Newsom signs into law extension of California eviction protections, rent relief

Featured in the Los Angeles Times:

SACRAMENTO - California tenants will be protected from evictions for another three months, and those with low incomes will have all of their past-due rent paid by the state, under a bill signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The governor acted just hours after both houses of the Legislature approved the bill extending the eviction protections through Sept. 30. Lawmakers cited urgency stemming from the expiration of previous protections that was set for Wednesday.

“California will significantly increase cash assistance to low-income tenants and small landlords under the state’s $5.2 billion rent relief program, making it the largest and most comprehensive COVID rental protection and rent relief program of any state in the nation,” said a statement by Newsom’s office.

The action doubles the funding of the rent relief program, allowing payment of 100% of low-income tenants’ past-due rent back to April 2020 and until the expiration of the eviction protections, as money is available.

Landlords and tenants can apply immediately for the expanded rent relief.

In addition to prohibiting eviction of tenants who pay at least 25% of their rent for another three months, the new measure blocks landlords from getting a court order for eviction before giving tenants a chance to apply for rent relief through March 2022.

Some 758,000 California households owe back rent; the average amount they are behind is $4,700, according to research by PolicyLink and the USC Equity Research Institute.

Newsom negotiated the proposal with legislative leaders and signed the bill along with a main budget bill that had been approved by the Legislature on June 14.

The eviction bill, AB 832, was passed on a 34-0 bipartisan vote in the state Senate, although some Republicans complained that the state has mishandled distribution of rent relief funds, and the extension has unduly harmed landlords.

Sen. Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel) voted for the bill after proposing, without success, that the eviction protections be extended only to those who could document financial hardship from the pandemic by showing they have applied for unemployment benefits.

“Everyone else needs to pay their rent,” Bates said. “Rental property owners have borne the weight of this Legislature’s and the governor’s actions quite long enough.”

The three-month extension was opposed by some landlord groups, including the California Rental Housing Assn.

“We have been under severe financial distress for an excess of 18 months now, and AB 832 will not help the tens of thousands of small mom and pop rental providers who are financially suffering and are struggling to continue providing affordable and safe housing for their residents,” said Christine LaMarca, the association’s president.

On Monday, the state reported that it had paid out just $73 million of the $1.4 billion it had made available in March, while applications have been submitted for a total of $722 million. Counties and cities, given $1.2 billion to distribute, are also struggling.

Democratic lawmakers said they have been assured by the Newsom administration that it is improving the distribution process.

Tenant advocates had complained that a 32-page application for rent relief made it hard for many to apply, but officials said the form has been simplified, and renters can now self-certify that they were financially burdened by the pandemic.

The approval of the bill was hailed Monday by tenant advocates including Patricia Mendoza, a renter and leader of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

“Now I don’t have this massive financial burden on my back and my family’s stability isn’t dependent on my landlord’s participation in the rent relief program,” said Mendoza, a resident of Imperial Beach.

Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) said his bill recognizes that the state has received $27 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds, some of which will finance California’s large rent relief program.

“With the available funding, ending eviction protections this week would be fumbling on the one-yard line,” Chiu told his colleagues. “It would be tragic to evict families onto the streets when we have the ability to keep them in their homes with rent relief funding.”

Tenant rights activists gathered last year at El Monte City Hall to demand an eviction moratorium. 

SF Tenant Lawyers Anticipate Flood of Evictions

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

A wave of evictions could wash across the city next month, tenant attorneys say, even as lawmakers scramble to prevent widespread displacement.

“I’m afraid that we’re talking about thousands of people,” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative.

The statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents that were due during the pandemic ends June 30 — and recent legislation by San Francisco lawmakers will not change that. State officials are working to extend the moratorium but have yet to reach an agreement. Prochovnick is preparing for a cascade that could overwhelm the city’s free legal defense system if state talks fall through and throngs of residents get pushed from their homes.

