California weighs extending eviction protections past June

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation's most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate.

Left unsettled is whether California will continue to ban evictions for unpaid rent beyond June 30, a pandemic-related order that was meant to be temporary but is proving difficult to undo.

Federal eviction protections also are set to expire on June 30. California had passed its own protections that applied to more people.

Newsom and legislative leaders are meeting privately to decide what to do, part of the negotiations over the state's roughly $260 billion operating budget. An extension of the eviction ban seems likely to give California more time to spend all the money to cover unpaid rent. But landlords and tenants' rights groups are arguing over how long that extension should last.

“The expectation for people to be up and at ’em and ready to pay rent on July 1 is wholeheartedly unfair,” said Kelli Lloyd, a 43-year-old single mother who says she has not worked consistently since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Lloyd — a member of the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment — is supposed to pay $1,924 a month for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom rent-controlled apartment in the Crenshaw district of south Los Angeles. But she says she's $30,000 behind after not working for most of the last year to care for her two children as day care centers closed and schools halted in-person learning.

That debt will likely be covered by the government. But Lloyd said she recently lost a job at a real estate brokerage and hasn't found another one yet. She's worried she could be evicted if...