California officials are urging low-income renters to apply for assistance ahead of the Sept. 30 eviction ban expiration.
State law adopted this year bars landlords from evicting tenants through March 31, 2022, if the tenants complete an application for aid, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The state’s $5.2 billion assistance program now covers 100 percent of back rent and future rent as well as utilities.
The state is distributing about half of that money, while counties are administering the other half. L.A. County is administering the program through the City of Los Angeles Housing Department.
Since the start of the pandemic, California has barred landlords from evicting low-income tenants if they pay at least 25 percent of their rent. A divided state legislature declined to extend the measure beyond Sept. 30.
Starting on Oct. 1, a landlord can evict a tenant if they themselves completed a rental assistance application for the tenant and were either denied, or if the tenant did not complete their part of the application, according to Mercury News.
The state was initially slow to get the rental assistance program up and the funds distributed. As of Monday, the state has given $650 million of its share of funds, or about a quarter of its total.
PolicyLink and the USC Equity Research Institute estimate that as of August, about 744,000 households in California still owed an average of $3,500 in back rent.
[LAT, Mercury News] — Dennis Lynch