Assembly bill aims at preventing wave of evictions due to the pandemic.
SACRAMENTO — Landlords would be barred from evicting tenants in California for not paying their rent during the coronavirus pandemic, under legislation a San Francisco lawmaker plans to introduce Wednesday.
Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu said his bill, AB1436, is intended to prevent what advocates fear will be a wave of evictions once temporary protections are lifted for millions of Californians who have lost their jobs in recent months. While the bill would not provide tenants with direct financial aid, it would give them more time to make up their unpaid rent and take the threat of eviction off the table.
Many Californians were struggling to afford high rents even before the pandemic, Chiu said, and the state now risks adding to its surging homelessness population.
“This was already a horrific situation. It has gotten exponentially worse,” he said. “We’re trying to provide a path for transitioning out of
this COVID19 crisis.”
Policymakers have been grappling with how to keep people in their homes amid an economic shutdown that has pushed nearly 6 million Californians into unemployment since March.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, local governments and the judicial branch all adopted policies that have halted evictions during the pandemic, but those moratoriums may be lifted soon. Newsom’s executive order allowing cities to freeze evictions for tenants who lost income because of the coronavirus is set to expire at the end of July. The court system will decide this week whether to resume eviction cases in August.
It’s not known how many tenants have been unable to meet their obligations for the three months of rent that have come due so far. A recent U.S. Census Bureau survey found that nearly 14% of California tenants did not pay or deferred their rent last month, while more than 31% had no or only slight confidence that they would be able to pay in June.
If even a fraction of California’s 17 million renters wind up losing their homes, tenant advocates warn, it could be a catastrophe. Facing a projected $54.3 billion deficit, the state has limited resources to offer relief, and a federal bailout that many are hoping for is at a standstill in Congress.
“I don’t see any scenario where government comes to the full rescue of everyone who is suffering,” Chiu said.
His bill would prohibit landlords from seeking to evict tenants for any rent they did not pay during the state of emergency that Newsom has declared for the coronavirus pandemic and for 90 days after it is rescinded.
Tenants would be expected to resume paying rent at that point, and could be evicted if they fell behind on those payments. But they would have a year to start repaying any back rent that they accumulated during the pandemic. At the end of that year, landlords could file a civil action to recoup the remaining money.
San Francisco supervisors passed a similar proposal Tuesday, extending permanent eviction protections to tenants who missed rent payments during the pandemic.
Chiu said his approach strikes a balance, encouraging landlords to let tenants stay in their homes while they pay back what they owe. He said he wants to give people more time to make up their unpaid rent, so everything doesn’t come due as soon as eviction protections expire.
“We’re advocating a different way to handle that scenario,” he said.
But the openended timeline is likely to present a political challenge. Newsom’s state of emergency for the pandemic could last for months or even years, to give the state more flexibility in dealing with potential future outbreaks.
As communities across California have considered their own measures to give tenants grace periods, landlord groups have argued it amounts to an unlawful taking of property.
“There must be consideration for small rental property owners who have gone months without the rent and have a mortgage and expenses to pay,” Debra Carlton, lobbyist for the California Apartment Association, said in an email.
The group is a powerful force at the state Capitol. It backs SB1410 by Sen. Anna Caballero, DSalinas, which would create a taxpayerfinanced fund to cover at least 80% of the rent that a tenant could not afford because of the pandemic, for up to seven months, if the landlord forgives the rest.
Another renter relief measure, AB828, by Assemblyman Phil Ting, DSan Francisco, would freeze evictions and allow courts to set up repayment plans.
Brian Augusta, director of the Rural Housing Project at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, said those bills put too much onus on renters to seek help and give landlords veto power. His organization is sponsoring Chiu’s measure.
“We need to provide this baseline protection that ensures people can’t be evicted,” Augusta said.
That would buy more time for the Legislature to figure out a financial solution, he added.
Senate leaders have floated a proposal to give landlords tax credits to forgive the rent of tenants who cannot pay because of financial hardships related to the coronavirus, but it has not been formally introduced yet. Other bills moving through the Legislature would allow property owners to push back their mortgage payments and request an emergency reassessment of their property taxes.
Augusta said it’s in landlords’ interest to keep their tenants housed and stable, so they can eventually earn enough to pay back their missed rent. Evicting them, he said, is “not going to put money in anyone’s pocket.”