The 11/11/2022 edition of THE THORN WEST, our weekly locally news recap, included an inaccurate and confusing summary of a recent Los Angeles city council committee meeting. We apologize for this error.
City Councilmember Nithya Raman did agendize a package of tenants rights expansions with an end date to the eviction moratorium for the housing committee meeting on Nov 9th. It is crucial to correct that she responded to tenant pressure and held back that vote, and further moved to amend the package with stronger permanent tenant protections.
The eviction moratorium’s end is linked to the city’s declaration of local emergency, which has expired, and been renewed at the end of every month for many months. Governor Newsom declared the statewide end of COVID-19 emergency will happen Feb 28th, 2023. Councilmember Raman has twice moved to extend the eviction moratorium date until that Feb 28 deadline, and twice been voted down. So the package currently includes the eviction moratorium end date of Jan 31, 2023, one month earlier, and this package will likely return to council soon.
City Council would need the mayor or the governor to act in order to extend the moratorium beyond Feb 28, and Councilmember Raman would need majority council support to extend it to February. The end of the moratorium will still be a disaster for tenants, regardless of what other protections are included.
Tenants should know that no matter what date the eviction moratorium ends, that they have until August 2023 to pay back rent that was owed between March 1, 2020 – September 30, 2021, and at least until Feb 2024 to pay rent that was owed October 1, 2021. Tenants that owe back rent from November 2021 - the present will be vulnerable to eviction starting one month after the city’s eviction moratorium ends.
If you are facing eviction yourself or know someone who is, please go to https://tenantpowertoolkit.org/ for help filing an answer to your eviction notice.
