Relief may not reach landlords, renters by deadline

Statewide eviction protections are set to end June 30

Daisy Song scrimped and saved to make it through the COVID-19 pandemic as its shockwaves took away her main source of income.

The single mother trimmed expenses and winter heating to make ends meet. She's waiting for more than $50,000 in state rental relief — as a landlord, not a tenant.

She's paid utilities and expenses for her tenants, who she said haven't paid rent in two years, rather than risk fines for letting her El Cerrito rental home fall into uninhabitable disrepair.

At least 16,000 Bay Area aid applications, like the one Song is depending on, have been pending for months with the state, according to a recent review of the California emergency rental assistance program.

“The process just stopped. There's no updates,” Song said. “It just feels very unfair.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that the state has distributed more than $5 billion in the country's largest rental assistance program. But advocates say California is unlikely to settle relief claims before statewide eviction protections end June 30 and make it easier for landlords to remove nonpaying tenants.

At its current pace, the state will not finish processing applications until the middle of July, according to one analysis by the National Equity Atlas. The delay could disrupt housing for many poor families and tenants.

“We don't know what share of indebted renters will become homeless,” said Sarah Treuhaft, co-author of the analysis, “but some will become homeless.”

The pandemic has hit not only tenants hard, but mom-and-pop landlords, too. Small-property owners often have little choice but to pay their mortgages, keep up their prop

erties and hope state relief will help them recoup lost rents. The aid applications require information from both renters and landlords, and most payments are made directly to property owners.

The emergency rental assistance program, launched in March 2021, has been a patchwork of state and local efforts designed to keep families housed and stable during the health crisis. San Francisco, Santa Clara and Alameda counties were among Bay Area municipalities to establish local programs.

The Department of Housing and Community Development estimates the state and local relief programs, funded largely by the federal government and supplemented by California lawmakers, have kept 1.2 million residents in their homes during the pandemic. The state program has aided more than 300,000 households. The average payment has been about $11,000.

HCD has sped up processing of applications since the program closed to new requests April 1. California's total relief effort is expected to top $8.1 billion, nearly $3 billion more than initially earmarked.

“We're advancing funding to help more families get back on their feet through this historic effort,” Newsom said in a statement. “As California's recovery progresses, the state is committed to continuing our work to ensure the hardest-hit communities have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

But the massive aid program has come with challenges. Landlords and tenants have complained the system is hard to navigate, and slow to process requests. Advocates say the state has not done enough to reach immigrant communities and non-native English speakers.

About 22,000 applicants in the Bay Area have pending applications or are awaiting payment, according to the most recent National Equity Atlas analysis released last week. Roughly 37,000 applicants have been paid, and 13,000 of those have applied for additional relief. Tenants with pending applications are protected through the end of June from most eviction suits for unpaid pandemic rent.

For Song, the relief can't come too soon. She works three jobs to support her two school-age children. She received an initial check from the state for $45,000 to cover the first 10 months of unpaid rent from 2020, she said.

But the tenants have continued to pile up debt on the unpaid, $4,500-amonth rent and utility payments on the four-bedroom house, she said. So Song turned off the heat in her own Albany home, and put up with a raccoon in her attic because she could not afford pest control.

Song could evict her tenants for not paying April's rent, but the state would then deny the current application and she would receive nothing. She wants to replace her renters if the rent relief check eventually comes.

“It's horrible,” she said of her quandary. “It's just ridiculous.”