The Santa Clarita City Council is set to consider repealing the local eviction moratorium set in place in late March in favor of the more comprehensive Los Angeles County COVID-19 renter protection program, officials said.
On March 31, 2020 the City Council adopted an urgency ordinance temporarily prohibiting evictions of residential, commercial and manufactured- home tenants arising from financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During this local emergency, and in the interest of protecting the public health and preventing transmission of COVID-19, it is essential to avoid unnecessary housing displacement, and prevent housed individuals from falling into homelessness,” said City Attorney Joseph Montes at the time.
The current ordinance is set to last through Governor Newsom’s executive order on the matter, May 31, and be retroactive to March , in line with a similar decision made by the wider Los Angeles County to provide protection for tenants in the unincorporated portions of the County.
Since that time, the County has twice amended their order, increasing the rent payback period from 6 to 12 months, extending the eviction moratorium period to June 30, clarifying that the commercial tenant protection applies to small businesses and extending the applicability of the order to those cities in the County that do not have their own eviction moratorium.
In order to allow residents extended rent protections, the City of Santa Clarita aims to remove the local order to allow the wider range of protections offered by the County ordinance.
The City Council is set to rescind the City’s prior ordinance at the meeting next Tuesday, thereby making landlords and tenants in the City subject to the same rules and protections as those in the rest of the County, including any amendments to the order that the County may adopt in the future.
If the urgency ordinance to rescind the previous moratorium passes with at least a four out of five vote.
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How is this fair to landlords especially small landlords? Do the renters have to prove it’s covid related or can any renter not pay rent without repercussions?