As of June 30, the city’s rent moratorium ended and now local renters have just six months to pay back rent or face eviction.
Under the rules of the moratorium, which was enacted as part of the local emergency at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a landlord could not impose or seek to recover late fees, pass-throughs, or interest for rent that was delayed or unpaid due to the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The moratorium also encouraged partial payment of rent if tenants could not pay the full rent, and prohibited landlords from harassing or intimidating tenants who exercised their protections under the moratorium.
“I think that with the removal of the state eviction protections there will be an increasing number of evictions,” said Dr. Jane Panangaden, a Caltech grad student who has been organizing with the Pasadena Tenants Union for the last four years.
“No-cause evictions are still disallowed in LA County, so what we have been mostly seeing recently are large rent increases. Tenants unable to pay these rent increases will most likely self-evict rather than risk their credit scores in court for a case they will likely lose.”
“So, yes I think we will see a lot of evictions soon, but I think most of them will not be easily traceable. If we had a rental registry, which is one of the provisions in the rent control law on the ballot this November, then we would be able to track these displacements, as landlords would have to file copies of the notices to quit with the rental board, who would then release aggregate statistics. For now though, we will likely never now the extent of the exodus from Pasadena in the next few months.”
According to one local realtor, more people paid rent than many industry experts expected.
“The last time I looked was probably a couple of months ago and it confirmed things like, even at the worst part in December of 2021 and the previous year, the payment of rent was a lot higher than anyone expected,” said Leon Khachooni, director of the Foothill Apartment Association. “It wasn’t meeting the ‘one third numbers’ that everyone was hearing in the news for all of 2020 and 2021.”
A total of 52 city and county jurisdictions in California enacted emergency eviction moratoria in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from Nolo website.
Many of those jurisdictions have already lifted the moratorium on residential and commercial tenants.
Most local jurisdictions that currently have COVID tenant protections in effect have set the expiration of their eviction moratoria to coincide with the anticipated lifting of their local emergency, as per a city staff report.
Locally, the City Manager’s office contacted several commercial real estate brokers in Pasadena and their overall observation is that the lifting of the city’s eviction moratorium will have a minimal impact.
“One person on a property that I take care of that has not paid $1 of his own money since March of 2020,” said local Realtor Ann Marie Villicana. “We have received some governmental assistance, but still behind since I think it’s now paid through October of 2021.”
According to Villicana there is almost chance of being evicted right now because of the way the law works.
“It’s completely lopsided. The landlord has to pay all their property taxes, all the insurance, all the maintenance, all the mortgage, any problem that comes up has to be taken care of, but the tenant has no obligation to pay the rent right now.”
Several local tenant advocates groups have successfully gathered the required signatures to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot.
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