Elon Musk is Boring

Video Index (with direct links)
0:52 Restaurants use outdoor space for additional dining
1:38 Elon Musk’s Boring Company wants to dig a tunnel to the Ontario Airport
2:48 PPP Flexibility Act will help small business with some welcome changes
3:55 Mike gets on a shopping center roof
4:16 Split Roll has qualified for the November ballot
5:44 LA’s $100MM plan to help renters pay for rent
6:21 Squirrel caught in the act!

Hello Investors!

Just as the country is recovering from the pandemic, we are now dealing with a new challenge. The senseless killing of George Floyd has resulted in nationwide protests and riots. I hope we can come together as a country, eliminate racism, and move forward.

This past Friday, LA County was given the green light to reopen restaurants for dine-in services and barbershops. However, many restaurants are still struggling since they can only seat at 60% capacity. The city of Los Angeles has started a new temporary program called LA Al Fresco, which will streamline the approval process for any restaurant looking to expand their seating to outdoors. It will start with sidewalks and parking lots and then expand to the streets.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has proposed digging a 2.8 mile underground tunnel to link Rancho Cucamonga to Ontario airport. The first terminal would be at a new station along the San Bernardino rail line, and would connect that station to via an underground tunnel to terminal 2 at Ontario airport. The ride would take about 2 or 3 minutes.

Last week, The House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, by a vote of 417 to 1, which will ease restrictions on the requirements of the PPP Program for the loans to be forgiven.
• Only 60%, not 75% of the loan needs to be spent on payroll. That means that more funds are available to pay for rent.
• The window that businesses are allowed to use the funds is extended from 8 weeks to 24 weeks.
• Workers can be rehired by December 31. This was originally June 30.
The bill is now in the Senate, with Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell trying to get this passed unanimously in the Senate. If so, the goal is to get these new rules put in place quickly, hopefully by early next week.

During this pandemic, landlords have mostly been focusing on evictions, we sometimes lose track of other policies that are taking place in the background that are not coronavirus related. However, the split roll tax has now officially qualified for the November ballot. If this is passed, it would result in commercial properties over $3MM having their property taxes reassessed every three years. That means that your property tax could jump significantly every three years instead of the maximum 2% increase per year that was set forth by Proposition 13 back in 1978. Higher property taxes will make it a lot harder for many businesses to remain profitable. At a time where a significant number of landlords, and almost every small business in the state is struggling due to the coronavirus, it would be a terrible blow for our industry to increase their expenses further.

If you own residential rental properties in LA and your renters are having trouble paying rent, you may be in luck. A new program would use $100 million dollars from the federal government to help tenants pay their rent. Those who need assistance must be making 80% or less of the LA’s median income to qualify, and the rent payments would go directly to the property owner. This would be the largest rent relief program of any city in the US. The goal would to have this program up and running by July 1.

See the end of the video for a video of the squirrel who finally got to my bird feeder. Congratulations, squirrel!