California is transferring quicker to offer Tesla homeowners aid than struggling renters
California Lt. gov. Eleni Kounalakis made national news on Thursday by becoming the first woman in history to sign a state measure into law. The bill she ratified, Assembly Bill 2179, extends statewide eviction protections through June for renters who have applied for a state relief program – protections that would have expired this past Thursday had action not been taken.
Feel good story? Unfortunately, no.
Seemingly lost (arguably by design) in the national fanfare over Kounalakis’ historic first is the fact that the bill she signed contained a poison pill. Embedded in its text is a preemption clause that prevents jurisdictions like San Francisco from enforcing their own local eviction moratoriums, while allowing moratoriums in some places – like Los Angeles — to survive.
“There is no policy rationale for overriding local eviction protections in San Francisco, etc., while allowing other cities to protect their renters,” State Sen. Scott Wiener D-San Francisco and Assembly Member Phil Ting D-San Francisco, both of whom voted against the bill, said in a joint statement this week. “We shouldn’t be playing favorites by allowing some cities to protect their renters while prohibiting other cities from doing so. Cities must have the ability to protect their residents from eviction and homelessness.”
San Francisco is a city known for its political excesses. Trying to help its residents from being tossed into the street amid a deadly pandemic that continues to cause chaos in the global economy, however, isn’t one of them. And arbitrarily stripping the city of its ability to do so reeks of an ugly backroom deal.
Data compiled by The Chronicle show that nearly 21,500 households in San Francisco County were behind on rent as of February. Collectively, these households owe nearly $199 million.
More than $5 billion in federal funds has been made available to make the households whose back rent stems from COVID — and the landlords they owe — whole. But the state rental relief program charged with distributing most of these funds has been clouded by bureaucratic failures. Upwards of a year after California began accepting applications, not even half of the more than 507,000 households who have applied for the program have received aid. Those numbers don’t include more recent applications sitting on desks, waiting for the machinery behind this program to process them.
This is why flexible local eviction moratoriums remain so essential. And yet California didn’t just eliminate the ability of places like San Francisco to protect its residents, it cut off new relief applications as of March 31 – even as it actively pursues funding sources to expand the program’s pot. The state requested an additional $1.9 billion in federal funds last November, money that it is still seeking. And legislators recently passed a law to streamline the relief process to make it easier to quality.
It still wasn’t easy enough. In the wake of the bill’s signing, many lawmakers expressed concern that non-English speakers and some other groups had struggled to navigate the process and had been left behind.
We urge these and other lawmakers to take stock of the system’s failures and aggressively move to remedy them — before a wave of evictions swells the ranks of the state’s homeless population.
It’s not as if California lacks the capability to put money in people’s pockets in a hurry. gov. Newsom is lobbying for an $11 billion rebate that would give $400 debit cards to car owners — including electric vehicle owners — to combat the rising costs of gas. Payments could conceivably go out as soon as July. That Tesla owners could see direct relief from a momentary gas price hike, as thousands of struggling renters are thrown out of their homes due to bureaucratic bungling, is an injustice that can’t be allowed to occur.
Landlords are right to insist that tenants can’t be allowed to forgo rent payments in perpetuity. Blanket eviction moratoriums have to end eventually. The quickest and most ethical way to get to this place, however, is for California to more efficiently use the massive pot of funds at its disposal to make those with COVID debt whole. If we’re prepared to clear the way to put cash in the pockets of Tesla owners, we can do the same for those at risk of eviction and homelessness.
This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
