A woman holds a sign during an outdoor protest in New York City on August 6, 2020.

Truthout - As the eviction moratorium sputters uncertainly onward, a new genre of news article has emerged from the chaos: the woes of the so-called “mom-and-pop landlord.” These landlords — individuals with just a handful of rental properties — are hard-pressed to keep up mortgages and maintenance due to their inability to collect rent during the COVID crisis. Most landlords featured in such stories agree that ending the moratorium is the answer . . .

As Mangal’s situation suggests, the plight of the small landlord is complicated. It is true that the so-called mom-and-pop landlords are feeling the squeeze, though not to the extent they like to pretend. At worst, these beleaguered landlords will lose their rental properties, while those they evict stand to lose housing, a financially stable future and even their lives as the Delta variant surges. Yet landlord complaints are not entirely unfounded. As mom and pops begin to exit the rental market, large corporate entities are already swooping in to buy up the excess stock, which threatens to funnel wealth into the pockets of the ultra-rich, put further pressure on remaining small landlords to sell and create worse conditions for tenants down the road.

San Diego Union-Tribune - San Diego County renters are still protected from eviction until early October, but a stricter local law is expiring.

On Sunday, the San Diego County eviction moratorium, which was tougher than state and federal laws, will end. The local ban was controversial in preventing homeowners from moving back into properties if they had a renter and triggered an unsuccessful lawsuit.

Starting Monday, San Diego landlords could send 60-day eviction notices to renters if they intend to move back in or make significant repairs to their property. It also might be easier to get rid of problem tenants.

The Guardian - California’s ambitious program to provide rent relief to every low-income tenant struggling during the pandemic has been plagued by delays and challenges, and some renters who are waiting for the aid to arrive say they are now facing eviction threats.

California officials have been working since March to distribute funds to landlords whose tenants fell behind on rent during the pandemic, and in June authorities promised that the state would pay off the entirety of the rent debt of qualifying tenants. But the program has been slow to roll out, with eligible tenants across the state having difficulties applying while others say they’ve had to wait months for funds.

Activists and members with the Hillside Villa Tenants Association of Chinatown march from City Hall to LAPD headquarters to demand the city fund the purchase of their 124-unit building in order to stop evictions on Thursday, April 8, 2021. 

San Gabriel Valley Tribune - An ordinance aimed at preventing landlords from harassing tenants went into effect on Friday, Aug. 6, after being adopted by the Los Angeles City Council by a 13-0 vote.

The ordinance approved June 23 when two council members were absent and signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti prevents landlords from harassing tenants by eliminating services, withholding repairs, refusing to accept rent payments or taking other retaliatory actions.

Tenant leaders organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment gathered outside City Hall Friday morning to celebrate the ordinance going into effect. The alliance had been organizing to put pressure on council members to pass the ordinance, which had been stalled in committee.

“The anti-harassment ordinance had been in limbo for over four years in the housing committee. During the pandemic, the Stay Housed Coalition and ACCE saw an uptick in cases of landlord harassment, so ACCE along with other organizers decided to come together to fight for a just tenant anti-harassment ordinance,” an ACCE representative said Friday.

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Tenant Leaders, Advocates and City Councilmembers on Friday Mark First Day of Anti-Harassment Ordinance Enforcement at Los Angeles City Hall 

Tenant Leaders Also Urge Improvements to the Ordinance to Further Protect Renters From Abuse

LOS ANGELES (August 6, 2021) - Hailing a new citywide anti-harassment ordinance as a major victory in the fight for strong tenant protections, tenants’ rights advocates and attorneys representing tenants gathered at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday to mark the first day the city’s new anti-harassment ordinance goes into effect. 

KPBS - Local leaders and tenants rights advocates gathered in National City on Tuesday to demand that Conrad Prebys Foundation stop the sale of it’s nearly 6,000 apartment units to the private equity firm Blackstone.

Anne Marine McKellob has called Golden Tree Apartments on Ave A her home for the past three years. It’s one of the 66 buildings the foundation is selling to Blackstone for over $1 billion. McKellob worries about what will happen when Blackstone takes over.

“I am pretty much afraid that we got to move out,” said McKellob. “They aren’t in favor of us, they are in favor of themselves and growing their money higher.”

San Diego Union-Tribune - San Diego County has a strict eviction ban, but local attorneys and tenants’ rights advocates say they are still seeing a number of tenants forced from their homes, especially low-income families.

Tenants of a Chula Vista apartment complex are among those who recently found themselves being evicted from their homes in an apparent violation of those laws.

On May 15, Luis Castro, a former restaurant server who lost his job because of the pandemic shutdown, and other tenants at an apartment complex on Smith Avenue were told to vacate their units within 60 days.

“I’ve been here for 12 years and I don’t know where I would go. This is unfair; this is displacing families,” Castro said.

