Business evictions on hold till March
Newsom executive order extends local bans
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday allowing local jurisdictions to continue banning commercial evictions of tenants affected by the coronavirus pandemic until the end of March 2021.
Newsom cited the ongoing economic fallout from the pandemic and the need to protect businesses in extending the order, which was set to expire at the end of September.
Retailers, gyms, barbershops and restaurants were forced to shutter for months under Bay Area health orders, causing unprecedented economic devastation. More than 2,000 Bay Area businesses were permanently closed in San Francisco and the East Bay and another 3,000 were temporarily closed, according to data from Yelp as of July 10. The San Francisco metro area had the thirdhighest rate of permanent closures in the country, behind only Honolulu and Las Vegas, according to Yelp.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city would extend its local eviction moratorium until the end of March.
“Losing these protections would have been devastating for struggling small businesses,” Breed wrote on Twitter.
San Francisco stores, gyms and barbershops are allowed to reopen at reduced capacity, but restaurants still have not been approved for indoor dining. City officials are requesting that the state reevaluate a
decision to designate the city as red rather than orange under the state’s reopening system. An orange designation, based on improving infection numbers, would allow restaurants to reopen indoors.
Laurie Thomas, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in San Francisco, said this month that restaurants continue to struggle even with the expansion of outdoor dining.
Thomas owns two restaurants, Rose’s Cafe and Terzo, where she had to lay off 65 people and lost tens of thousands of dollars in August with outdoor dining.
“I'm not even sure we're going to survive,” she said.
Major retailers, including Gap, Nordstrom and Saks, have been sued by landlords for alleged nonpayment of rent at San Francisco properties.
In June, the Legislature killed SB939, sponsored by Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, that would have made the eviction protections permanent during the pandemic. The bill also would have allowed lease negotiations for tenants hurt by the coronavirus and allowed them to break leases with no penalties. The proposal was heavily opposed by the real estate industry.