More Than 1,600 Californians Have Been Evicted During Pandemic

Speaker 1: 00:00 With many Californians losing their jobs in the pandemic state leaders issued a moratorium on evicting tenants, but that order is not altogether clear. It's been enforced inconsistently in counties across the state. And some 1600 Californians have been evicted since March as a result, including at least 99 households here in San Diego County. Joining me is Matt Levin data and housing reporter for the new site. Cal matters, Matt, welcome to midday edition. Thanks for having me. Well, many of us following the news since COVID-19 hit believe renters, who've lost jobs and income have been protected from being evicted, at least till now, but your sh your story shows, that's not the case. Start with the moratorium. It reveals this directive as clear as mud. Speaker 2: 00:45 Yeah, I think that's a decent characterization. So what the state moratorium did, and there were kind of multiple moratoriums, some from the, uh, governor Newsome's administration, and then some from the judicial council, which is the governing body of the state court system. And those essentially shut down eviction proceedings in cases where tenants could demonstrate a negative financial impact from, uh, from COVID from the virus. Um, but what wasn't addressed was all of these cases that actually had already gone through the court system and were simply waiting for Sheriff's departments to decide whether to perform the eviction, to physically come and lock the tenants out. So, um, we, uh, we issued public records requests for basically every Sheriff's department in the state to get a handle on. Okay. So just how many Californians were in that exact situation. Maybe they were laid on a February payment or March rent payment, but the Sheriff's still came and kick them out of their homes in the middle of a lethal pandemic. Speaker 1: 01:54 Yeah. And that's where it, it does really get murky, explain how difficult it is to get clear and complete numbers on evictions across all California counties, San Diego's numbers are likely out of date and it can get confusing. Speaker 2: 02:07 Yeah, that's that's right. So there, there really isn't any centralized data source for the number of evictions that happen, period. Um, even in pre pandemic times, we submitted public records requests to get that data. Um, not all, uh, Sheriff's departments responded in time for us to publish the story. So that number, that 1600 household number is, you know, likely a significant underestimate of the number of people who had to leave their homes. Since governor Newsom declared a state of emergency on March 4th, San Diego was one of the Sheriff's departments that actually got back to us relatively quickly. Um, and it did show that they had performed a significant number of evictions since March 4th. Speaker 1: 02:53 And people are yelling at each other if it's a, if they're upset, Speaker 2: 02:56 That's that's exactly right. Yeah. So least, you know, in most of the Sheriff's departments, we talked to deputies were equipped at least later on with PPE, but in humble County up there in the North coast, um, it was optional for Sheriff's deputies to wear mask. And so there was a specific anecdote we have in the story where, um, there was a tenant, um, uh, a couple who was being evicted. They had friends and family members helping them move. And the two Sheriff's deputy showed up without mass. Um, and it was a highly charged environment where people were yelling at each other and you can public health experts. That's a situation that they desperately want to avoid, right. A group of people, some of them screaming, um, and then physically being removed from the place where they're instructed to shelter. Speaker 1: 03:50 So Sheriff's departments from one County to the next deal with evictions differently, even city to city within a County, the rules vary, right? That's it makes it very confusing all the way across the board. Speaker 2: 04:01 That's right. And Sheriff's departments aren't especially happy about that. So in the absence of kind of a clear state directive, it was up to individuals Sheriff's departments as to whether to pursue these evictions. And there were obviously public health concerns, um, for the counties writ large, but also for individuals Sheriff's deputies. So, um, in Kings County, in the central Valley, um, the Sheriff's department there, once governor knew some shelter in place, order came down, they said, you know what? We are not going to do any more evictions period, unless it's a case of domestic violence or some other threat to public health and safety. Other Sheriff's departments had a different legal interpretation of what was coming down from the state. And they decided, you know what, we are going to go ahead with these evictions, even though that involves, you know, deputies going house to house on the same day often, um, in sometimes highly charged emotional situations where it might be difficult to observe social distancing guidelines. Speaker 1: 05:04 And you said the Sheriff's departments aren't keen on the whole situation as it's gone along. What about advocates for both renters and landlords? Speaker 2: 05:11 So advocates for renters are especially unhappy with this. Um, although they they've somewhat given up on trying to fix this specific loophole as their attention now turns to, uh, preventing this eviction cliff for tenants that were financially impacted from COVID, but, you know, tenants groups have lobbied way back in March when the, uh, when the virus first hit California to have governor Newsome or attorney general Besera, uh, instruct Sheriff's departments just don't do any addictions whatsoever, except in cases of, uh, public health and safety emergencies. So I think from governor Newsome's perspective, as well as the attorney general, or I think there was some fear that if they did, you know, explicitly instruct sheriffs not to do lockouts, that they would run into some legal challenges in terms of overstepping their constitutional authority, even in times of a public emergency, as far as landlords, you know, landlords kind of rightly say, Hey, look, you know, we don't want to add to any type of public health, right by evicting people. But if you're forcing us to keep these tenants in our homes, we are bearing the financial cost of that. Speaker 1: 06:30 It seems like our homeless crisis figures to get even worse soon with all of this on a question, is there any indication the moratorium will be extended or ended? Can we expect some clarity to emerge regarding late rent and evictions? Speaker 2: 06:45 So we had some news from me, judicial council, actually yesterday, they are, um, they signal that they are going to allow eviction court to resume, uh, starting September 1st, earlier, there were fears that they might lift the moratorium on eviction cases as early as this Friday. Um, but state lawmakers and governor Newsome lobbied, uh, the judicial council and particularly the state Supreme court, chief justice to hold off on that. So what that means is that state lawmakers and Newsome have a few weeks here to iron out some type of legislative solution that will protect tenants from eviction and, uh, compensate landlords in, in some matter, the compensating landlords part is the difficult part because the state does not have money, right? We were facing a $54 billion deficit and the federal government hasn't come up with new money yet for States to use, to combat COVID. So they're trying to figure out a way to deal with this, and he's very compressed timeframe. Um, no deal has emerged yet. There's a couple of proposals in the legislature, but the details have yet to be worked out. So it'll be a very, very busy couple of weeks here, um, for both state lawmakers and governor Newsome, Speaker 1: 08:04 Lots of news to follow up on, on this specific, a very thorny issue in California. I've been speaking with reporter Matt Levin of the new site. Cal matters. Thanks very much, Matt, thank you so much. We reached out to the San Diego County Sheriff's department to find out if it is continuing to carry out evictions. A spokesperson said the department carried out 12 evictions in July and they are currently looking at processing pre COVID evictions.