Tenants facing eviction cliff want lawyers: Here’s what San Francisco is doing about it

Featured in the San Francisco Examiner:

Back in 2018, San Francisco voters passed the country’s first ballot measure requiring the universal right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.

But the approved measure, known as Proposition F, didn’t immediately live up to its full promise, covering two-thirds of eligible tenants. About half of them received limited representation. Those shortcomings are about to change.

The City’s recently agreed-upon budget, expected to pass in the coming weeks, would add an additional $6 million to the program, bringing its total budget to $17 million to better meet demand.

The boost in funding makes San Francisco home to one of the most robust tenant counsel offerings in the country, and certainly in California. It also comes as the state’s eviction moratorium is set to end Oct. 1.

“The fact that San Francisco has reached full funding is a very significant achievement,” said John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, which tracks efforts around eviction representation. “There’s a massive imbalance of power…the system only functions for the side that has counsel.”

If you are charged with a crime, it’s understood that there will be a public defender provided if you are unable to afford a private attorney. If you face a civil matter like eviction, however, counsel is generally not guaranteed. Tenant and homelessness advocates say that needs to change in order to stabilize renters, preventing displacement and homelessness.

The California Apartment Association, which represents landlord interests statewide, disagrees. It called Assembly Bill 1487, which would establish a statewide legal services trust fund for tenants facing eviction, a “problematic bill” that would provide more funding for attorneys to delay legitimate eviction cases and cost landlords more in legal bills.

“With the existing funding, unethical tenant attorneys are funded to make false claims about property owners who are simply trying to regain possession of their properties from tenants who have failed to pay rent or who have created problems for other tenants at the property,” CAA wrote in a letter to legislators. “These firms that receive funding automatically and consistently utilize the same discovery and jury demands.”

San Francisco’s program, led by the Eviction Defense Collaborative agency, has been quite effective in warding off evictions. With representation from the tenant-right to counsel program, 67 percent of closed cases in 2019 resulted in the tenant remaining in their homes — 80 percent of whom were Black clients, according to the latest data from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

Renters who received services through the right-to-counsel program in 2019 were 94 percent low or moderate income tenants, 28 percent white, 23 percent Latino, 22 percent Black and 21 percent Asian and Pacific Islander.

Even if evictions aren’t avoided, Pollock said attorneys can negotiate the terms of departure that allows for more time to vacate as well as preventing a record of eviction following the renter around, making it hard to secure new housing. Eviction records can also ripple through matters of child custody and employment.

“It was clearly working and one of the best investments we could make in keeping people housed and avoiding homelessness,” said Supervisor Dean Preston, who co-authored Prop. F and has pushed for increased funding of the program. “We all know there’s going to be a huge increase in the number of eviction cases so it’s really good timing that the right to counsel funding is there.”

However, the estimated number of tenants in need of the service was assessed pre-pandemic. Most court and eviction proceedings were on pause last year and California later enacted a statewide eviction moratorium, which was recently extended once again to the end of September.

EDC is in the process of assessing needs from partner agencies like Asian Law Caucus to determine how funding will be doled out, giving everyone enough time to hire skilled attorneys. Last summer, the program anticipated cuts in the face of a tighter budget under the pandemic and some attorneys had to be laid off before a budget increase came through.

“It’s indispensable that we have access to this knowledge ahead of time,” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at EDC. “Tsunami, cliff or a flood, whatever, it is, there’s going to be a lot of people in jeopardy of losing their housing. We know that when people are represented they have a much greater likelihood of maintaining their housing.”

Updated estimates of need will be determined after the state’s eviction moratorium is lifted, said MOHCD spokesperson Max Barnes. A federal eviction moratorium is scheduled to expire on July 31. California is expected to extend its statewide moratorium until Sept. 30.

 

Assemblymember David Chiu, who as a San Francisco supervisor brought forward a tenant right to counsel pilot in 2012, has contemplated proposing a statewide program but said it is a “long-term conversation.”

In the meantime, legislatures continue to add funding for renters and homeowners in need of assistance to remain in their homes. AB 1487 was folded into the latest budget to bring $120 million over the next three years, Chiu said.

