David Zimmerman had big plans when he moved into a four-bedroom house in North Park. He would split the $2,500 monthly rent three ways with roommates and take full advantage of the backyard — starting a garden, throwing parties, maybe even raising chickens.
Zimmerman only had a verbal agreement to live there, but he said the owner was his friend’s mother. He said he didn’t think twice about it because she made him feel like part of the family.
But a week after moving in, San Diego experienced one of the coldest days on record in March, and a broken window and a broken heater forced Zimmerman to wrap himself in blankets and sleep on the sofa in the living room, the warmest place in the house he could find.
why it matters
Research has found that more people have been infected with and died from COVID-19 in places where eviction protections did not exist.
So the 30-year-old tenant complained to his friend’s mom. He said he was not aggressive; he was just tired of being cold.
Shortly after her complaints, Zimmerman said she received notice to leave on May 1. He said his landlord was using a no-fault eviction to remove him from the 1,200-square-foot property to carry out substantial repairs and remove it from the rental market. .
While Zimmerman’s situation is unique, data and interviews suggest he’s one of hundreds of other tenants caught up in a wave of no-fault evictions in San Diego County, and cities like San Diego. and Chula Vista are taking steps to prevent abuse of the system and keep people housed.
A new source Analysis of court data found that the average number of residential eviction filings per business day has trended upward since last September, around the same time that most local and state COVID-related eviction protections have expired.
Currently, as long as non-paying tenants have applied for housing assistance, they cannot be evicted in most cases, said Gilberto Vera, senior counsel for the housing team at the Legal Aid Society of San Diego.
But tenants can be evicted for other reasons, or for no reason at all.
Vera said the Legal Aid Society has seen an increase in situations similar to the one Zimmerman faces — a landlord evicting a tenant with a no-fault eviction, citing the need to significantly remodel the property and a desire to fire out of the market.
Indeed, nearly a quarter of calls for help to the Legal Aid Society involve various types of no-fault evictions, according to data collected by the law firm.
But there’s no enforcement mechanism to stop a landlord from saying they need to evict for substantial repairs, or because they want to stop renting the property, to turn around and rent to someone. else at a higher rate.
“Renters here in our county are susceptible to landlord exploitation because of these shortcomings,” Vera said.
Last week, the San Diego City Council moved to close those loopholes by requiring no-fault evictions to meet certain conditions, such as providing additional notice and following rules for taking a property off the market. The new moratorium takes effect May 19 and will last until September 30, or 60 days after the end of the local state of emergency, whichever comes first. Chula Vista is preparing to take similar action next month.
But some rental property owners call it a political decision. Lucinda Lilley, president of the Southern California Rental Housing Association, said landlords have been caught off guard by a new layer of restrictions that will cause unintended consequences and threaten the housing ecosystem.
“We recognize that there are extremes among tenants and rental housing providers, and we certainly recognize that there can be bad actors,” Lilley said, “but there are other ways to deal with that. “
This moratorium ties the hands of rental housing providers by limiting what they can do with the property they own, she said, adding that cities and counties should instead require mediation before an eviction. can be filed.
But the ultimate goal is to prevent people from becoming homeless in the midst of a pandemic through no fault of their own, said Jose Lopez, director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment in San Diego.
“When we talk about no-fault evictions, we’re talking about evictions for tenants who did nothing wrong,” Lopez said.
“It can’t happen soon enough”
Zimmerman’s troubles began early in the year with what seemed like a lot.
He had heard of the house in North Park – a much larger space than he had in University Heights. His friend’s mother, Penny Yasuda, had just purchased the property earlier this year. Although Yasuda did not respond to interview requests, there is no evidence that the deportation was not in accordance with the law.
According to Zimmerman, Yasuda wanted to rent the space for $2,500 starting in March. But the earliest he and two other roommates could move in and afford that rate was in May. Zimmerman said she agreed to meet in the middle, asking just $900 a month for March and April, then raising the rent to $2,500 a month when the roommates arrive in May. But none of this was written.