Times of San Diego - By the end of this week, eligible tenants in the San Diego region will start seeing 100% of past-due rents erased from the beginning of the pandemic through the end of September. 

A new state law that extends eviction protections also allows local agencies to cover all back rent due for low-income tenants impacted by COVID-19. 

This comes after news organizations across the state, including inewsource, reported low participation rates for rental and utility assistance programs, which left millions of dollars unspent.

East Bay Times - Clara Luz Realageno was at work at the end of May when she received a notification on her phone that there was movement detected by security cameras she had installed just days earlier.

The camera monitor on her phone showed that it was her landlord. He was entering her home and changing the locks, barring her from returning to the studio she had rented for four years.

“I left for work; I had no idea I would be coming back to nothing,” she said through a translator in a recent interview.

Realageno didn’t expect to be locked out of her house that day, but her landlord’s violation wasn’t unprecedented. In fact, his pattern of harassment toward her in recent weeks was what prompted her to buy and install the two security cameras inside her home.

San Francisco Chronicle - Richmond officials will soon consider a plan that could allow undocumented residents to vote in local elections, citing their lack of a public voice despite the “significant contributions” they make to the community and its economy.

The City Council is expected to vote this month on a first step: directing the city attorney to conduct a sweeping review of the city’s charter along with legal research to determine whether it can allow noncitizens to participate in local elections, such as school board contests.

LA Times - California tenants will be protected from evictions for another three months, and those with low incomes will have all of their past-due rent paid by the state, under a bill signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The governor acted just hours after both houses of the Legislature approved the bill extending the eviction protections through Sept. 30. Lawmakers cited urgency stemming from the expiration of previous protections that was set for Wednesday.

“California will significantly increase cash assistance to low-income tenants and small landlords under the state’s $5.2 billion rent relief program, making it the largest and most comprehensive COVID rental protection and rent relief program of any state in the nation,” said a statement by Newsom’s office.

San Francisco Chronicle - California will shield struggling tenants from eviction for at least three more months and attempt to pay off all of the rent lower-income residents missed during the coronavirus pandemic under a deal announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers.

The plan, which emerged after weeks of tense negotiations with renter advocates and property owner groups, would extend through the end of September the state’s moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent due to the pandemic.

Lower-income tenants who qualify for a state rental aid program — those who earn 80% or less of the median income in their county and were financially affected by COVID-19 — would be protected from eviction for an additional six months. From October through next March, those residents would receive extra time to apply for rent relief if a property owner attempts to evict them.

NBC 4 - Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders from both the state Senate and Assembly agreed Friday on a proposed extension of the statewide eviction moratorium, through Sept. 30.

The eviction moratorium — put in place in March 2020 as an emergency measure related to the COVID-19 pandemic — was set to expire June 30, just five days after the agreement was announced.

Newsom and legislative leaders also agreed on paying 100% of back-rent owed by tenants who struggled to make rent payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, in an increase of relief funding.

A bill largely ignored by the media may be California’s last chance to avoid disaster for tenants

Sacramento News & Review - With California’s long-feared eviction reckoning on the horizon, corporate landlords have already used loopholes to throw tenants onto the streets throughout the COVID crisis, as one Sacramento woman recently learned when she and her three sons were ejected from their apartment after the oldest boy got shot four times while walking on the grounds. The disabled teen barely survived that attack, and an official notice from managers at the complex shows they used the shooting as justification to evict not only him, but his mom and 12-and-9-year-old brothers – smack in the middle of the pandemic.

The family is now homeless.

The complex maintains that it acted appropriately on behalf of other residents.  

Given the extent to which rental companies have already flouted the mission behind California’s current displacement efforts, the question of what those entities will do once the state’s eviction moratorium expires June 30 – and the federal moratorium a month after that – has housing advocates fearing the worst, particularly if Gov. Gavin Newsom is not able to pull off the last-ditch compromise he’s reportedly been working on.

FOX 11 - The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday adopted an ordinance aimed at preventing landlords from harassing tenants by eliminating services, withholding repairs, refusing to accept rent payments and more.

The ordinance passed on a 13-0 vote, with two members absent. It will next go to Mayor Eric Garcetti for approval.

"I am pleased that the City Council passed the Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance. This means that for the first time in Los Angeles, city law defines and codifies illegal harassment activities, providing an affirmative defense for tenants in eviction cases when landlords engage in actions constituting harassment while strengthening civil penalties," Councilman Gil Cedillo, who chairs the Housing Committee, said in a statement after the vote.

The rent forgiveness program would pay landlords all of what they are owed while simultaneously giving tenants a clean slate

The Guardian - California is pursuing an ambitious plan to pay off the entirety of unpaid rent from low-income tenants who fell behind during the pandemic, in what could constitute the largest ever rent relief program in the US.

