Written by Amanda Angulo
California legislators have continued to push off the question of the state’s extension on evictions for the third time during the pandemic. While many tenants and landlords are all worrying about where they will go and how they will survive, they are being shut out of the decisions that will affect them.
Most likely, the extension will be granted to go past June 30th, which is the deadline for the previous extension. However, the amount of time for the extension and the terms that will come with it have yet to be decided and confirmed. Many lawmakers believe that a decision could be made by the end of the week or as soon as the end of the day.
Since January, when Gov. Newsom passed the eviction protections, only $50 million of $1.4 billion has been distributed by the state and the state has only received applications for half of the money. This is something that our California lawmakers have been worrying about, not getting the rest of the money into resident’s pockets before the deadline.
Therefore, with this new decision of the eviction extension, legislators will be amending rules for applications in order to get the rollout to be much faster. Yet, the people who are being affected, tenants and landlords, have been kicked out of negotiations between the Governor and Assembly and State leaders, which has been occurring in the last two rounds of negotiations.
“We’d rather not have an extension at all, but we need to get the money out,” said Debra Carlton, executive vice president of the California Apartment Association. “That’s our number one focus. If that means a short, short-term extension, so be it. But the focus has to be on getting the money out.”
