California must release rent funds, stop evicting tenants
While hope is in the air for many Californians celebrating a shift back into “normal life” after 14 months of pandemic living, many of our parishioners and neighbors in Santa Clara County are buried beneath mounting debt due to lost wages during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, by the end of 2020, California tenants’ combined rent debt exceeded $3.7 billion and affected 1.1 million households, according to the Bay Area Equity Atlas.
Thankfully, significant federal funds are becoming available to California tenants who have struggled to pay rent due to COVID-19. That said, the state COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act, SB 91 that stipulates how counties can distribute this funding leaves out California’s most vulnerable families. Additional policy changes guided by moral principles are urgently needed now. Consider the importance of the common good, the unity of the family, and respect for the dignity of essential workers. In order to avoid massive displacement of families and a tsunami of evictions, the state must extend the eviction moratorium until the end of 2021 and amend SB 91 to allow more flexibility in fund distribution.
Many families are falling through the cracks of SB 91; these are San José’s most vulnerable renters and include many undocumented families. Currently, SB 91 only provides relief to tenants who owe back rent directly to their landlords. However, many Californians borrowed money from
family, friends, payday lenders and even loan sharks in order to pay rent and protect their housing. SB 91 cannot help them. Families who sublease (and don’t have the formal lease agreement papers required to apply for relief) have also been left behind. We must act quickly to provide a lifeline for these families. By allowing tenants to use these funds to prepay rent for at least six months (which also keeps landlords afloat), and by increasing relief eligibility to tenants who sublease, we will give California’s most vulnerable families the opportunity to get back to work and repay their massive debts.
The situation is urgent. Even renters and landlords who are eligible for relief funds through SB 91 need more time. The moratorium expires on June 30, but by then landlords and families will have only received a small fraction of available rental assistance funds. As of June 9, out of 88 applications submitted to the state with the help of one nonprofit, no tenant or landlord in Santa Clara County has reported receiving any relief from the state HomeKey, fund even though valid applications were submitted as early as two months ago. Tenants who have applied for relief are now receiving eviction notices. As reported in The Mercury News, agencies that distribute the funds are backlogged (“Bay Area tenants, landlords: Fix broken rental relief program,” The Mercury News, May 25). In order to avoid an evercompounding homelessness crisis, we must extend the eviction moratorium until the end of 2021, streamline the application process, and allow flexible rental assistance.
California must act now. This challenge is not unique to Santa Clara County — it exists throughout the state, and will impede our collective recovery from the pandemic. This is why we are joining together with fellow bishops, clergy and leaders from across the California Industrial Areas Foundation network to call upon Gov. Gavin Newsom and our state legislators to extend the eviction moratorium until the end of 2021 and amend SB 91 to allow more flexibility in rental assistance distribution to help low-income renters remain in their homes and landlords get relief. We must make recovery a possibility for all Californians.