Zimmerman said he was drawn to the backyard, swimming with ideas of where to start growing vegetables and the best place to set up the chicken coop. Moreover, this deal would not have cost him more than a month that he had already paid at University Heights. He jumped at the chance, he says.
He now faces eviction on May 1, about two weeks before the city’s moratorium takes effect. As a research associate for UC San Diego, Zimmerman said he worked remotely and depended on stable food, the internet and housing to make a living. He said his plan was to dig in and hope that any eviction proceedings would take place after the moratorium comes into effect.
But he could still be protected, said Erin Rounds, managing attorney and owner of Tenants Legal Center.
Based on the law’s drafting, Rounds said every tenant in the city of San Diego should be protected from no-fault eviction, whether they’ve lived somewhere for three months or three years, with or without a lease. And a judge will have to decide whether this moratorium should apply to someone who was already served with a no-fault eviction before it took effect on May 19.
“Even the lawyers right now don’t really know how this is going to be handled,” she said.
Nonetheless, Zimmerman said he worries about the baggage that comes with resisting an eviction.
“It makes it so much harder to find a future hire,” he said.
The anxiety of it all keeps him awake at night, he says. He feels exhausted throughout the day and has productivity issues at work.
“I think for a lot of people in San Diego, it can’t happen soon enough,” he said.
“It’s my property”
About 64,000 San Diegans are still out of work, according to SANDAG, and rental debt continues to pile up in a county where census data shows nearly half of all housing is occupied by renters. Statewide, research shows that 740,000 households have racked up $3.5 billion in rental debt since early February.
But while some eviction protections expired last September, most tenants are still covered as long as they have applied for housing assistance.
So far, more than $196 million in rent relief has benefited nearly 17,000 households in the City of San Diego, with 9,000 still awaiting approval. The county’s rent relief program has distributed more than $193 million to help more than 20,000 households, of which $20 million is still awaiting approval.
And now San Diego’s moratorium on no-fault evictions is an attempt to add an extra layer of protection for people who pay rent and fulfill all of their lease obligations.
But he makes certain exceptions. A landlord can evict a tenant to take the property off the rental market, provided they give six months’ notice and vacate all units in the property. This is to prevent a landlord from targeting a specific person and allow everyone else to stay, said Vera, the lawyer.
A landlord could also evict a tenant so that they or an immediate family member – grandparents, parents or children – can move into the property, but they would need to provide 90 days notice.
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Even that poses a problem for homeowners faced with a situation like Renee Burnett.
She said she owned property in the city, a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house in southeast San Diego that she inherited from her aunt. She’s rented it from the same family for the past nine years, and they’ve struggled to pay the rent for the past six years, she said.
But it’s not about the money, she says. She is trying to evict them now because her sister is sick and homeless, and has moved to San Diego to be closer to her family. But because her sister isn’t considered an immediate family member under the city’s moratorium — only grandparents, parents and children — Burnett wouldn’t qualify for the exception.
“I mean, come on, who’s more immediate than your sibling?” she said in an interview, adding, “and it’s my property, it’s my property.”
Burnett, who lives in Chula Vista, said he emailed Mayor Todd Gloria and the city council before the moratorium passed, explaining his sister’s poor health.
“What makes this even worse is that my sister’s husband and primary caregiver lives in his car and sleeps in the park, three houses away from my rental property,” she said in the e-mail. mail. “My aging mother shelters my sister at night.”
She ended her note with “not all landlords are real estate moguls” and asked the city council not to pass the moratorium. It ended up going 6-1, with council member Chris Cate voting no and council members Joe LaCava and Raul Campillo recusing themselves.
Even so, Burnett said he gave his tenants 90 days notice to vacate on April 13, before the final vote. She said she used a no-fault eviction, citing the landlord or an immediate family member moving in as the reason, hoping something would change and allow her to pass.
“We’ll see what happens when it’s all said and done,” she said. “I would be really angry if something happened to my sister before that.”
Content type
News: based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the journalist, or reported and verified by knowledgeable sources.