“It just never felt fair that you didn’t have a level playing field between the parties in eviction proceedings,” Chiu said. “Every day people should have access to lawyers, particularly when they’re about to be denied basic necessities like shelter. It has been critical that this funding and work is being done.”

 

 

Is Pamela Logical or Entitled? S.F. has $1.1 billion to spend on homelessness

 

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, please read the article below and note the red highlighted part. Do you think Pamela should be grateful for what she's being offered or is this reply common practice amongst the homeless, especially when a key fits the door of a studio also?

The pressure is on to make a difference...

For Pamela Tisdale, the amount of money that San Francisco plans to invest in homelessness — more than $1.1 billion over the next two years — is irrelevant as long as she lives in a small, temporary hotel room that has “rats galore.”

“I just want my own housing,” said Tisdale, who lives in a city-leased hotel that local officials plan to close next year. “I’m just fed up.”

As the 62-year-old struggles to a find a permanent and affordable place to live, San Francisco has never been so flush with cash to help people like her. The city’s spending on homelessness has increased dramatically over the past five years — but never like this.

That’s because the city has a combination of onetime federal and local funds to pour into homeless services. The pot also includes about $800 million from Proposition C, a controversial 2018 business tax that is finally free to use after years of being tied up in a lawsuit.

Now, advocates and city leaders say, San Francisco is in an unprecedented position to make a tangible difference on the city’s streets.

But the historic investment is also presenting the city with a tenuous question: If this doesn’t make a difference for the city’s homeless, then what will?

San Francisco has thrown significantly more money at the crisis over the past few years, but the issue has only grown. From 2016 to 2019, homelessness spending in each two-year budget swelled 83%, from about $200 million to $360 million. At the same time, the number of homeless people grew from about 6,000 to more than 8,000, a 33% increase.

Prop. C expands that spending significantly. The measure — which taxes the gross receipts on large corporations — collects about $250 million to $300 million for homeless services each budget cycle. The money in the upcoming budget, which will be finalized in August, is unusually large because it includes an extra $500 million from the past two years that was tied up in court for years due to a lawsuit over the tax.

After months of haggling over the details, the Our City, Our Home committee, which oversees the funds, reached a deal with the mayor and board last month on how to dole out the money. Among their planned investments: funding for at least 825 units of new housing, 650 rental subsidies, over 1,000 new shelter beds, about 200 tents in sanctioned sites and several new street outreach teams.

Shanell Williams, chair of the committee, said the spending plan was carefully crafted over several months with the input of more than 800 people, primarily those who are homeless or formerly homeless. She said the money will “make a huge difference.”

“We feel a lot of pressure to make some change,” she said. “San Francisco voters are very serious about this investment being spent the way it was intended.”

The deluge of money comes at a critical time for San Francisco, as the pandemic has pushed more people toward poverty and also exacerbated other maladies like mental health issues and drug addiction. While the officials don’t yet know how many more people have become homeless over the past year, it’s widely expected that the population has grown.

Now, city officials — including Mayor London Breed, who strongly opposed Prop. C in 2018 — are relying on the money to make progress on San Francisco’s most pressing crisis.

Relief, though, likely won’t come overnight, as scaling up a system that has long been understaffed and overwhelmed could take months, or even years.

Shireen McSpadden, the new director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the department has “major gaps” when it comes to contract management, fiscal oversight, and basic processes and procedures.

“We need to build the plane and continue to fly it,” said McSpadden, who joined the department in May. “That’s the pressure we’re under with this.”

For people like Tisdale, that relief can’t come soon enough.

Within the next year, she’ll have to move out of her hotel room when emergency federal funding runs out for the program. She said she was offered a studio apartment a few months ago, but it was so small that she had to “stand sideways in the kitchen.”

She’s holding out for a one-bedroom, where she can finally live comfortably after nearly 10 years of cycling between the streets, shelters, her mother’s couch and a dilapidated permanent supportive housing unit in the Tenderloin.

“I want to go somewhere that I’d be stable,” she said. “I just want to put a key in my door.”

        Pamela Tisdale stands outside a hotel where she lives in San Francisco. The hotel has been temporarily leased by the city for homeless people during the pandemic. Tisdale said she has to deal with rats on a daily basis, and also had to recently vacate her room     when a pipe burst. The city is preparing to spend an unprecedented $1.1 billion to help people like Tisdale find better housing.

 

When it comes to finding permanent housing, Tisdale could eventually benefit from Prop. C, as at least 50% of the new funds must go toward housing resources, like rental vouchers or acquiring new units. A core tenet of the ballot measure is that it must be used for creating new programs that focus on getting people off the streets, rather than bolstering existing ones.

But if Breed had her way in 2018, San Francisco would not have this money to spend from Prop. C at all. She didn’t support the measure, saying the city was already spending a tremendous amount of money on homelessness — about $300 million a year — “with no discernible improvement in conditions.”

It was a contentious campaign. The measure divided city leaders and also pitted Breed, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and some tech companies — including Twitter — against the city’s homeless advocates, nonprofits and even Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, the city’s largest employer.

Nearly three years later after Prop. C passed with 61% of the vote, perhaps no one stands to benefit more politically from the measure than Breed. Under her watch, the city will be able to fund thousands of new units of housing and several new outreach teams, and create hundreds of new mental health and drug treatment beds.

“With all this money we have to invest in homelessness, there is no way that we shouldn’t be able to be more effective,” Breed said in a recent interview.

While she is glad the city now has the extra cash — “I don’t leave money on the table” — she echoed her sentiments of 2018. In particular, she said she’s worried about the impact of all the city’s taxes on the retail industry, as well as the accountability for how the money is spent.

She also said that, without a similar investment in surrounding counties, San Francisco could attract more unsheltered people to the city. That concern is not substantiated by the city’s most recently available data, which showed that 70% of the city’s homeless in 2019 were last housed in San Francisco.

“We could use the money, and it’s great,” she said. “But, at the same time, what are the trade-offs?”

City officials are working on creating a public database to track metrics, such as how many people have been placed into housing and how many new units have been built or acquired.

Along with Prop. C, the upcoming $1 billion-plus budget also includes tens of millions of dollars in one-time funding from federal emergency assistance due to the pandemic, local bond money and the city’s general fund. The city is also expecting a chunk of money from the state, which has yet to be finalized.

Matthew Doherty, the former director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, said San Francisco’s funding for homelessness is “close to unprecedented” for a city.

“It is the kind of investment that can really make a difference,” said Doherty, who now works as a consultant. “And the fact that it is an ongoing and predictable source of revenue for upcoming years, so they can plan for other investments, is not something that many communities have.”

Joe Wilson, the director of Hospitality House, a shelter in the Tenderloin, called Prop. C a “once in a generation” investment.

Yet, he still remains skeptical it will be enough.

“Is it going to solve the problem? No,” he said. “The structural conditions still exist that perpetuate homelessness and poverty in America.”

And until we address that, he said, “more will always be needed.”

Extended State Eviction: Moves Eviction Cliff to Oct. 1

Featured in the San Francisco Public Press:

California’s eviction moratorium protecting tenants affected by the coronavirus pandemic was set to expire June 30. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation extending it, but the state law supersedes local pandemic eviction protections and prevents city legislators from adding new ones through March of next year. Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that helps low-income tenants respond to eviction lawsuits, explained the details on “Civic.”

A partial transcript of the conversation is included below. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Laura Wenus: The state passed legislation that extends its existing eviction moratorium to Sept. 30. Tenants need to show that their inability to pay is linked to the pandemic and they need to pay a quarter of their rent. Is this like the arrangement we had before, where you need to have paid 25% of all your accumulated debt by Sept. 30? Or do you need to be making regular payments of 25% to stave off eviction every month?

Ora Prochovnick: It’s identical to the protections that we’ve already had. Everything is just kicked down the road for three more months. Tenants have the option to either pay incremental 25% installments each month or pay in one lump sum by the end of September. The only requirement is that all accrued rent from last September through Sept. 30, 2021 — of that full amount, 25% of it must be paid by the end of September. It’s 13 months. So, if we do the math, three-and-a-quarter months have to be paid.

Wenus: What is gone now that the state moratorium has superseded local protections?

Prochovnick: There is a policy in our legal system called preemption, which basically creates a hierarchy. If the federal government does something, the states have to follow along. Here, we’re looking at state preemption: If the Legislature in Sacramento passes a rule, San Francisco can’t contradict that. We have to follow it. San Francisco, unanimously through our Board of Supervisors, had put in place an eviction moratorium so tenants could not be evicted for non-payment of rent until the end of December, if their inability to pay was due to COVID financial hardship. And because of this preemption by the state law, that rule cannot be in effect. Instead, starting Oct. 1, tenants throughout the state, including in San Francisco, have to begin paying 100% of the rent rather than 25% that San Francisco had approved.

Wenus: If somebody gets an eviction notice, say on Oct. 1, what happens next?

Prochovnick: In San Francisco, we have a right to counsel program. It was passed by the voters in 2018 through Proposition F. And recently, our new budget from our mayor and Board of Supervisors has happily fully funded that program. A tenant being evicted should access the services through the Eviction Defense Collaborative, which will either represent the client or refer them to an agency within our consortium and make sure that they get the help they need to fight that eviction, with the assistance of counsel.

Wenus: The same legislation that extends protections also bars local officials from adding new additional local protections well into next year. What does that mean for tenants?

Prochovnick: There clearly were some tradeoffs in Sacramento to get this legislation to pass. There are some things in there that make tenants happy. And there are some things that make the real estate lobby happy. This preemption through March 2022 clearly is something that the Apartment Owners Association was seeking. The tradeoff is that once lawsuits start on Oct. 1, and through March 2022, there are requirements that the lawsuit not go forward unless the parties have fully and in good faith sought to access the rental assistance programs that are available. The concept being that evictions for non-payment of rent should not go forward if everybody could be made whole by these rental assistance programs.

Wenus: The legislative analyst has given us estimates for how much renters cumulatively owe in the city. At the low end, the office estimates that over 15 months of not paying rent, tenants in the city have accumulated debt of more than $147 million. At the high end, the estimate is $355 million. How does that compare with the money available for rent assistance?

Prochovnick: San Francisco has a pot of money that came directly from the federal government. And the second pot of money is funneled through the state. Those two pots of money have different rules about how they can be disbursed. There’s another proposition that our voters passed — $32 million has just been allocated from Proposition I money directly for rental assistance for tenants who have received notices or court papers for eviction.

If we’re around $140 million or $150 million, we probably can do it. But if we’re at $340 million, $350 million, $360 million, there will not be enough funds for all the rent that is owed, and evictions will go forward against those who were denied assistance. Not because they weren’t eligible, but because the funds ran out.

The new state eviction protection law, which allows evictions to commence in October, basically has a process where those unlawful detainer actions could not proceed unless the landlord could show that they had applied for rental assistance through one of these government programs and been denied. In the past, tenants had to come forward and assert defenses. Now, the landlord has the burden to prove that they’ve been denied rental assistance after good faith efforts to obtain it. And the tenant can still assert the defense of saying: ‘‘I have applied for rental assistance, and my application is pending.’’ And those legal proceedings will be stopped until the tenant’s pending rental application has been dealt with.

But the bad news is, once there is a denial, the eviction could go forward. There might be a denial because the tenant is not eligible, maybe their income is way too high. There might be a denial because the landlord does their application and the tenant ignores it and doesn’t take part. And to be fair to the landlords, we are allowing that eviction to go forward. And there might be a denial because the rental assistance program says: “Sorry, we ran out of money.”

Wenus: So, in other words: “Yes, you’re being evicted. Yes, your income is low enough that you should by rights get rental assistance. But because there isn’t any: Sorry, you’re getting kicked out anyway.”

Prochovnick: That is correct. It’s upon all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen. That might mean at the federal level, we need to cause that next tranche that we’ve referred to that has to come forward, or here at the state or local levels, we either need to produce more rental assistance money or change the laws because of how inequitable it would be to evict tenants in this situation.

Wenus: But we can’t add local protections because the state preempts them.

Prochovnick: Right. We can add money. We can’t add moratoriums.

Wenus: If I am a tenant who is worried about facing this deadline in October of paying 25% of the debt that I’ve accumulated, or that come October I’m really not going to be able to pay my full rent, what should be my first couple of steps?

Prochovnick: Tenants who currently are not able to pay their rent need to be sure that they have already submitted what we refer to as a declaration — a statement under penalty of perjury, informing your landlord that your non-payment is due to COVID financial hardship.

If the tenant has done that, the next step is to make sure that by Sept. 30, they need to pay 25% of the rent. Basically, that means three-and-a-quarter months. We want everybody to be making those payments by the end of September. If they can’t do it on their own, they should be accessing rental assistance programs now. Either the state or the city or a combination of the two.

And then starting Oct. 1, people need to do whatever they can to begin paying 100% of the rent.

How to get help: If you are facing eviction, call the Eviction Defense Collaborative at (415) 659-9184 or send an email to legal@evictiondefense.org as soon as possible. For those who require in-person assistance, walk-ins are welcome Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 2:30 p.m.

San Fran paying $60,000 per tent for 'temporary' homeless encampments

Featured in The Center Square:

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has requested an additional $20 million from the city of San Francisco to keep six Safe Sleeping Village encampments running for another two years.

The encampments are comprised of tents spaced six feet apart on concrete within a white painted square box on the ground. The encampment is enclosed by portable barriers where along one wall are air-conditioned trailers with showers and portable toilets.

The funding request comes after the city spent $18.2 million to fund 260 tents on six sites, costing taxpayers $60,000 per tent per year. Little to none of the money has gone to find permanent housing or toward finding a long-term alternative.

Funding for the six encampments pays for the costs of the tents, providing three meals a day, 24-hour security and maintaining bathrooms and showers.

The department is asking the city to allocate an additional $15 million for the upcoming fiscal year for a similar number of tents, costing taxpayers roughly $57,000 per tent per year.

The sites were created in May 2020, two months into the state’s lockdown, as a way to keep homeless individuals off of the sidewalks.

At a recent meeting, Supervisor Ahsha Safai questioned the $20 million request, suggesting it was an exorbitant amount to continue to fund what was supposed to be a temporary solution.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen said the cost “just doesn't make any sense.”

Proposition C, a 2018 business tax passed by voters to collect money for homeless services, funds the program, which within another two years will have cost taxpayers $1 billion.

In May 2020, Jonathan Streeter, a city spokesperson, told the San Francisco Examiner that the encampments were a temporary approach and the areas where they were located would be returned to their prior uses once the governor’s shelter in place order was lifted, and the city would continue to work on long-term, safe solutions for the homeless.

The villages parallel a failed venture the city entered into with hotels to house the homeless. A report published in City Journal describes the city’s Front-Line Worker Housing hotels: officials funded nearly $4,000 worth of alcohol for homeless in one purchase, chaos is erupting inside and around the hotels, and hotel workers are forbidden from discussing what they witness, or face a $1,000 fine or imprisonment of up to one year or both.

“The hotels were pressured into accepting the homeless guests, though they were also eager for the chance to recoup some revenue lost to the Covid-19 lockdowns,” it reports. “Rooms are rented at close to $200 per night, totaling $6,000 a month – nearly double the cost of a private one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. The city-sponsored guests also receive personal grooming, sanitary, and cleaning supplies, three delivered meals, and laundry service for clothes and linens. Contracts last between 90 days and two years; by that point, the guests may be able to claim de facto permanent residence.

“Eventually, at least some of these properties will revert to being real hotels again, and homeless guests will check out. If the city has an exit plan for what happens next, though, officials aren’t sharing it.”

Despite receiving federal coronavirus relief money, the city is facing a projected $650 million budget deficit over the next two years.