Evictions are on the rise in Marin following the end of COVID-19 rental protections and the county should take steps to prevent further displacement, according to a nonprofit that advocates for tenants.
“Without robust tenant protections, evictions will return to the high levels we’ve seen in the past,” said Laura McMahon, executive director of Legal Aid of Marin. “It’s really a call to action for us.”
Legal Aid briefed the Marin County Board of Supervisors on the status of evictions in the county on Tuesday at the invitation of Supervisor Dennis Rodoni.
According to Legal Aid, 349 unlawful detainers were filed in Marin in 2018 and 336 were filed in 2019. An “unlawful detainer” refers to the court complaint that landlords register when they want to evict a tenant.
The number of eviction notices dropped to 136 in 2020 and 194 in 2021 during the height of the pandemic while a state eviction moratorium was in place. But in 2022, after the state moratorium ended, the number of evictions in the county shot back up to 333.
Lucie Hollingsworth, an attorney with the nonprofit, said the state moratorium was particularly successful in preventing evictions because it only allowed “just cause” evictions in cases involving health or safety.
In addition to being able to evict tenants for failure to pay rent or other violations of their leases, landlords are typically allowed to evict for such “just” causes as wanting to rehabilitate a dwelling, convert it into a condominium or allow a relative to live in it.
Legal Aid is recommending that the county adopt rent control. The state’s Assembly Bill 1482, which became effective in 2019, capped annual rent increases at 5% plus inflation.
“Lowering that cap on rent increases would go far,” Hollingsworth said.
As an example of how quickly rents can rise under AB 1482, Hollingsworth demonstrated that a tenant paying $3,198 per month for a two-bedroom apartment could end up having to pay $4,807 per month for the same apartment five years later.
“They would be spending $1,600 more for that unit, which is a 50% increase.” Hollingsworth said.
Hollingworth said that according to the county’s recently updated housing element, rents in Marin increased 16% from 2021 to 2022. That is possible despite state rent control because landlords may raise rents to market levels when a dwelling becomes vacant.
Hollingworth said that four large Marin complexes with a total of 720 apartments were sold last year. She said renters in the apartments were paying “naturally occurring” affordable rent because they had lived in them so long.
“Many are feeling like they are being pushed out,” Hollingworth said. “They’ve all had maximum rent increases. There has been some alleged harassment as well.”
McMahon quoted a number of figures as evidence that Marin is facing an imminent eviction “catastrophe.”
“We located a report that found that 4,500 Marin households held 18.3 million in rental debt as of 2021,” McMahon said. “The renter demographics are overwhelmingly people of color.”
McMahon noted that 70% of Marin’s Black residents and 71% of its Latino residents are renters, but was unable to immediately cite the source of the Marin rental debt statistic when quizzed later by Supervisor Mary Sackett.
Marin County ended its direct involvement with rental assistance after distributing $27 million to more than 1,900 households from April 2020 through September 2022. The money came from the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill signed into law by President Biden in March 2021.
At the time, the county had not exhausted all of the funds potentially available to it. In October, rather than have the county continue to operate the rental assistance program, supervisors turned the job over to Community Action Marin, the largest nonprofit social services provider in the county. Since then, another $6.23 million in rental payments have been funded. As of March, another 341 households had received rental assistance.
Another of Legal Aid’s recommendations is that the county more actively enforce a requirement included in the just-cause ordinance it adopted in December 2018 that landlords with three or more dwellings register them annually with the county.
Compliance with this law is a necessary precondition for evicting a tenant. Hollingworth said Legal Aid could be using the law as a means of defending clients from unlawful evictions if the system were working as intended, but it is not.
Following the meeting, Leelee Thomas, deputy director of the Marin County Community Development Agency, wrote in an email that 198 housing providers overseeing a total of 1,711 dwellings have registered to date. Thomas estimated that amounts to about half of those subject to the ordinance.
“At this time, only county staff have access to the information in the registry,” Thomas wrote. “However, as part of the registry, housing providers are asked to confirm that they have sent proof of completion to their tenant before filing a termination.”
Other Legal Aid recommendations included having the county adopt a tenant “bill of rights,” strengthen its just-cause protections and invest in homelessness prevention legal services like those the nonprofit provides.
Marin County Administrator Matthew Hymel told supervisors that over the last 33 months, the county has spent $560,000 to cover the cost of a bilingual attorney and paralegal working at Legal Aid of Marin. Hymel said he will be proposing to continue that level of funding in next year’s budget.
Hymel said next year’s budget will also include $380,000 to cover the cost of a planner to oversee implementation of rental protections called for in the county’s new housing element over the next two years.
Used with permission by the Marin Independent Journal.
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