Due to the COVID-19 pandemic fallout, California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to give landlords all of the state's past-due rent which gives renters a clean slate while helping everyone in recovering from the pandemic.

Paying People's Rent

California, the most populated state in the U.S., was not able to decide whether they will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30. The order was initially meant to be temporary.

However, the state struggled in the past months and extended the pandemic-related order to avoid people in the streets which will be a cause for a possible surge in the state.

Not only the state's eviction protections are set to expire on June 30, but the protection also set by the federal government is set to expire on the same date. But California's eviction protection order applies to more people, which prompted discussions in the past months.

According to WBTW, Governor Newsom, alongside legislative leaders, is going to meet privately to decide regarding the eviction issue. The discussion is part of the negotiations over the state's roughly $260 billion operating budget.

Meanwhile, the extension of the eviction ban will most likely give California more time to spend all the money to cover the unpaid rent. But landlords and tenants' rights groups are arguing over the duration of the said extension.

Moreover, a 43-year-old single mother who says she has not worked consistently since the pandemic began in March 2020, Kelli Lloyd, shared that expecting the California people to be up and ready to pay on July 1 is totally unfair.

Lloyd, who is a member of the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, is charged $1,924 per month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom rent-controlled apartment in the Crenshaw district of South Los Angeles. She stated that she's $30,000 behind after not being able to work for most of the last year to care for her two children as daycare centers closed and schools stopped in-person learning, ABC7 reported.

Despite the talks of covering the past-due rent, Lloyd emphasized that she recently lost her job at a real estate brokerage and has not found one yet, so eviction is her major problem once there's no solid decision from the California government once protection expires. She also pointed out that the opening of the state did not mean jobs were already available for all.

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Furthermore, California has $5.2 billion that can be used in paying off people's rent. The money came from multiple aid packages which were approved by Congress. According to Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Newsom on housing and homelessness, the fund appears to be more than enough to cover all of the unpaid rent in the state based on their assessment, AXIOS reported.

But the California Department of Housing and Community Development's report showed that out of the $490 million in requests for rental assistance through May 31, only $32 million has been paid. The numbers do not include the 12 cities and 10 counties in the state that run their own rental assistance programs.

Democrat Assemblyman from San Francisco, David Chiu, who is also the chair of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, emphasized that it is challenging to set up a new and big program overnight. He added that it also has been challenging to educate millions of struggling tenants and landlords on what the law is.

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