What the extension of state eviction protections means for Sonoma County renters and landlords

Sonoma County tenants who’ve missed rent payments because of the pandemic will now stay protected from eviction for another three months as long they have already applied for government assistance.

That’s thanks to a new bill approved by the California Legislature Thursday to extend rental protections just hours before they were scheduled to expire.

A statewide moratorium on most evictions for nonpayment technically ended on Oct. 1 of last year. But tenants have remained shielded from a court-ordered eviction as long as they’ve applied for rental assistance. That protection was set to expire midnight on Thursday.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of households across California still have pending applications. It would have been impossible for state and local rental aid programs to process all of those before the deadline, meaning households still waiting to get the money could have been evicted beginning Friday.

Locally, around two-thirds of the roughly 6,000 households that applied to the county’s $40 million rental aid program had still not received assistance as of last month.

At the same time, Sonoma County’s program — which advocates and landlords say can be confusing and time-consuming to navigate — stopped accepting new applications altogether on Feb. 11 due to a lack of state and federal funds. Local renters are now stuck signing up for a wait list in hopes more money becomes available.

Renters needed to have applied to the wait list before Friday to stay protected from eviction under the county program, officials said.

A state-operated rental aid program, which is not available to Sonoma County residents, stopped accepting new applications on Thursday. But local officials have indicated the county program should keep its wait list open as they seek out more federal funding.

As of this week, the county program had distributed $27 million of the $40 million in rental aid. It was unclear how many individual households had received money and whether the county currently has enough funds to ensure everyone who has already applied for aid receives it.

The program can cover 100% of unpaid rent and utilities dating back to April 2020 for low- and middle-income tenants.

An ongoing countywide eviction moratorium, enacted in March 2020, no longer prevents most evictions for nonpayment, according to attorneys for Sonoma County. Instead, it only protects tenants if they pay 25% of all rent debt incurred before the expiration of the state eviction ban on Oct. 1 of last year. The deadline for the 25% payment is June 30. The remaining back rent is not forgiven but can be covered by rental aid.

A separate “just-cause” eviction ordinance, approved by the county in February of last year, prevents all evictions except when a unit is taken off the rental market, a renter causes “an imminent threat to health or safety” or for nonpayment of rent, though protections still apply for those who can’t pay due to COVID-19.

The just-cause protections are currently set to expire on June 30. But local advocacy groups including the North Bay Organizing Project are pushing local governments to adopt permanent just cause ordinances with many of the same rules. Advocates argue failing to do so could lead to a flood of evictions and a spike in homelessness, especially among Black and brown communities that have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

You can reach Staff Writer Ethan Varian at ethan.varian@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5412. On Twitter @ethanvarian