As part of their ramp-up efforts, Prochovnick and her staff this week ended remote work and returned to their offices in the South of Market neighborhood to meet in person with tenants who lack broadband internet access or struggle with requesting help online or by phone. People seeking legal help can show up without an appointment on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

A combination of local and state regulations temporarily stalled eviction for unpaid rents due from March 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, as long as those payment lapses are traceable to a COVID-19 hardship. Come July 1, the eviction moratorium will lift and San Francisco landlords will be able to evict tenants who have not paid at least 25% of the rents owed since Oct. 1, 2020. Unpaid rents for earlier months of the pandemic cannot be cited as cause for eviction.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he is trying to extend the moratorium: “We’re working with legislative leaders to come up with a proposal that will be supported both by the state Assembly and the state Senate,” he said during a June 10 interview on Univision. “More on that very, very soon.”

A potential shock to the legal system

If the displacement wave crashes next month, San Francisco’s free legal aid system — called Right to Counsel — will likely be unprepared.

The Right to Counsel program contracts with attorneys from 10 nonprofits, including Eviction Defense Collaborative, which does case intake for the entire program. Right to Counsel was created after San Francisco voters in 2018 approved a measure ensuring that every tenant facing eviction would receive legal counsel.

Before the pandemic, the program was already overburdened, unable to provide full-service defense to everyone who requested it.

In 2019, San Francisco landlords filed 2,638 evictions. If this year sees as many filings with the bulk of them coming in the second half of the year, it would overwhelm the system’s 50 defense attorneys, who can handle about 2,350 eviction cases over 12 months, Prochovnick said.

“That contemplates cases spread out over time, not a tsunami of cases hitting all at once,” she said. “We fear that when that tsunami hits, we won’t have the capacity to provide everybody the full scope of services.”

Prochovnick said her concerns about evictions were driven by two indicators: figures on rent debts and the slowness of rent-relief programs in San Francisco. Unpaid rents totaled between $13.6 million and $32.7 million per month in the first six months of the pandemic, the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated in October. Tenants are protected from eviction for nonpayment during those months, but the city has not produced a more recent analysis showing whether rent debts have continued accumulating — if that has happened, then it’s possible that many households were unable to pay landlords the 25% needed to avoid displacement. They may be able to hit that threshold with money from federally funded programs but, as of May 27, just four households in the city had received that rent assistance out of more than 2,650 applicants.

Triaging tenants

Prochovnick said her team — which receives potential cases and assigns them to staff attorneys or those at organizations within the Right to Counsel program — will assess tenants using “vulnerability scores.” Higher scores will get full-scope legal aid, and will go to elderly residents and parents, as well as people who speak limited English, have physical or mental health challenges, live in subsidized housing or were previously homeless. They will have an attorney assigned to them throughout their cases, including preliminary discussions on strategy.

People who don’t score high enough will receive coaching from attorneys — but they will have to represent themselves. Attorneys will help these tenants draft their defense arguments. They’ll also explain the steps and timing of the legal process to help those facing eviction avoid an automatic loss for failing to follow the rules.

Full-scope representation yields the highest success rate, meaning that tenants get to stay in their homes — 67%, compared with 38% for tenants coached on self-representation — according to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Courts may be overwhelmed, too

Local eviction cases go through San Francisco Superior Court, which has yet to fully reopen. Proceedings are still happening on Zoom. Prochovnick said she doubts the court system could accommodate a dramatic spike in cases.

“There’s no way that the court will be able to handle that number of trials,” she said.

That could buy some time for tenants in eviction cases, which generally take less than a month from initial notice to court ruling, she said.

But Prochovnick is concerned that many tenants won’t resist eviction — that when they see the notice on their door, “they’re just going to leave. I’m hoping that the word can get out that they don’t need to do that.”

“This is their home and they have rights and protections that might enable them to preserve their housing,” she said.

 

 

 

If you need more help, please contact https://sf.gov/renthelp for San Francisco government rent help. We do not want to see any more of our friends on the street. 

 

 

San Francisco 'Museums For All' Program!

Featured in SF Gate:

San Francisco 'Museums For All' Program Makes Arts Accessible To Disadvantaged

San Francisco has launched the citywide Museums for All program -- which provides free and reduced admissions for low-income residents to 21 museums in an effort to support the city's reopening and recovery.

