' cash flows, is running dry.
From day one, the Government should have realised that while landlords have a moral imperative here, the State also has a duty, some would say a constitutional responsibility, which is equally pressing.
While it is easy to demonise them, property owners, too, need help.
By constantly appealing to landlords, the State is effectively delegating its own responsibility to provide a social safety net for the vulnerable to private landowners who are already under strain precisely because of their inability to collect rent, possibly their only source of income.
The constant appeals from state officials, which are clearly falling on deaf ears, achieve nothing but pitting one suffering group against another: landlords, who have bills to pay and mortgages to service, against tenants.
There is by now profuse international precedent for the use of eviction restrictions. In the US multiple states have moratoriums, while the UK has a ban on rental-property evictions enforceable by bailiffs, which has been extended to March next year.
It is true the State has less money available to fund similar measures here. But we are talking about the provision of one of the most fundamental of human needs: shelter. If the Government cannot find the funds, it can certainly devise creative ways (tax holidays, home repair grants) to reward landlords who do not evict.
The State wants landlords to hold their hand, but it is the State that has been holding its hand for far too long.
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