The Los Angeles City Council is moving to advance a broader moratorium on evictions, as the novel coronavirus bruises the local economy.
At a meeting that lasted for eight hours on Tuesday, stretching from morning to night, the council advanced dozens of proposals to help cushion the impacts of the outbreak. One proposal would strengthen the mayor’s order barring landlords from evicting tenants, both commercial and residential, who are unable to pay rent.
“For too many of our residents, coronavirus has the potential to be devastating health-wise and economically,” said council president Nury Martinez. “When I talk about the working poor being one life emergency away from being homeless—this is that emergency.”
Individually and together with other measures introduced today, the moratorium would build upon an executive ordered issued Sunday night by Mayor Eric Garcetti to freeze evictions.
The City Council’s proposal would give tenants up to 12 months to pay back their rent, instead of the six months provided for residential tenants and three months provided for commercial tenants under the mayor’s moratorium.
Renters who are “hanging on by their fingernails” are “not going to be able to pay this back quickly,” said councilmember Mike Bonin.
Bonin, who coauthored the motion, said he wants to ensure tenants would not be required to show proof that they were impacted by COVID-19, as the mayor’s order implies. But the city attorney’s office and head of the city’s housing department cast doubt on whether that would be legal.
To aid property owners, another proposal would mandate that banks and financial institutions “suspend mortgage foreclosures and mortgage late fees for the duration of the public health crisis.”
Another would require employers to show “just cause” when terminating employees. Workers who are terminated would have to be let go in order of seniority, and they’d “have right of first refusal to return to jobs once businesses reopen.” Another would create a “local emergency leave program” to give low-wage workers 14 days of paid leave during a major disaster or public health emergency.
Most of the proposals will require further action by the city attorney’s office and the council before they would go into effect.
Under an order issued by the mayor on Sunday, an eviction moratorium is already in place in the city of Los Angeles.
Initially designed to protect renters in residential properties, the eviction moratorium was expanded tonight to apply to commercial tenants who are able to show “an inability to pay rent due to circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“You can be rest assured that you will not lose your housing during this crisis because you can’t make the rent,” Garcetti said in announcing the moratorium.
The order covers income losses related to workplace closures, child care expenses due to school closures, and health care costs tied to having COVID-19 or caring for family or household members who have the disease.
The eviction moratorium is part of new guidelines and efforts that Garcetti has laid out to stem the spread of virus and curb the economic impacts already being felt by many workers.
As the city encourages people to stay home, there has been increasing attention on populations who do not have a permanent home and their difficulties following these directives.
On Saturday, two formerly homeless mothers and their children “reclaimed” a Caltrans-owned home in El Sereno that was vacated for the now abandoned 710 freeway extension.
“I’m fighting not just for myself, but for other people that have children, and for seniors, who are the most vulnerable,” said Martha Escudero, one of the women who moved into the house. “We can’t let those children and seniors be on the streets.”
The group calls itself Reclaiming Our Homes. Its members are calling for major investments in public housing and would like to see vacant housing used immediately to give people without homes a place to safely wait out the public health emergency.
Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, says he’s worried about renters being able to get access to information about their rights right now. So many organizations run walk-in clinics, or have first-come, first-served policies that require waiting in a big room with others.
Gross says he’s meeting with his staff and the attorneys that offer services to their clients to figure out how they are going to move forward—without compromising anyone’s health.
The city of LA’s housing and community investment department, which handles housing inspections and enforces the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, has closed its walk-in counters. But residents can call (866) 557- RENT or (866) 557-7368 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday or submit questions online.
Comments
Additionally, it would order the city attorney to come up with a strategy for working with banks and lenders "to halt mortgage payments for individuals who have suffered severe loss of wages due to the spread of COVID-19."
So does this include landlords who suffer a severe loss of "wages" (i.e. income) when renters don’t pay for a month or two? that would seem to be fair, but what do I know…
By what!?!? on 03.12.20 4:40pm
Pretty much everyone will just stop paying their rent if they know they won’t get evicted or have any consequences. Everybody just becomes a legal squatter. How about coming up with a fund to help only those who are sick avoid eviction.
