COVID Eviction Defense
On March 31st, 2022, the California legislature approved Assembly Bill 2179. This bill extended California’s eviction moratorium from March 31st to June 30th. This means that landlords in the state are not allowed to evict a tenant for nonpayment of rent if the tenant applied for COVID-19 emergency rental assistance on or before March 31st. The extension of the moratorium only applies to unpaid rent before March 31st, meaning that tenants must continue paying rent and utility bills on April 1st. If a tenant misses the deadline to apply to the rental assistance program, their landlord will still be able to take them to court over missed rent.
Under the bill, landlords can only evict a tenant before June 30th if:
The landlord applied for rental assistance to cover the portion of rental debt that was amassed due to COVID-19 hardship.
This application was denied due to lack of eligibility, funding, or failure by the tenant to complete their portion of the application in a timely manner.
Another notable aspect of the new law is that local jurisdictions will not be allowed to enact any new tenant protections until July 1st and many protections that were supposed to begin April 1st were postponed. Although the extension of the eviction moratorium will help some tenants stay in their homes, the postponement of local protections leaves thousands of tenants vulnerable. 90% of organizations helping renters apply for aid reported that tenants had difficulties applying for rental assistance due to inadequate language access and lack of awareness of the program. Even though the eviction protection was extended, the deadline to apply for rental assistance stayed the same. The implications of this are that tenants who had difficulty applying for rent relief or were unaware of the program are still at risk of getting evicted.