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Hundreds of Marin residents were rescued from the immediate threat of eviction proceedings this week when the state extended a moratorium on evictions for another 90 days.

“The extension of the eviction protections through June 30, 2022, provides us with additional time to finish processing pending applications and requests for assistance,” said Hyacinth Hinojosa, a deputy county administrator overseeing the county’s distribution of rental assistance funds.

“There was concern from tenants and community advocates that without this law people would be vulnerable to eviction,” Hinojosa said, “and might self-evict beginning April 1.”

The rental assistance is being provided to people who were unable to pay their rent because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of Marin residents are still waiting for the county to process their applications.

Hinojosa said the county has distributed more than $22 million to 1,403 households, but it still has another $10.9 million to give out. The county is currently reviewing 835 applications.

Any Marin resident who submitted an application after Jan. 8 was put on a waiting list. The county had expected to close the waiting list by now, but has decided to keep it open until the end of this month. Hinojosa said there are 424 names on it.

Hinojosa said the county isn’t guaranteeing that people on the waiting list will receive any money. He said, however, that the county can apply to the state for more funds if it runs out.

“For Marin, it’s definitely a good thing,” Lucie Hollingsworth, senior attorney at Legal Aid of Marin, said of the moratorium extension.

Hollingsworth said all of the Marin residents awaiting rental assistance payments and on the waiting list would have been vulnerable to eviction as of Friday.

“Now, they’re breathing a sigh of relief that the county has another few months to get this rental assistance money out the door to the landlords,” Hollingsworth said.

Hollingsworth said 12 non-payment eviction cases were filed in Marin during March, which would have led to quick evictions without the moratorium extension.

The moratorium provides protection against eviction for nonpayment of rent, but only in cases where an application for rental assistance funds was filed by March 31.

Hollingworth said, however, that landlords will be less likely to proceed with evictions if a tenant has filed an application, and there is a chance of recouping owed rent.

The new legislation preemptively bans additional local protections against eviction for nonpayment of rent that were not in place on Aug. 19, 2020. Nevertheless, Marin landlords were not happy about a fourth extension of the state’s eviction moratorium.

“It’s a disappointing move by the Legislature,” said Joby Tapia, secretary of the Marin Rental Property Association. “There is a lot of abuse by tenants who are taking advantage of the inability to be evicted.”

Tapia said a better solution would have been to create an arbitration board or some kind of judicial review to determine if evictions are justified or not.

“This broad-handed approach is just continuing to put strain on small property owners,” Tapia said.

Tenant advocates say the financial impacts of the pandemic have not completely abated, and many low-wage workers have seen their incomes reduced. The state unemployment rate was 5.4% in February, and many California cities are among the most expensive for renters in the U.S.

Christina Livingston, executive director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, said the state needs to keep the rental assistance program open, allow local eviction protections and keep more families housed.

“The economic fallout of the pandemic is far from over,” she said.

Researchers estimate that statewide at least half of the applications to the assistance program, launched last March, are still under review.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, serving as acting governor while Gov. Gavin Newsom is on vacation, signed the measure Thursday. The emergency bill — AB 2179, co-authored by Assemblymember Tim Grayson, D-Concord, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland — needed two-thirds approval from lawmakers and passed by wide margins in the Assembly and state Senate this week.

“Today’s action will provide additional time to thousands more who are in the process of acquiring emergency relief,” said Kounalakis, becoming the first woman in state history to sign a piece of legislation into law.

Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, cast the lone Senate floor vote against the extension. Wiener, chair of the Senate housing committee, said the extension was important but he objected to pre-empting additional local protections. Many California renters, he said, “continue to struggle.”

Lawmakers enacted a broad moratorium early in the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking to keep families struggling with illness and unemployment from becoming homeless during the health crisis. The moratorium was extended three times, gradually offering fewer protections and finally only covering renters in the federally-funded $5.5 billion Housing is Key assistance program. The program is expected to receive additional funds but was set to stop taking applications at midnight March 31.

Both sides agree that the assistance program, built from scratch to quickly deliver billions of dollars to tenants and landlords, has been confusing, opaque and fraught with delays. Still, the state has distributed $2.6 billion to 223,000 renter households since it launched last March.

About 373,000 renters have applications either under review or are awaiting payment on a first or second aid request, according to an analysis of state data by the National Equity Atlas. The researchers estimate as many as 740,000 renter families in California missed paying February rent.

State housing officials say the backlog is between 165,000 to 190,000 applicants. The state expects to pay back rent for all eligible applicants in the program.

Bay Area News group contributed to this report.

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