Evictions are only part of state's problem

California has another new law to extend the pandemic-related moratorium on eviction of tenants for failure to pay rent.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis recently signed the bill into law while Gov. Gavin Newsom was out of the country on vacation with his family, itself an indication that the state of emergency has ended in every way except legally.

In passing Assembly Bill 2179, lawmakers acknowledged that the extraordinary tenant protections enacted when the state was ordering “non-essential” workers to stop working can't go on forever. The law fell short of what tenant activist groups wanted. It offered protection from eviction only to people who had applied by the March 31 deadline for rent relief, and only through June 30 while the state continues to work through the backlog of applications.

Last June, when state lawmakers approved a third eviction moratorium, it was widely expected that it would be the last one.

However, the rent relief program has experienced the familiar struggles of California's COVID-19 relief programs, getting the money out to fewer than half the applicants who filled out the form requesting aid. For the average tenant, the wait was approximately three months.

It wasn't fair, lawmakers reasoned, to allow landlords to evict people for non-payment when they had applied for rent relief but the state's delays were responsible for their inability to pay.

Tenant groups complained that the new law caused all other tenants to lose their protection from eviction on April 1. Advocates argued that the system is extremely difficult to navigate. A survey of 58 tenant organizations by the advocacy group Tenants Together reported that 90% of the groups said their tenants were having trouble with the application process, and that language access was inadequate.

A recent Census Bureau survey found that more than 900,000 California households said they were not confident they'd be able to pay rent in April.

The problem in California goes far beyond the pandemic. There are many jobs available now, but that doesn't mean the jobs pay enough to pay the rent in California.

State policies are driving up costs and driving out businesses, which can move to other states where taxes are lower and salaries go further. The affordability of housing is affected by income levels as well as housing prices.

None of the problems are solved by telling property owners that they cannot collect the rent that is owed to them.

All that does is drive people out of the rental housing business. If you were trying to create a housing crisis, you'd be hard pressed to find a faster way to do it.

The new law limits the ability of local governments to add their own eviction moratoriums, which will help create more stability in the rental housing market.

And it pushes the state toward more normal conditions, in which contracts must be honored and cannot simply be suspended by government action.

Ultimately, however, state lawmakers need to address the failures of policies that are causing high-paying jobs to leave the state while pushing up the cost of energy, transportation, housing and food.

What the state really needs is a moratorium on bad laws.