The Judicial Council of California on Thursday voted to end the statewide eviction moratorium next month, reopening courts to landlords and pressuring Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers to address a potential housing crisis.
Courts will be allowed to process evictions beginning Sept. 1, although a patchwork of more than 100 local laws could prevent delinquent tenants from being displaced. Most Bay Area counties and cities have passed renter protections during the coronavirus pandemic, although many are scheduled to expire in August.
Lawmakers pressured the justices for more time to craft a legislative solution, and the council delayed their decision by several weeks.
But the panel of state judges on Thursday insisted a permanent solution come from either the governor or the legislature. “In our ongoing conversations with Gov. Newsom and the Legislature, we have been responsive to their requests for additional time to develop and enact policy and legislative proposals,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said in a statement Thursday.
Assemblymember David Chiu (D- San Francisco) was grateful for the council’s decision to extend the deadline a few weeks. “This gives the legislature enough time to pass a solution to prevent evictions and foreclosures without a gap in protections,” said Chiu, chair of the Housing & Community Development Committee.
The Covid pandemic has hit many low income tenants and their landlords hard. Researchers at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation found nearly 1 million California renters have experienced job losses due to the health crisis. Nearly three-quarters of those apartments include a person of color.
Bay Area county and city laws are expected to slow displacement, but housing advocates say many poor, immigrant families may simply pick up and move before engaging with the courts.
Landlords and renters are also concerned about the lapse in federal unemployment supplements, a $600-a-week-boost which helped struggling tenants pay bills but ended in July.
One proposal from Chiu would ban evictions for unpaid rent during the emergency. Nine California mayors on Thursday backed the plan, including Sam Liccardo in San Jose, Libby Schaaf in Oakland, and London Breed in San Francisco.
The bill, AB 1436, would allow landlords to sue for the debt, and remove tenants if they continued to miss payments after the crisis passed. The ban would end 90 days after the pandemic state of emergency order is lifted or on April 1, 2021, whichever comes first.
The proposal would also allow small property owners to delay mortgage payments between 6 to 12 months on certain loans not backed by the federal government.
But landlord groups have assailed the proposal, saying it amounts to free rent for tenants and little aid for struggling property owners. The proposal could mean landlords receive no rent from a unit for up to a year, placing an unfair burden on small property owners. Many could lose their properties, landlords say.
“In many cases, the rent payments are an owner’s only source of income,” a coalition of landlord and developers wrote to Chiu last week. “Without a source of funding to help tenants and landlords, it is highly unlikely that tenants will be able to pay the back rent that is owed.”