By LA Denizen on 03.12.20 4:45pm
It isn’t just the sick who are affected though. Think of the movie theater worker who isn’t getting any hours because nobody is going to the movies, or the bartender who isn’t getting any shifts because the bar is closed.
Allowing evictions during a national health crisis where the government is forcing people to stay home and not work doesn’t make any sense. Yes, you’ll have to pay back and back-rent, but that should be fanciable at 0% rates for long-ish terms to make sure otherwise employed people aren’t thrown out onto the streets.
By Greyvagabond on 03.13.20 4:21pm
That is what unemployment insurance and food stamps are for. Food is more of a necessity than housing, yet if someone goes to a restaurant and dines and ditches, there are consequences. Same for a grocery store. I can’t walk into a grocery store and walk out with a couple bags of groceries and just tell them "I am having a rough month so I’m going to take these for free – see ya next week". If you could do that then everyone who actually pays for groceries and restaurants would pay much higher prices (similar to housing now).
The eviction process is very long in CA and heavily favors tenants over landlords anyway. Say someone loses their job in the next few weeks. The first rent they’d miss would likely be May 1. They wouldn’t actually get evicted until the end of summer if the landlord was very aggressive and everything went his way.
This has nothing to do with Covid-19.
By LA Denizen on 03.13.20 10:24pm
I don’t think it’s sunk in with people yet what’s about to happen. It will make 2008 look like a tea party. This is a global economic SHUT DOWN. 2008 was only a financial system freeze up. Which of course will happen this time as well. We are sitting on a mountain of debt (corporate and personal) that is just a minor cash flow disruption away from massive defaults and bankruptcies. The entire COUNTRY lives essentially paycheck to paycheck considering the debt service burdens-and that money is about to get shut off. This will without question be the most economically disruptive event any of us have ever lived through. Mass layoffs beginning this week, and small businesses to start going under very quickly. Look for major long term cash flow disruptions, credit evaporation,, and assets (housing, stocks, bonds) to collapse by 40-60%.. And this time there is very little the Fed can do to fight it as rates already at rock bottom and their balance sheet is already massive. I take no pleasure in saying this I stand to lose as much as anybody else and a LOT of people are going to be hurt tremendously. It’s awful. Just please don’t delude yourselves that this will be a couple weeks at home and back to normal. Far, far from it.
By AlexX101 on 03.16.20 8:04am
AlexX101. I sure hope you are not right. But I do appreciate your expert analysis that we should be prepared for the worst. If the government moves smartly and quickly, they will devise a massive bailout that will satisfy the big guy and little guy, the big businesses and the mom and pops. But we don’t have an efficient government, so I agree that people will be hurt before such bailout occurs. This is a health and safety crises that I suspect many are not mentally prepared to understand the urgency: survival. I wish we all had the ability to save three to six months salary for emergencies like this.
By GJJ3000 on 03.16.20 12:46pm
AlexX101 IS right. I don’t like it anymore than you do but any informed American knew that this was coming.
By LATEACHER1X on 03.18.20 9:45pm
I agree with Greyvagaband. An acquaintance of mine posed the question do we help the big guy or the little guy? I say we do both. But my acquaintance says we have to make a choice between the two: help the company that serves hundreds and not help the mom and pop stores. Etc. (Remember the Chrysler bailout). I know this type of economic discrimination is faced in other areas in our society, and I suppose such thinking will not be invisible in this current crises, i.e who will get the best medical resources. Many still think like my acquaintenace who feels we have to help the big buy first. To end this crisis, after lots of new regulations and paperwork, money will have to be spent, and in the future the individual and the businesses will see an increase in taxes to pay the bill. For now, we must help everyone.
By GJJ3000 on 03.16.20 12:37pm
Landlords are greedy AF, no one cares…I’m a Real Estate Investor, I treat humans as humans, stop worrying about your pennies and feed some people…
By Teela Marie on 03.12.20 6:19pm
Bloodsuckers
By ByeByeLA on 03.12.20 8:59pm
Teela Marie, if you’re a speculator/investor, you’re a significant part of the reason California has a housing problem in the first place.
