In LA, A Deadline To Pay Back Rent Debt. Here’s Where Renters Can Get Help

A major deadline is coming up Tuesday for tenants in the city of L.A. who owe rent to their landlords from early in the pandemic. While that rent debt is coming due, there is limited help available.

Up until now, renters have been protected from eviction if they still owe rent from March 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2021. But it’s coming due on Tuesday. If tenants don’t pay up, they could find an eviction notice on their door.

Where renters can get help

There are some ways renters can get help, according to officials and advocates:

• StayHousedLA.org has information about how to navigate the eviction process and find an attorney.
• Details on how to respond to an eviction notice can be found on Stay Housed LA here. Legal experts say it’s crucial to respond within the required five business days. 
• Information on L.A.’s pandemic renter protections can be found on the L.A. Housing Department’s webpage.
• Homelessness prevention services are available from this listing by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
• The Los Angeles Housing Department has opened public counters for direct assistance, by appointment only. To see locations and make an appointment, click here or call 866-557-7368. 
• City councilmembers' offices can assist residents who live within their districts. More information is available here.

More help may be on the way: In the coming days, city councilmembers will be asked to approve a request by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for spending on short term emergency rental assistance and eviction defense. If approved, the proposal would provide funding for some renters who need help.

The money would come from the recently-enacted Measure ULA — a new voter-approved tax on property sales over $5 million. The proposal would follow through on funding the council approved in May, which included $20 million from ULA for emergency rental assistance and $25 million for eviction defense.

That funding is in the budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, though the programs aren’t yet available to tenants.

Who does the deadline apply to?

The deadline is limited to renters who live within city limits and does not apply to everyone. If you’re a renter in L.A. and you’ve followed all of the city’s rules (which include notifying your landlord every month about Covid hardship and paying 25% of the debt by a certain point) you’re not at risk of eviction.

But tenant advocates say many renters haven’t followed these steps, or have debts from temporary job loss early in the pandemic that they simply don’t have the money to pay.

The deadline is driving concern about another wave of people ending up on the streets.

“I am deeply concerned about an increase in homelessness because of the thousands of people facing eviction today because of the tenant protections going away,” Bass told LAist in an interview Friday.

Eviction filings have already been rising for many months, and are now higher than they were before the pandemic.

There already were about 3,000 eviction cases pending in court at the end of June, Bass said.

If you live outside the city of L.A., check our eviction guide for details on timelines that may apply to where you live.

Evictions can have big consequences

Losing an eviction case can have enormous consequences for renters, often hurting their ability to rent in the future.

At a news conference Monday, Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman announced city departments are working to proactively contact renters one by one who are at risk of being evicted to let them know about their rights. The outreach includes phone calls and going door-to-door in ZIP codes city officials have identified as high risk, according to the mayor’s office.

“For those of us who have worked on eviction prevention or homelessness prevention work, one of the most devastating parts of this work is that the people who need the help the most often don’t know about the resources that are available to them,” Raman said.

Under new rules the city council passed earlier this year, landlords now have to tell the city’s housing department every time they give an eviction notice to a tenant – which gives the city a list of tenants to reach out to let them know about their rights and available resources.

“We will continue to lock arms with our partners to solve this crisis so that everyone in Los Angeles has a safe place to sleep at night and that no one is sleeping on the streets,” Bass said on Monday.

But the resources available to tenants are “very limited right now,” said Javier Beltran, deputy director of the L.A. County-based Housing Rights Center.

That includes free legal assistance through Stay Housed LA, which is limited to renters in specific ZIP codes.

Navigating the complexities of renter protections can get really complicated, Beltran said.

“It's hard because even attorneys are having a hard time trying to make sense of it all,” he said, referring to dozens of new rules at the city and county level.