The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is negotiating with legislators and said the $5.2bn plan would pay landlords all of what they are owed while giving renters a clean slate.

If successful, the rent forgiveness plan would amount to an extraordinary form of aid in the largest state in the US, which has suffered from a major housing crisis and severe economic inequality long before Covid-19.

KTVU FOX 2 - The State of California and its counties are considering extending the moratorium on evictions in hopes of staving off flooding the streets, parks and lots with unimaginable new homeless. It's already had a huge impact on the young Californians of our future.

California's COVID anti-eviction moratorium ends on June 30. Experts say, 900,000 California households, up to 15% of renters, are behind on their rent each owing about $8,000, according to the Federal Reserve. 

If that tragic eviction tsunami comes, the pandemic will have hurt the children most of all and their parents know it. 

"They got scared, they got stressed out; we didn't have anywhere else to go," said Jorge, the son of a renter in Bay Point. 

PBS NewsHour/Associated Press - Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate.

Left unsettled is whether California will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30, a pandemic-related order that was meant to be temporary but is proving difficult to undo.

Federal eviction protections also are set to expire on June 30. California had passed its own protections that applied to more people.

San Jose Mercury News - After widespread criticism from tenants and landlords, state officials said Thursday they plan to streamline applications and step-up outreach efforts to more quickly deliver $2.6 billion in emergency rental assistance.

Despite nearly 200,000 applications requesting $543 million to cover unpaid rent, just $40 million has been distributed across California, according to state data. Advocacy groups continued to sound alarms, saying the state needs to accelerate the distribution of relief checks or risk a wave of evictions when a state moratorium expires June 30.

“I’m worried about eviction. All day, every day,” said renter Patricia Mendoza, a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. “The vast majority of tenants and landlords have not received rent relief.”

City News Service - The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday strengthened aspects of a draft tenant harassment ordinance, including through an expanded definition of harassment, and directed the City Attorney's Office to incorporate the revisions and bring the measure back for final approval.

The draft ordinance defines tenant harassment in several ways, including reducing or eliminating housing services, such as parking; failing to perform necessary repairs and maintenance; abusing the right to access a rental unit; threatening a tenant with physical harm; misrepresenting to a tenant that he or she is required to vacate the unit; refusing to accept rent payments; and inquiring about a tenant's immigration status.

The City Council amended the definition to include tactics like coercing a tenant to vacate with offers of payment; failing to perform necessary repairs on time as required by federal, state, county or local housing, health or safety laws; failing to minimize exposure to noise, dust, lead, paint, asbestos and other harmful building materials; and interfering with the comfort, peace or quiet of a tenant.

ABC 7 - Residential neighborhoods around USC look different than they did just a few years ago. Residents say that's because of companies like Tripalink, which are building housing for USC students - disrupting the makeup of Exposition Park.

Community members marched to Tripalink's office Thursday to demand a halt to all construction projects in the area. According to the group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Tripalink is expanding at a rapid rate. 

Protesters also want their councilmember, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, to put up a fight instead of working with Tripalink, and bring affordable housing to the area.

"I am so disappointed in Marqueece Harris-Dawson because he's turned his back on us," said Beverly Roberts, who lives in Exposition Park.

KPBS - More than two months ago, the San Diego region was awarded $211 million in state and federal funds to help landlords and low-income tenants who were financially impacted by the pandemic.

But only 2% of that money has been sent to eligible households, according to data obtained by inewsource in mid-May. Some are just now receiving updates about the status of their applications and many others are still waiting, housing advocates say.

The two-month turnaround to process applications and send payments to eligible households has been a problem for struggling tenants who are left in the dark. The state of California is also holding local agencies to a Sept. 30 deadline to commit 65% of the available funding.

San Francisco Chronicle - Dozens of tenants in Oakland filed a class-action lawsuit and four multi-plaintiff lawsuits late Tuesday against Mosser Capital, a San Francisco real estate investment company, alleging illegal utility gouging and harassment, attorneys said.

The allegations include driving up existing rents by imposing new utility fees, unlawful entry into units, refusal to make repairs and charging tenants for necessary repairs.

San Jose Mercury News - Oakland tenants in four different apartment buildings are trying to put a stop to what they say has been an ongoing campaign of harassment and legal violations from their corporate landlord, filing five lawsuits this week against the property owner.

The tenants say Mosser Companies, a property company that owns buildings in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, has shut off their utilities, created unsafe living conditions, slapped them with illegal fines and fees, and harassed them in an effort to get them to leave their rent-controlled apartments.

Just like companies charged with creating hostile work environments, Mosser has created “hostile living conditions,” said Ethan Silverstein, an attorney with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tenants. “Now, we are asking the courts to put a stop to it.”