When Alan called his tenant Christina to say skip April’s rent, she thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t.
In April 2020, Christina Marie was doing the math that millions of families were doing that spring, and the numbers weren’t adding up. A mother of four in Saginaw, Michigan, she was struggling to cover her bills as the pandemic ground everyday life to a halt. She had three packs of meat in her fridge and knew she’d need to make a grocery run soon, which meant going out during one of the most frightening early months of the outbreak. Then her landlord called.
His name was Alan, and he had something to tell her: don’t worry about rent this month. They’d figure it out later.
“SOOO My landlord Alan called me earlier and told me not to worry about rent this month and we will worry about it later i said okay!” Christina wrote in a Facebook post that would eventually rack up more than 500,000 reactions. She was grateful, she explained, and that was that. Or so she thought.
During the call, Alan had also asked her a simple question: did she have food? She told him about the meat, mentioned she needed to get to the store. He told her to be safe and hung up.
A little while later, her phone buzzed. It was a text from Alan, asking her to go check her front porch.
She opened the door to find 16 bags of groceries waiting for her. Cartons of milk, potatoes, diapers and more, quietly left without any fanfare. Alan had decided she shouldn’t have to go out at all.
“I couldn’t tell you how I feel right now for him to do this for my family my heart is so touched GOD BLESS YOU,” she wrote, alongside a photo of her porch overflowing with bags.
According to Goalcast, Alan had been inspired by another landlord, Nathan Nichols, who had publicly announced he was giving his tenants a rent-free April because of the “serious financial hardship” the pandemic was causing for hourly and service workers. Nichols had also put out a call to other landlords: “I ask any other landlords out there to take a serious look at your own situation and consider giving your tenants some rent relief as well.” Alan took that to heart, and then went further.
The post spread fast. Commenters poured in from across the country, many of them saying what a lot of people were thinking. “Better keep him as your landlord because it is really hard to find a good hearted person like that,” wrote Balentin Torres. Mivida Loca added, “It’s nice to know that we can stick together during such times and that there are decent human beings like that around.”
Others were more direct: they wished Alan was their landlord too.
The story keeps resurfacing because it captures something people were hungry for in those early, disorienting weeks of the pandemic, and still look for now. Not a grand gesture from a famous face or a corporation with a PR team, but one person quietly deciding that someone else’s situation was his business too, and doing something about it.