After a successful initial launch in summer 2019, the program returns for a permanent run, building on a commitment from Mayor London Breed to offer equitable access to arts, cultural, and educational opportunities for all, including families.

"All San Franciscans, regardless of their income, deserve the opportunity to experience the joy and inspiration, and community that our incredible arts and cultural institutions have to offer," Breed said in a statement. "As our city recovers and reopens, a permanent San Francisco Museums for All program will give families an opportunity to engage in safe, healthy, and enriching activities at a time when they need it most."

Under the program, residents currently receiving public benefits through the city's Human Services Agency can receive free or reduced admission for up to four people at participating museums. To participate, residents simply have to show their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card or Medi-Cal card and proof of San Francisco residency.

The permanent program will give some 225,000 San Franciscans unprecedented access to the city's premiere cultural institutions, including the de Young museum, Legion of Honor museum, Asian Art Museum, California Academy of Sciences, Exploratorium, Conservatory of Flowers, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, among many others.

City officials estimate a typical museum trip for a family of four in San Francisco can range anywhere from $20 to $150, often creating a barrier for low-income families.

The Museums for All program was created through San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros' Financial Justice Project, which works to ensure that the city's low-income residents can receive discounts on disproportionately high fines and fees.

"No one should be excluded from our world class museums because of the size of their wallet," Cisneros said. "A truly inclusive city is one where all residents have the opportunity to experience the wonder and excitement of our museums and cultural institutions."

A complete list of all participating museums and more information about the program can be found at https://www.sfhsa.org/san-francisco-museums-all

 

 

 

Have You Applied For Rent Relief To Avoid Eviction?

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

Just Four S.F. Households Have Received Rent Relief Funds

Just four San Francisco households had received state money to pay off their rent debts as of Wednesday, with 34 others approved but awaiting payment, according to state figures.

California’s rent-assistance program opened two months ago, and its eviction moratorium is set to lift in barely five weeks on June 30, allowing landlords to eject people for outstanding rent debts.

The need is great. More than 2,650 other San Francisco households, most of them low-income, have applied for help, requesting a total of about $38 million in assistance. One reason for the lag in getting funds to applicants: It took until two weeks ago for the city and state to agree on how the money should be spent, said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state’s program.

The state’s payments to tenants and landlords “should increase dramatically in the next two weeks,” he said, though he could not say by how much.

Groups representing tenants are calling on the state to extend the moratorium at least until all the funds are given out — and also to improve the application process, which is difficult for people facing technology barriers or who do not speak English or Spanish.

“We really could face the eviction tsunami that everybody’s been warning us about, but that has been more of a trickle,” said Sarah Treuhaft, vice president of research at PolicyLink, a national research and advocacy group that works on housing issues. “Unless we extend this moratorium, and fix the rent-relief program, people are going to be at imminent risk.”

The vast majority of San Francisco applicants are highly financially vulnerable. About 2,100 households reported earning up to 30% of the area’s median income, or $28,000 for a single-person household. About 440 households earned between 30% and 50% of the area’s median, which is $46,650 for a single-person household.

Payments to households lagged

In December, the federal government allocated $2.6 billion for Californians in need of help paying rent, with $2.1 billion more expected from a second federal aid package passed in March. While the state government created a program to distribute the money, some jurisdictions had the option to craft their own local programs in parallel.

To avoid duplicating payments, the two levels of government needed to settle on what each program would cover, Heimerich said.

They agreed to divide the payments based on when tenants owed rent. The state’s program will grant money for rents due from April 2020 through the end of March 2021. San Francisco’s program, set to begin receiving applications May 28, will pay for later months.

In a March 22 interview, Heimerich told the San Francisco Public Press that he hoped to settle the agreement “within the next week or so.” Why did the agreement take so long to hammer out?

“That’s a good question and I’m not sure,” Heimerich said. “I would ask that question of San Francisco.”

City staff said that negotiations about how the programs would run, as well as setting up collaborations with community organizations that would distribute the money locally, had been complex and required two months.

