Update on legislation to address eviction crisis for tenants and landlords

Vidya Sethuraman
India Post News Service

Assembly member David Chiu has been at the forefront of legislative efforts to avoid mass evictions of millions of Californians who are out of rent while ensuring that landlords are able to meet their financial obligations. EMS call on September 2 was organized to provide an update on what the legislature was and wasn’t able to do and outlined the next steps.

Assembly member David Chiu has reached a compromise with Gov. Gavin Newsom and the big landlord groups on a relatively limited bill to protect renters from evictions during the COVID pandemic. Everyone knows that before the pandemic California was grappling with the most intense housing and homelessness crisis.  We have 17 million renters who have been hanging by a thread even before the pandemic and the recession since the pandemic there have been millions of Californians who have been unable to pay rent. This bill will allow San Francisco’s existing ban on evictions for non-payment of rent to remain in place, at least until next year.

Under Assembly Bill 3088, tenants would be allowed to stay in their homes through at least Jan. 31, 2021, as long as they pay a portion of their rent. “This bill is far from perfect,” Chiu said. “Many tenant protections I fought for in AB 1436 are not in this bill, but we must put in temporary protections to get us through the next five months.” Under the measure, landlords can’t evict tenants who did not pay their rent between March 1 and Aug. 31. It would also ban evictions for tenants affected by the virus who pay at least 25% of their rent that’s due between Sept. 1 and Jan. 31. The proposal falls short of the tenant protections of an earlier bill, AB 1436, authored by David Chiu, which would have prohibited evictions through April.

The law also expands small claims court jurisdiction to allow landlords to recover deferred rent starting in March and extends anti-foreclosure protections to small landlords. “If we don’t act by midnight tonight, any tenant who’d been unable to pay any and all unpaid rent, would immediately have to pay that rent back or be subject to an eviction,” Chiu said, less than three hours before the moratorium’s expiration. “A wave of massive eviction would be catastrophic — catastrophic for homelessness and COVID-19 spread. It would turn this recession into a Great Depression.” The California Apartment Association, meanwhile, lauded the new bill, which it characterized as a major improvement over AB 1436.

David Chiu represents the 17th Assembly District, which encompasses eastern San Francisco. Since 2016, he has served as Chair of the Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee.