TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND FROM: Councilmember Carrasco
CITY COUNCIL
SUBJECT: SEE BELOW DATE: March 22, 2022
Approved Date: 3/21/2022
SUBJECT: Report on the Status of California’s COVID-19 Recovery Act, State’s COVID- 19 Rental Assistance Program, and Implementation of Local Eviction Diversion and Settlement Program.
RECOMMENDATION
1. Accept staff’s recommendation and ask staff to bring an urgency and a regular ordinance to council to be enacted April 1, 2022 for the March 29th meeting along with the following recommendations:
a. Reinstate San Jose’s eviction moratorium for an additional 6 months through an urgency ordinance. The ordinance would state that any tenant who had a COVID-19 related impact and has applied for rental assistance but has yet to be processed signs a declaration stating so, could not be evicted.
b. Any notice to pay rent or quit must include information about how a tenant can apply for rental assistance as well as any information about the City’s eviction diversion program. That information must be provided with any notice to pay rent or quit. A landlord must apply to this program prior to serving a notice to pay rent or quit. This notice must be provided to the City.
c. Before a notice to pay rent or quit is served, the landlord must apply for rent assistance either through the state or local program.
BACKGROUND
As we all work to recover from this pandemic, we must acknowledge the grave impact and lasting effects that this pandemic will have on our community. Although cases have gone down and vaccinations continue to become available, our community has endured adverse impacts beyond the virus. In particular, renters throughout San Jose and the entire state have been put in an increasingly vulnerable position through economic impact affecting one’s ability COUNCIL AGENDA: 03/22/2022
ITEM: 8.2
to pay their rent. Through the creation of various rental assistance programs to help COVID-19 impacted renters pay past due rent, there seemed to have been a path for tenants to be able to recover from incurred rental debt. Unfortunately, due to outstanding disbursement of funds, many renters still owe landlords past due rent and continue to be at high risk of eviction.
In San Jose, approximately of 2/3 of San Jose residents who have applied for rental assistance have yet to receive their payment. With uncertainty at the state level, we cannot leave renters in this city unprotected, which would lead to mass displacement. Staff’s recommendation of an eviction diversion program will help tenants, but without extending certain protections related to the eviction moratorium, tenants are at an increased risk of eviction.
A recent study by the National Equity Analysis found that only 34% of renters who have applied for rent assistance in Santa Clara County through the statewide program have actually received rent assistance. (Study available here: https://nationalequityatlas.org/CARentalAssistance) Of the 23,299 households that have applied for rent relief in Santa Clara County, just 7,872 or 34% have received assistance, according to state data. These tenants could face eviction as early as April 1, unless a moratorium is passed. These tenants should not face homelessness as a result of the state’s failure to process rent applications before the pending March 31, 2022 deadline.
We as a city were on of the first to provide protections for impacted renters, the consequence for not continuing to provide protections would be grave. We also know that eviction filings are already mounting in our courts, meaning that the second statewide protections end, eviction filings will skyrocket. By reinstating our city’s moratorium, we can work to ensure that tenants are able to wait for the rental assistance to come through without the fear of eviction.