“City leaders are working on putting in place a local nonpayment eviction moratorium to go into effect on July 1 to provide both programs the runway necessary to deploy the approximately $90 million in federal emergency rental assistance,” Max Barnes of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development said in an email.

Applicants face language, technology barriers

Meanwhile, the state needs to lower barriers that have kept many tenants from accessing rental relief funds, housing advocates say.

Tenants are struggling with the state’s online-only application because they lack internet access or tech skills, according to a statewide survey tenant-rights organization Housing Now conducted this month with staffers at groups helping tenants. The findings, published Tuesday, also show that applicants face language barriers, a problem San Francisco housing groups have been clamoring about since the program opened.

More than nine in 10 respondents said tenants struggled with technological barriers such as lacking an internet connection, limiting their ability to use the state’s web portal. There is no paper application, though Heimerich said there will be one in the future. And 59% of respondents said applicants grappled with poor translation on the website.

San Francisco organizations cited similar obstacles in April. State officials said they would work to fix the problems, but the survey results imply the issues have persisted.

“The website has not been accessible, from the outset, to those with limited English skills,” said Gen Fujioka, interim coordinator for rent relief at the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition. After appeals from tenant advocates, the state has provided a full Spanish translation to the site, but people speaking other languages must rely on Google Translate.

“The problem, however, is Google Translate is notoriously inaccurate and confusing — in some instances, the translations are offensive,” Fujioka said. The button for “Returning applicant” previously translated in Chinese to “Go back to your country applicant.”

The state corrected the button last month. But the rest of the web application will be “essentially inaccessible” to people speaking other languages until it is professionally translated, Fujioka said. “The result is basically discriminatory outcomes.”

The state website is being translated into six languages, the Orange County Register reported Tuesday, citing Heimerich.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors wants Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Housing and Community Development to immediately fix these problems. The Board voted unanimously Tuesday urging the state to make the rent-relief program accessible to people without internet access, remove language barriers and conduct outreach to groups underrepresented in the current applicant pool.

“The state has failed to meet the language-access needs of tenants in San Francisco and across California,” said Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond District and co-sponsored the resolution.

“Given the fact that the state’s eviction moratorium is expiring June 30, we cannot afford to wait any longer,” Chan said.

 

San Francisco's Inner Sunset district

$1b To Fight Homeless Over Two Years i.e. $50k per homeless

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Mayor Breed wants to add more than $1 billion to fighting homelessness in San Francisco over next two years

Mayor London Breed is proposing more than $1 billion in new funding to address homelessness over the next two years — a staggering amount that she hopes will finally make a dent in San Francisco’s most vexing problem.

That proposal, announced Tuesday as part of her wider plan for the city’s upcoming $13.1 billion budget, is on top of the $300 million or so already spent directly on homelessness each year. The investment — the majority of which is voter-mandated — reflects the intense pressure Breed and other city leaders are under to address the thousands living on the streets, in shelters and in unstable housing.

In front of a large, masked crowd Tuesday, Breed proudly called her proposal a “historic investment.” But she acknowledged that money won’t solve the problem alone, and that the city also needs more housing, treatment and enforcement to compel people inside or into care.

“For those exhibiting harmful behavior, whether to themselves or to others, or those refusing assistance, we will use every tool we have to get them into treatment and services, to get them indoors,” she said. “We won’t accept people just staying on the streets, when we have a place for them to go.”

It’s unclear how many homeless people there are in San Francisco, but the number has certainly swelled over the past few years. The city’s official count in 2019 logged more than 8,000 homeless, a 30% rise from two years prior. Other counts have suggested there may be as many as 17,000 homeless in the city.

At the same time, homelessness funding has also significantly increased. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s budget has increased by 80% since it was created in 2016, to $364 million in the most recent fiscal year. Meanwhile, Prop. C., a 2018 ballot measure that taxes big businesses for homelessness services, is expected to raise $250 million to $300 million per year.

Indirect spending on homelessness is likely much higher, as the crisis touches many different agencies — from police officers responding to people sleeping on the streets to Department of Public Works cleaners sweeping away tents, human feces and trash.

