Originally published on Atlanta Agent Magazine.

Everyone in the multifamily sector is feeling the pain of the COVID-19 outbreak right now, from owners to residents to maintenance workers.

“There’s a lot of stress out there,” Doug Bibby, president of the National Multifamily Housing Council, said in a webinar Tuesday organized by the Urban Land Institute to examine what owners and operators of multifamily buildings can do to ease the pain of the coronavirus pandemic and the social isolation that comes with combating it. “Love on your residents any way you can.”

Bibby and the other panelists involved in the webinar noted that the recently passed CARES Act did not do enough for multifamily housing. Among other provisions, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition Diane Yentel noted that her organization will be lobbying Congress to include measures such as a national uniform moratorium on foreclosures, as well as evictions. “Small landlords cannot afford to maintain their units without rents coming in,” she said. “We all have a stake in getting this right.”

Regardless of the legislation that still needs to be crafted, the webinar also included a few small things that real estate professionals can do right now to make a real difference in their residential communities.