What does this bill do?
1) Extends, through June 30, 2022, procedural legal protections against eviction based on nonpayment of rent or other financial obligations under the lease that accumulated between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022, provided that, as of March 31, 2022, there is an application pending for emergency rental assistance corresponding to all or part of the amount demanded. (Unless otherwise indicated, all further references to “rent” should be understood to include both rent and all other financial obligations under the tenancy.)
2) Updates the content of notices that landlords must provide to tenants after March 31, 2022, and before July 1, 2022, prior to seeking a court order for eviction based on nonpayment of rent, so that the information is accurate in light of the extension of protections against eviction and expiration of the deadline to apply for emergency rental assistance.
3) Extends, through June 30, 2022, statewide preemption of local laws as follows:
a) Local ordinances adopted before August 19, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to provide protection against eviction for nonpayment of rent remain grandfathered in and are applicable according to their own terms, subject only to specified state modifications to any timeline for repayment that the local ordinance provides.
b) Local jurisdictions are preempted from applying new or additional local additional protections against eviction for nonpayment of rent, if that rent accrued on or before March 31, 2022.
c) For rent that accrues on or after April 1, 2022, local jurisdictions are free to establish additional protections against eviction. (Code Civ. Proc. Sec. 1179.05.)
This bill is composed of three basic parts.
1) Three-month extension of eviction protections for those who submit rental assistance applications by the March 31, 2022 deadline
Existing law provides that a landlord who wants to remove a tenant in California for failure to pay the rent or any other financial obligation under the lease that accrued between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022, may file in court requesting a court order for eviction. However, the court is not supposed to proceed with the case unless the landlord affirms, through specified procedures, that the landlord applied for rental assistance to cover the unpaid rent but was unable to obtain it. Furthermore, once the case proceeds, a judge is not supposed to order the requested eviction in the form of a judgment until the court is satisfied that, indeed, the landlord tried but could not get compensation from the rental assistance program for the unpaid amount. (Code Civ. Proc. § 1179.11.)
This bill extends those same protections for three months, but only in those cases where a rental assistance application was submitted by the March 31, 2022, deadline and is still pending. The idea is to protect everyone who has applied on time for long enough for their applications to be processed and their rent paid. This should spare from eviction the roughly 165,000 to 190,000 low-income California households who will still have rental assistance applications pending on April 1, 2022.
What doesn’t this bill do?
It is important to highlight what the three-month extension proposed by this bill does not do. It does not provide any protection against eviction for tenant households that do not pay their rent from April 2022 on as it accrues. Unless there is a local ordinance in effect that pre-dates August 19, 2020, tenants who are unable to pay their rent for April 2022 onward will face eviction just as they would have prior to the pandemic. The extension also does not offer protection against eviction in scenarios in which the tenants fell behind on rent during the period from October 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, but neither the landlord nor the tenant submitted an application for emergency rental assistance to cover the unpaid amount.
2) Three-month extension of local ordinance preemption
When California first enacted statewide statutory eviction protections in the late summer of 2020, the bill included provisions preempting the ability of local jurisdictions to go farther than whatever protections against eviction for nonpayment of rent they already had on the books as of August 19, 2020. (AB 832, Chiu, Chapter 27, Statutes of 2021; Code Civ. Proc. Section 1179.05(a).) Each time that the state has extended statewide eviction protections since then,
the state has also extended these preemption provisions for an equivalent length of time. This bill follows the same pattern. To match the three-month extension of the legal protections against eviction, this bill also extends the preemption provisions for three months. As a result, the terms of any local ordinance in effect on August 19, 2020, will continue to apply. The terms of any subsequently enacted local laws protecting tenants against eviction for nonpayment of rent will not apply until July 1, 2022, when the three-month extension expires.
3) Updates to the information in relevant notices
The extension of protections against eviction proposed by this bill necessitates updates to the information contained in certain notices that landlords must provide to tenants before proceeding to court to seek an order for eviction. Currently, some of those notices advise tenants that they should apply for emergency rental assistance, for example. After March 31, 2022, when the state program will stop accepting new applications, it would be misleading and cruel if tenants continued to receive notices urging them to apply. Accordingly, this bill provides alternative required content for notices that landlords deliver to their tenants beginning April 1, 2022. The new notices simply inform tenants of the scenarios in which they may have protections against eviction and provide the tenant with an entry point for seeking out further legal advice. To be clear, landlords would only have to include this content if they are demanding rent that accrued on or before March 31, 2022, since no additional state protections apply to rent that accrues after that date.
SUPPORT: (Verified 3/30/22)
California Housing Consortium
City of Mountain View
City of San Diego
County of Santa Clara
OPPOSITION: (Verified 3/30/22)
Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles
Apartment Association of Orange County
Berkeley Property Owners Association
California Rental Housing Association
East Bay Rental Housing Association
Nor CAL Rental Property Association, Inc.
North Valley Property Owners Association
Santa Barbara Rental Property Association
Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute
Southern California Rental Housing Association