If the Board of Supervisors approves Breed’s spending plan this summer, it will likely put even more pressure on City Hall to ensure the money makes a noticeable difference on the city’s streets.

“In the past, the city would spend a lot of money without a plan. Now we actually have a plan. Prop. C is the plan,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, chair of the board’s Budget and Finance committee. “Now we have to make it work and make it real, we have to track outcomes and follow the data and be transparent about successes and challenges.”

 

Roughly 75% of Breed’s proposed homelessness investment comes from $800 million collected by Prop. C, which she did not support in 2018. Meanwhile, another 20% comes from local sources like the city’s general fund and a 2020 bond measure, and the remaining 5% comes one-time funding from the federal American Rescue Plan, which helped erase a massive, pandemic-induced budget deficit earlier this year.

Under Breed’s proposal, the money would go toward initiatives like capping all permanent supportive housing rent at 30% of a resident’s income, funding two new recreational vehicle parking sites and continuing a 40-bed emergency shelter for families.

The mayor also wants to create 6,000 housing placements by June 2022, which includes new permanent supportive housing units, adding more housing vouchers or buying people bus tickets out of town to go back to family and friends. The funding would also cover another 4,000 new housing placements by 2023, and help prevent potential homelessness and eviction for over 7,000 households.

Along with homelessness services, Breed is also proposing $300 million, or a 36% increase, in additional funding over the year prior for mental health and drug treatment services as overdoses skyrocket.

Tomiquia Moss, the CEO of All Home, a group that pushes for a regional approach to homelessness, said she’s glad that homelessness is not being addressed just in terms of building more housing — but also with the “gamut of services,” like mental health care and drug treatment.

While the $1 billion price tag is huge, she said that it could pay off in the long run as the programs and housing help stabilize people who would otherwise be on the streets.

“We’ve underinvested in this for decades,” she said. “What we actually need now to get out of the problem is exorbitant, but it doesn’t have to be that way if we start making the right types of investments.”

San Francisco has a $13.1 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and $12.8 billion for the following year. That is slightly less than last year’s $13.6 billion budget, as big city departments like the San Francisco International Airport generated less revenue amid the pandemic.

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance committee will hold a series of hearings this summer on the mayor’s proposed plan. The full board will then vote on the proposal before returning it to the mayor for her signature around Aug. 1.

This could be a fraught process between the mayor and supervisors, who have historically disagreed on how the money should be spent — particularly when it comes to homelessness funding, the city’s rainy day reserves and Prop. I, a 2020 real estate transfer tax measure.

The mayor’s proposed two-year spending plan also includes:

Public safety

Breed is proposing $65 million for violence prevention and safety. That includes funding to maintain current police staffing levels through two new academy classes for about 100 new officers. Those officers would replace those who have retired or left the force.

“Let’s be clear, keeping our city safe also does require law enforcement,” she said Tuesday. “That means making sure we have officers on our streets, walking the beat and responding to crimes.”

While activists called for city leaders to redirect resources away from law enforcement to the community, Breed has been clear that she would not shrink the number of officers in San Francisco.

Instead, she has supported new outreach teams of mental health professionals to respond to those on the streets — although there isn’t currently enough staffing to shift all mental health-related 911 calls away from cops.

The mayor’s budget also continues the $60 million annual investment in the Dream Keeper Initiative, which redirects money from the police and sheriff’s department into programs that support the city’s Black and African American community.

The law enforcement budget is sure to receive pushback.

In May, a hearing before a Board of Supervisors committee on alternatives to law enforcement drew dozens of callers. Most pushed to defund the police and invest more in community services, mental health treatment and education. A smaller contingent called for maintaining or even increasing law enforcement funding, citing a rise during the pandemic in burglaries and violent street attacks.

Economic recovery

Breed wants to spend $477 million over the two years to “drive and accelerate” the city’s economic recovery.

The majority of the money would be spent on the city’s remaining COVID-19 response, which includes funding to sustain the city’s homeless hotel program until the beginning of 2022. It also includes money for food security programs, vaccinations and testing.