With Looming Expiration Date and $24M Left in Rent Relief, City Approves 60-Day Extension of Emergency Eviction Protections
SAN FRANCISCO — With enough unspent rent relief funds to help more than 3,000 households avoid displacement, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Supervisor Dean Preston’s legislation to extend eviction protections by 60 days.
“This extension is necessary to avoid an eviction cliff,” said Preston, a 20-year tenant attorney prior to being elected Supervisor. “It would be a travesty to allow protections to expire while we have tens of millions in available rent relief money, and I’m glad my colleagues agreed to give vulnerable tenants clarity on how long they will be safeguarded from eviction.”
In addition to state and federal funds, San Francisco has allocated more than $71 million in local dollars for rent relief, which to date has helped more than 6,000 households avoid displacement and crushing rent debt. There remains approximately $24 million in unspent funds, according to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD), funds that are expected to prevent displacement and debt for another 3,000 households. Earlier this week, MOHCD re-opened its intake portal for new rent relief applications, which had been closed since September 2022 in order to catch up on a backlog of applications. New applications can be submitted through the website www.sferap.com.
Other Bay Area cities are considering extending their eviction protections. On February 27, the City of Berkeley voted to create a “transition period,” with most evictions banned until August 31. Tenant advocates in Hayward and San Leandro are also reportedly considering similar efforts.
The 60-day extension is the 14th bill introduced by Supervisor Preston to ban or limit evictions due to the pandemic, including some of the first policies in the nation to permanently take eviction off the table for COVID hardship. In addition, more than half of the local funding for rent relief was generated by Preston’s November 2020 Prop I ballot measure, which doubled the transfer tax on the highest valued real estate transactions in the city. The measure has generated more than $250 million since taking effect in 2021, more than $42m has been allocated to the local rent relief program.
These efforts have resulted in plummeting eviction rates, with San Francisco leading the state with a 75% drop in eviction filings, according to a March 2023 report from the Public Policy Institute of California.
“I appreciate that this Board and our Mayor, in crafting the framework to prevent pandemic evictions, have by and large spoken with one voice, making clear that displacement has tremendous public health ramifications,” Preston said. “We need to take lessons learned from pandemic protections and do everything we can to permanently make eviction a tool of last resort.”
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