Court orders California to pause denying pandemic rent aid

An Alameda County decide has requested the point out housing office to pause denying purposes for pandemic rental help immediately after tenant advocates filed a lawsuit alleging officers have unfairly withheld aid from battling renters.

Advocates contend the state’s $5.2 billion crisis rental support application has failed to give tenants more than enough chance to attraction denials and has discriminated in opposition to some Latino and Asian renters by offering application information and facts only in English.

“Over the earlier couple of months, I have labored with hundreds of tenants who acquired a denial with very little to no explanation and are terrified about shedding their properties,” said Patricia Mendoza, organizer at Alliance of Californians for Neighborhood Empowerment, just one of the groups behind the suit, in a assertion.

On Thursday, Alameda County Remarkable Courtroom Judge Frank Roesch ruled the California Department of Housing and Neighborhood Enhancement will have to halt issuing rental support denials, as effectively as place on maintain any denials handed down in the past 30 days. The pause will keep on being in effect even though the courtroom critiques the rental help appeals course of action and arrives to a closing choice in the lawsuit.

Advocates say the pause impacts an approximated 100,000 California households that have purposes pending with the application or ended up recently denied support. In June, at least 16,000 Bay Region households were being waiting around on the software as it struggled with extensive wait times and delayed funds. Some counties and metropolitan areas in the region also set up their possess rental aid plans, although numerous are now out of money.

The condition housing division reported in a assertion that its system, which stopped accepting new purposes at the conclude of March, has aided retain extra than 340,000 households from losing their homes all through the pandemic. It has specified out an typical of $11,690 for each house and virtually $4 billion in complete aid, according to the state’s rental assist dashboard.

“We are let down by the court’s ruling and will carry on to protect California’s COVID-19 Lease Aid system,” the agency explained in the statement.

To qualify for the point out method, renters need to have taken a fiscal strike mainly because of the pandemic and get paid no a lot more than 80% of a county’s median income. As of past thirty day period, the software had denied help to at minimum 135,000 homes — about a 3rd of all candidates — according to advocates and news stories. Which is remaining quite a few renters at danger of eviction considering that statewide protections for these with pending purposes expired June 30.

In the Bay Region, some neighborhood governments have passed their have eviction protections that continue being in result. Two of the strongest community ordinances in Alameda County and Oakland have been challenged in court docket. Landlords in all those instances argue the eviction bans have outlived their goal two-plus yrs into the pandemic and in some instances are becoming abused by tenants who have unsuccessful to spend lease, harmed models or violated lease agreements.