California’s eviction moratorium is scheduled to expire on Thursday midnight at 7.1.2022
SACRAMENTO — A limited three-month extension to California’s eviction moratorium is scheduled to expire on Thursday at midnight, despite opposition from tenant advocates who say the state still hasn’t done enough to keep renters housed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawmakers in March moved the eviction moratorium’s expiration date from April 1 to July 1 for California tenants who’d applied for the state’s rent relief program by the end of March.
That extension also afforded the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development more time to work through a backlog of applications and disburse payments to thousands of renters who still hadn’t received aid. Of the 404,313 household applications received, the department has so far processed 329,327, according to the state’s rent relief dashboard. The average assistance per recipient totals $11,667, and the state has paid out more than $3.8 billion in assistance. Madeline Howard, senior attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said thousands of vulnerable Californians could lose their housing as of Friday.
Howard is one of the attorneys in two lawsuits that a coalition of tenant advocacy groups brought against the Department of Housing and Community Development after it closed the application portal.
