1 in 6 Sacramento tenants who got COVID-19 rent and utility assistance faced eviction

About one in six people who received local COVID-19 rent or utility relief had already received an eviction notice, a sign of widespread financial precarity in Sacramento when hundreds of households faced the prospect of displacement and homelessness.

About $98 million in rental and utility assistance has been distributed to more than 12,000 low-income city and county households through the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency using federal and state COVID-19 funds.

Of those households, more than 2,000 had an eviction lawsuit known as an unlawful detainer filed against them in Sacramento Superior Court, according to agency spokeswoman Angela Jones.

It’s impossible to know for certain whether rent relief helps a household avoid eviction in every case, Jones said. Some may have been able to temporarily stave off an eviction, but continued to fall behind on rent. Others may have still been kicked out ultimately for other reasons.

A temporary state moratorium on evictions only protects tenants who filed paperwork proving they can’t pay rent because their income was impacted by the pandemic. Renters who didn’t file paperwork on time could still be evicted, as could those who committed minor lease violations, or who lived in units a owner wants to renovate.

“We have requested this information from the Court but haven’t received a response and we don’t know if the information is being tracked in the Court,” Jones said in an email.

In some cases, landlords kick out families who should be covered under state law knowing many renters have limited resources to fight an illegal lock-out, according to tenant rights advocates.

Even if a tenant successfully sues, the damages landlords would have to pay in Sacramento are lower than in cities with stronger renter protections like San Francisco.

The Sacramento Emergency Rental Assistance program began covering past-due rents and utility bills for low-income tenants living in the city of Sacramento and Sacramento County in fall 2020.

Today, the program has already distributed the vast majority of the nearly $100 million in rental relief. But demand remains high.

More than 30,000 people who applied have not received funds. The housing agency created a wait list in February to allow additional people to sign up.

The housing agency has applied for additional emergency rental assistance from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, but there’s no guarantee that tenants on the wait list will see relief.

Throughout the process, the housing agency has prioritized tenants who received an eviction notice. If an applicant applies for the wait list and has an eviction notice, the agency will review the applicants eligibility to see if funds can be issued immediately.

It’s unclear how many people on the wait list have an eviction notice filed against them, according to Jones.

Between April 2020 to December 2020, at least 642 unlawful detainers where the value of unpaid rent was under $25,000 were filed at Sacramento Superior Court, according to spokeswoman Kim Pedersen.

The number of eviction lawsuits quadrupled the next year, with 2,586 unlawful detainers filed in the county court over the course of 2021.

And in January and February of this year alone, 676 eviction lawsuits were filed. If unlawful detainer filings kept up the pace of the first two months of 2022, more than 4,000 tenants could be sued for eviction by the end of this year.

Not all unlawful detainers result in an eviction. During mediation, tenants and landlords are sometimes able to reach a resolution on how much the tenant has to pay to avoid an eviction — assuming the renter can pay at all in a timely manner.

This story was originally published April 19, 2022 at 5:25 AM.