Michael Che honors his late grandmother who died from COVID-19 by covering rent for 160 public housing units

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Comedian Michael Che wants to honor his late grandmother, who died after contracting COVID-19.

How Michael Che honors grandmother

The “Saturday Night Live” star took to Instagram to announce that he plans to pay one month’s rent for all those living in his grandmother’s public housing complex.

“It’s crazy to me that residents of public housing are still expected to pay their rent when so many New Yorkers can’t even work,” Che wrote in the post.

“Obviously I cant offer much help by myself. But in the spirit and memory of my late grandmother, I’m paying one month’s rent for all 160 apartments in the NYCHA building she lived in.”

Che himself grew up in a housing project on Allen Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and has held fundraisers for NYCHA residents.

“You go without heat. You go without food, go without doorknobs, and go without everything. Elevators don’t work. There was grease and oil inside the elevators to keep off graffiti, but then you couldn’t touch the wall,” he told the New York Times last year.

“And the thing is, it’s all fixable! We can do something about this.”

Pandemic affecting paying rent

Nearly a third of American renters missed their April rent payments, and the number of coronavirus-related layoffs has swelled to more than 20 million as jobless claims climbed another 5.25 million last week, reports MarketWatch.