The COVID-19 Rental Housing Recovery Act (the Recovery Act) grants limited protections to tenants unable to pay their rent. In March of this year, the Recovery Act was extended but only through June 30, 2022. Unless the state legislature takes very unexpected and belated action before July 1, many of the Recovery Acts protections will expire including:
For rent that is owing any time between March of 2020 and March of 2022, the Recovery Act requires the landlord to show proof that they filed for emergency rental assistance as a condition of obtaining a judgment for unlawful detainer. This requirement will now expire. (CCP 1179.11)
The requirement for 3-day notices demanding rent from October 1, 2021, through March 31, 2022, to include specific information. The Recovery Act requires to be written into a 3-day notice advice to the tenant that they may have legal protections against evictions based upon their completion of an application for emergency rental assistance. This information must be added to a 3-day notice to pay rent that if served between April 1, 2022, and June 30, 2022, when demanding rent due from October 1, 2021, through March 31, 2022. This requirement will now expire, and the notice will return to a standard 3-day notice. (CCP 1179.10)
State preemption period expiration will allow cities and counties to now implement their own rent moratoria. The COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act (CTRA), originally passed in September of 2020, preempted the myriad local rent moratoria that had developed in the early days of the pandemic. Between March 2020 and August 2020 there were roughly 150 cities that had enacted their own local rent moratoria. These laws allowed tenants to delay payment of rent based upon a claim of the tenant’s COVID-19 financial hardship.
But once CTRA was passed, cities could no longer enact new protections or extend existing ones. Only a handful of cities that already had their local moratoria in place prior to August 19, 2020, have been able to maintain these ordinances in force throughout the pandemic (such as the city of Los Angeles).
This preemption of local rent moratoria is due to expire on July 1. Once it does, any city or county in the state will be free to enact new rent moratoria. Los Angeles County and the city of San Diego already have, and their ordinances will be effective starting July 1. For information about LA County tenant protections including their rent moratorium, see “About LA County’s COVID-19 Renter Protections.”
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