An Alameda County, California judge has ordered the state housing department to pause denying applications for pandemic rental assistance after tenant advocates filed a lawsuit alleging officials have unfairly withheld aid from struggling renters.
Advocates contend the state’s $5.2 billion emergency rental aid program has failed to give tenants enough opportunity to appeal denials and has discriminated against some Latino and Asian renters by providing application information only in English.
“Over the past few months, I’ve worked with hundreds of tenants who received a denial with little to no explanation and are terrified about losing their homes,” said Patricia Mendoza, organizer at Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, one of the groups behind the suit, in a statement.
On Thursday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled the California Department of Housing and Community Development must stop issuing rental aid denials, as well as put on hold any denials handed down in the past 30 days. The pause will remain in effect while the court reviews the rental aid appeals process and comes to a final decision in the lawsuit.
Advocates say the pause impacts an estimated 100,000 California households that have applications pending with the program or were recently denied aid. In June, at least 16,000 Bay Area households were waiting on the program as it struggled with long wait times and delayed funds. Some counties and cities in the region also set up their own rental aid programs, though many are now out of money.
The state housing department said in a statement that its program, which stopped accepting new applications at the end of March, has helped keep more than 340,000 households from losing their homes during the pandemic. It has given out an average of $11,690 per household and nearly $4 billion in total aid, according to the state’s rental aid dashboard.
“We are disappointed by the court’s ruling and will continue to defend California’s COVID-19 Rent Relief program,” the agency said in the statement.
To qualify for the state program, renters need to have taken a financial hit because of the pandemic and earn no more than 80% of a county’s median income. As of last month, the program had denied aid to at least 135,000 households — about a third of all applicants — according to advocates and news reports. That’s left many renters at risk of eviction since statewide protections for those with pending applications expired June 30.
In the Bay Area, some local governments have passed their own eviction protections that remain in effect. Two of the strongest local ordinances in Alameda County and Oakland have been challenged in court. Landlords in those cases argue the eviction bans have outlived their purpose two-plus years into the pandemic and in some cases are being abused by tenants who have failed to pay rent, damaged units or violated lease agreements.
Advocates, meanwhile, say eviction protections and rental relief are still desperately needed to keep people from falling into homelessness, as rents are rapidly rising throughout the Bay Area and the state.
“We have to keep people housed,” said Madeline Howard, senior attorney at Western Center on Law and Poverty, in a statement. “That’s why we filed this lawsuit — the program was created to prevent evictions but falls woefully short.”
The advocacy groups backing the lawsuit include Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, PolicyLink and the Keep LA Housed Coalition. They are being represented by the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
