Personally, I'm doing my best to come out the other side of this without taking any of these "freebies" if someone needs EI, they've paid into that, cool. But this mortgage thing is freaking me out. Credit ratings work as "paid or not paid" there's no "the government says it's okay to miss a payment category" Even if they do sort that out, I can't help but think that when a person's mortgage comes up for renewal in a few years that they'll be told by the bank that their interest rate is higher than advertised because they've demonstrated themselves to be high risk.