‘Profoundly unfair.’ California tenants sue state over COVID rental aid program

California tenants have filed a lawsuit against the agency that runs the state’s COVID-19 emergency rent relief program, saying it “disproportionately harms tenants on the basis of race, color, and national origin.”

Tenant rights organizations Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy announced Monday they joined with research institute PolicyLink to sue the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), which administers the rental assistance program.

The groups claim the program has denied funding to hundreds of thousands of tenants without specific reasons or adequate opportunities to appeal. HCD has also made it more challenging for non-English-speaking tenants

to communicate with program officials, the lawsuit said.

The groups are represented by the Western Center on Law & Poverty, Public Counsel, and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. They filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court.

Civil lawsuits provide only the plaintiff’s perspective and don’t share any information from defendants. HCD did not immediately respond to The Sacramento Bee’s request for comment.

“Tenants are being denied rental assistance that they need to stay housed without being told the reason, or getting a fair chance to contest the denial,” said Madeline Howard, senior attorney at Western Center on Law & Poverty, in a statement. “The process is profoundly unfair, doesn’t meet constitutional standards, and fails to meet its most basic function — keeping Californians housed.”

California’s rent relief program

California has been operating its pandemic rent relief program since March 2021. It allowed income-qualifying tenants to apply for funding to help pay rental debt dating back to spring 2020, when COVID-19 prevented some residents from working and paying for their housing.

The program stopped taking applications on March 31. Only tenants who had applied for assistance by that date remain protected from eviction for nonpayment of rent.

The Legislature in March approved Assembly Bill 2179, which extended those protections through June 30 for renters still waiting for their assistance funds.

More than 316,000 households have received upwards of $3.6 billion as of Monday, according to HCD data. But the program has faced severe backlogs, and some tenants have had to wait months to receive the money they need to pay their rent.

The application can also be long and confusing and require extensive documentation from tenants and landlords. Advocates have report many needy tenants have fallen through the program’s cracks.

Rental aid denials, application translation problems

In addition to these problems, the lawsuit says HCD is “violating state and federal law by failing to provide due process and administering (the emergency rental assistance program) in a way that disproportionately harms tenants on the basis of race, color, and national origin.”

For example, some tenants have had their applications denied without receiving specific reasons or having the chance to appeal directly to a decisionmaker, the lawsuit said.

The tenants’ groups said 138,000 households — about 31% of those who applied for rental assistance — had their applications denied as of June 1. More than 425,000 households had completed applications as of Monday, according to HCD.

Some tenants who requested materials in languages other than English still received communications only in English, making it challenging for them to respond to inquiries about their applications, the lawsuit said.

“Renters with limited English proficiency, many from Asian and Latinx communities, face barriers in accessing rental assistance due to the Department’s lack of adequate interpretation services,” the lawsuit said.

The tenants’ groups petitioned the court to prevent HCD from denying assistance without reason or means of appeal.

They also want the court to “(prohibit) respondents from administering the rental assistance program in a way that discriminates against tenants based on race, color, and national origin.”

“This lawsuit is necessary to stop the unfair and arbitrary rental assistance denials,” said Jackie Zaneri, senior attorney at Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, in the release. “Tenants deserve to have their rental assistance applications fairly considered and to know why they were denied.”