SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Eviction relief protections in California have officially come to an end. However, thousands of residents who are behind on their rent along with housing advocates say that date needs to be extended.
Rodney Davis is a Sacramento resident facing a possible eviction.
"You're talking about stress, it's been very stressful," Davis said. "I'm still sort of in a dilemma and don't really have very much money saved up."
Davis has a lot of anxiety and uncertainty as the state's rent relief eviction protections come to an end. He has received assistance from the Sacramento Emergency Rental Assistance Program in the past, but was recently furloughed from his state job. Now, Davis is about one month behind on rent, still waiting for his unemployment benefits to kick in.
"My landlord can still give me an eviction notice," Davis said. "Technically, I'm gonna owe for this month and next month, so I don't know. To be honest, I probably got like $500 in the bank."
Landlords can now start issuing eviction notices for tenants like Davis who are behind on their payments and for the thousands of renters who have applied to the state's emergency COVID-19 relief program and are still waiting for a response.
"To be frank, the state protections ended on March 31 and we've seen many, many people living in jurisdictions that didn't have protections. Sacramento is one of those," Laura Simon Weisberg, the legal director for ACCE Institute, said. "So in many ways, for tenants in Sacramento and Sacramento county, things were bad yesterday, and they're bad today and they're gonna be bad tomorrow."
Simon-Weisberg offers this advice for tenants who are served with an eviction notice.
"When you get that three day notice, take action. See if there's some way to pay rent, reach out to legal service organizations to see around getting rental assistance," Simon-Weisberg said. "Another really helpful resource is there is a website called tenant power toolkit that walks you through every step and then prints out an answer."
As for Davis, he has no place to go if evicted from his apartment. He's urging lawmakers to to reinstate rent relief and extend protections..
"Hire more people to assist people who in many cases not because they haven't been doing what they need to do but they're just in a bad situation because of COVID," Davis said.
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