Long Beach renters who have been unable to pay rent because of closures that were intended to stem the spread of the coronavirus may soon have more relief options from the city.
The City Council voted unanimously at its Tuesday, June 23, meeting to direct city staff to look into creating a program that would provide renters who have missed payments because of the pandemic with an option to pay half of their missed payments to their landlords — and have the city match that amount to bring them up-to-date on their rent.
The program, proposed by Councilman Rex Richardson, was not on the agenda but was offered as a way to incentivize renters who have missed payments to pay what they can.
The panel has already implemented a temporary ban on evictions due to nonpayment because so many tenants have lost income because of coronavirus-related closures; under that law, which currently prohibits those evictions through July 31 but could be extended, renters have until July 31, 2021 to pay back any rent they owe.
But some council members have expressed concerns that the law could be setting the city up to have mass evictions next July, when many renters could find themselves owing four or five months worth of rent payments all at once.
To address that, the council considered on Tuesday a law that would require renters to pay back rent according to a schedule of smaller payments over the course of a year.
But Richardson and other council members noted that requirement could trigger earlier evictions if renters failed to pay any of the smaller increments at any point.
“We, the government, told them, ‘You can’t go to work,’” Councilwoman Jeannine Pearce said. “We, the government, told them, ‘You need to stay home.’ I cannot support anything that we then turn around and create a mechanism that would evict tenants for doing what we told them they could do.”
So, instead, the council voted to expand the rental assistance program it already created, which is set to launch next week.
Under that program — funded with $5 million from the state and federal governments — Long Beach will offer up to $1,000 per month of rent for three months to certain tenants.
With the idea approved Tuesday night, city staff will seek other funding opportunities to pay half the missed rent for impacted tenants. The program will come back to the City Council in the next 30 days for approval.
“If we want to help people, I think we should address the fact that come Aug. 1, when people are paying their full rent, when the (eviction) moratorium period is over,” Richardson said, “most people are going to be struggling. We should help them.
“I think the solution here,” he added, “is to take our rental assistance fund and look at ways we can target that to help people make up their back rent.”
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June 24, 2020 at 11:12AM
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Long Beach proposes new rental assistance program for struggling tenants - Long Beach Press Telegram
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