Eviction Moratoriums Should Continue Until Withheld Rent Aide Is Given

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhlJJG54DPw

Oakland News Online Blog – vlog by Zennie62 YouTube. OaklandNewsOnline.com is the original blog post for this content.

Landords who claim that tenants are not paying rent, should first make sure rental aide was given to them. That was what was supposed to happen with the State of California’s “Housing Is Key” program, but Oakland’s share, estimated at over $20 million, was not disbursed. Why? Because the “Housing Is Key” program aides thought that because Oakland had its “Keep Oakland Housed” rental aide program, that Oaklanders weren’t supposed to get help from California’s “Housing Is Key” program.

But that idea ran afowl of legislative truth, and Oakland At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan led an effort to unlock the California’s “Housing Is Key” program money for Oakland, and to the tune of $20 million. Then, strangely, after months of work and advocacy on the part of Councilmember Kaplan and her staff, she and they went silent as 2022 and the midterm elections approached. Why?

During July of 2022, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ordered the California Department of Housing and Community Development to stop issuing rental aid denials and put on hold any rental aid rejections handed down in the past 30 days to that point. The pause was to have remained in effect while the court reviewed the rental aid appeals process and came to a final decision, which was done January 22, 2023.

But guess what? California Department of Housing and Community Development claimed it had $177 million left, and for all practical purposes ran out of money. Arguably, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (CDHCD) used the legal process to buy time and craft the idea that it had to money left. A nasty plan to say the least.

CDHCD made zero effort to look for new dollars, and then a month later, California Assembly Member Matt Haney (D-SF) bragged that he found $400 million that should be used for affordable housing in California, but said nothing about providing aide to renters who need it now. It’s that kind of governmental myopia and political promotion in the face of suffering that has many leaving California, and still more who aren’t homeless and can’t leave fearing they’re next to be pushed to the streets.

Landlords should join with tenants rather than using the annecdotal stories of a few who they claim do not pay for the many who want to, but can’t. Government is supposed to fix market failure – that’s what we were instructed in school. But it’s apparent a number of people either skipped, flunked out of, or never had civics courses to know that.

It’s wake up time.

It’s time to wake up. Time to stop the landlord / tenant warring, Time to tune out those who would pit them against each other. And time to team up and force California government to do some work. The staggering number of people in California negatively impacted (including this author) are enough to form a giant class-action lawsuit against the California Department of Housing and Community Development, to start, and California government administrations that have failed to use tax-increment-financing-based legislation to get rental relief money to residents, and instead leave the entire burden to the State of California.

California and local government can’t get away with demanding businesses to close due to COVID, not compensate them, then sit and watch as employee renters who lost their jobs because of business closure are pitted against landlords harmed by the income-choking results of the shelter-in-place laws.

the California Department of Housing and Community Development is constantly saying that it gave out aide to 374,618 households in California, and $4.5 billion in total money. But CDHCD only presents their supply side of the equation; the demand side look like this: 13,217,586 total households in California, of which 1.5 million need rental assistance.

That means the 374,618 helped by the State represents 24.9 percent of the total. So the $4.5 billion the State provided was from a clearly under-funded effort that California did nothing to address. The actual required payout is 7,879,500,000.00, or 75.1 percent greater than what the California Department of Housing and Community Development gave out. That’s not the tenant’s fault or the landlords, but both are pitted against each other while the government sits back and asks for votes.

Enough is enough.

Stay tuned.

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