The LAST thing I EVER want to hear is an investor complaining about landlords being greedy. At least the landlords are providing a service in return for the money they’re getting. The investors are just in it to make a quick buck, and don’t you DARE lie to me and claim that’s not true of you.
You are absolutely part of the problem and you don’t get to piss and moan about greedy landlords.
By steve760 on 03.12.20 10:30pm
Well stated. You are saying the investors are heartless and cruel?
By GJJ3000 on 03.16.20 1:07pm
Of course, the high fees imposed by cities, counties and school districts have NOTHING to do with it. High union wages are not an important factor in the cost of housing. Limited resources like water and power because of "do-gooders" not wanting extra water storage locations or allowing smelt to live and/or making all electricity "green" when there is not enough land for solar panels. We’all have a hand in the high cost and limited availability of housing in the People’s Republic of Los Angeles. Did I mention the 16 elected crooks in downtown?
By JustAPlayer on 03.18.20 3:37pm
Troll alert. That comment has to be trolling.
By LADude on 03.13.20 2:41pm
Teela Marie is not a Real Estate Investor – come on – lol Unless If you consider a realestate investor as someone who probably pays 60% of their income to share 1 bedroom of a 3 bedroom apartment that someone else owns.
By Mr Balls on 03.16.20 11:23am
The reports I’ve read indicate that proposals will include relief for landlords. Not sure how that would work, but apparently the issue is on politicians’ radar.
Hopefully, the City Council can come up with something that helps everyone. Now is not the time to engage in knee-jerk reactions and us-against-them thinking.
By MyrnaMinkoff on 03.13.20 3:05pm
True.
By GJJ3000 on 03.16.20 1:10pm
What if the renters can’t pay rent, and the landlord needs the rent to pay his/her mortgage?
By Noice LA on 03.12.20 4:43pm
right, that’s what I’m saying
A lot of people will stop paying if they know they don’t have to, and we don’t get that same luxury with the banks. But if this happens all over the city of LA, and there are just a TON of foreclosures occurring all over the city… The unintended consequences of this policy could make this situation go from bad to worse economically.
I find it astonishing that the politicians wouldn’t have a mortgage and utility payment relief for landlords as well as tenants in this situation. What’s fair for one side is fair for the other. The banks will get bailed out by the Feds as usual.
By what!?!? on 03.12.20 4:52pm
Some people will do absolutely anything to avoid helping anyone, ever, those people suck, until you’re homeless you get no say…Help someone besides yourself…
By Teela Marie on 03.12.20 6:21pm
And some people are quick to offer to "help" using someone else’s money, often by use of force.
Landlords already offer, at great personal and financial risk, housing, to those who are unwilling or unable to buy a place of their own. Your form of "help" will only lead to more landlords withdrawing units from the market.
If you want to "help" the homeless, urge your politicians to enact policies that encourage them to return home to their family support system, not languish on our sidewalks.
If you want to help renters, remove rent and eviction controls, and allow for fast-track infill redevelopment at higher density, review fire egress and ADA requirements, and decouple parking from rents (this will require market-priced "residential permit parking" districts), repeal Prop 47, and cease all the sanctuary-state nonsense.
By smartalex on 03.13.20 7:07am
Foreclosure, bankruptcy…….
Then a tent on the sidewalk.
By ByeByeLA on 03.12.20 9:00pm
The foreclosure process doesn’t officially start until 4 missed payments and even after that the homeowner has 90 days after receiving a notice of default to get caught up.
Renters can get a 3 day pay-or-quit notice if they are late by a couple of days and then they only have 3 days to pay up or eviction proceedings will go forward and within a few weeks they’re evicted.
Obviously renters are the ones more vulnerable in the short term.
By Cocomonstr on 03.14.20 1:10pm
If the mortgage is still due rent is still due.
There’s no reason landlords should have to subsidize tenants. Either everything freezes or nothing.
By Logicthinktank on 03.16.20 7:08am
Great question. Landlords will need help as much as tenants.
By GJJ3000 on 03.16.20 1:10pm