LA Tenants Face Deadline To Pay Back Lingering COVID Rent Debt

Tenants in the city of Los Angeles must repay all of their past-due rent from earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic by Thursday or they could face eviction.

The repayment deadline marks the end of nearly four years of city rules that gave tenants safeguards from eviction if they couldn’t keep up with rent due to pandemic job loss or illness.

Landlords say these protections have lasted far too long, putting unfair financial burdens on the city’s rental property owners. But tenant advocates point to data showing that many L.A. renters continue to carry large debts, and many could soon be at risk of losing their homes.

“Landlords have been waiting for this date,” said Bijan Ghaemi, an organizer with Community Power Collective and a member of the Keep L.A. Housed coalition. “There’s going to be a huge wave of evictions.”

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the L.A. Housing Department, found that up to 93,000 city households have COVID-19 rent debt due by Thursday’s deadline.

The key dates

Rent in L.A. was never canceled during the pandemic — only delayed. The city’s protections for late rent ended back in February 2023. But protections have so far continued for tenants with unpaid balances from months prior.

An earlier deadline in August 2023 required tenants in the city to repay debts from the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic. Now, the city’s Thursday deadline requires tenants to pay back everything they owe from October 2021 through January 2023.

Barbara Schultz, who directs eviction defense work at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said lawyers are already in short supply for renters currently facing eviction. She worries that shortage, coupled with the end of rent debt protections, could drive L.A.’s rising homelessness numbers even higher.

“The concern is that if there will be more evictions filed, tenants will not be able to find representation and they will be displaced and potentially rendered homeless,” Schultz said.

Last year’s homeless count released in June found the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city had jumped 10% from the prior year to a total of 46,260.

Where’s the rent relief?

The city launched a rent relief program in September 2023 aiming to clear these debts before the deadline. The application period closed in October. By Tuesday afternoon, the city had distributed less than $8 million of the $30 million in total available funding.

The city council voted last week to continue eviction protections for rent relief applicants who’ve been approved, but who have yet to receive payments. However, pending applicants who have not been approved will head into February without protections.

The city does not have enough funding for everyone who applied. Applicants requested the city’s help paying off more than $470 million worth of back rent.

Rose Serna, a single mom in Highland Park with about $4,000 in pandemic rent debt coming due Thursday, said she applied for the city’s rent relief program but has not yet received approval. She said she trusted the city to make tenants whole before the deadline.

“It feels hugely irresponsible of the city when we are in such a dire housing and homelessness crisis,” said Serna, who previously spoke to LAist about her housing instability. “I was trying to do everything they were telling us to do. And in the end, I guess it wasn't okay to follow their advice because now it's just like the rug is being pulled from under us.”

Serna said she’ll do whatever she has to do to stay housed, even if it means seeking loans or going into credit card debt.

Will evictions spike after Feb. 1?

Evictions in L.A. County have already eclipsed pre-pandemic levels. Landlords filed close to 48,000 evictions last year, a 25% increase from 2022 and more than the 40,572 filings in 2019.

Dan Yukelson with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angele, a local landlord advocacy group, doubts the expiring protections will cause a huge spike in evictions.

He said many landlords have already discussed payment plans with tenants who owe back rent. In other cases, he said, tenants with large unpaid balances have already moved out.

“There has certainly been enough notice given to tenants about the rent due date,” Yukelson said. He acknowledged some landlords will have no choice but to evict.

“Inevitably, owners will need to recover their units,” he said. “Because they have mortgages, much higher insurance, trash hauling fees to pay and everything else. They just can't sustain themselves unless they're collecting the revenue that's legally owed to them.”

Up to 93,000 households are behind

For their study, researchers with the University of Pennsylvania used survey data to estimate how many renters will be affected by the city’s looming deadline.

Researchers estimate that about half of the nearly 93,000 renters behind on rent owe relatively small sums of money (three months worth of rent or less). But up to 17,000 households were carrying large balances (one year’s worth of rent or more).

The researchers also surveyed landlords, finding that those who own 50 units or more were much more likely to pursue eviction than owners with less than five units.

About 71% of large landlords surveyed said they planned to evict tenants behind on rent after the expiration of earlier city protections, compared to 39% of smaller landlords.

At the same time, smaller landlords reported more difficulty keeping up with their mortgages during the pandemic. About 37% of surveyed small landlords with late rent fell behind on their mortgage at least once during the pandemic. Among larger landlords with late rent, about 20% reported missing mortgage payments.

What resources are available?

City outreach workers have already begun tracking down tenants at risk of eviction, offering to connect them with legal services. The city also funds a program called Stay Housed L.A. that can refer low-income renters to free attorneys in certain cases.

In a statement, City Councilmember and housing committee chair Nithya Raman said, “With the landscape for renters changing once again on February 1, it is imperative that we ensure that Angelenos know their rights and that the City is here to help them.”

The city’s housing department is encouraging tenants to call their hotline at (866) 557-7368 for help understanding their rights. Last year, the city council passed a host of new regulations to help renters including a rule that bars landlords from evicting tenants over less than about one month’s worth of late rent. LAist has also put together a comprehensive guide on L.A.’s ever-evolving rental housing regulations.