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Fresno City Council extends COVID-19 protections for renters, but will they cut checks?
The Fresno City Council voted 4-3 Thursday to secure $3 million to help families and small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. They also voted unanimously to extend an eviction protection ordinance.
Councilmember Esmeralda Soria proposed the $3 million relief fund. Of that money, $1.5 million will go to consumer grants to help families avoid homelessness, and $1.5 million to small businesses, adding to the city’s $750,000 small business COVID-19 relief fund.
The council will vote on an appropriation to secure those funds by May 6.
Under her proposal, individuals who did not qualify for federal relief would be eligible to receive $400, couples or single parents $800 and families with multiple adults and children, $1,000.
Applicants are required to make at or less than 80% of the area median income. For a family of four in Fresno County, that’s an annual income of $55,900 or less, according to HUD income limit data for 2020.
Funds will be prioritized for people ineligible for federal assistance, a point contested by Councilmember Garry Bredefeld, as he expressed his opposition to the program. He indicated he was generally opposed to direct cash assistance. “The best solution is to let people get back to work,” he said.
Councilmembers Soria, Luis Chavez, Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza cast the “yes” votes. Joining Bredefeld in voting against the plan were councilmembers Mike Karbassi and Paul Caprioglio.
The trio described it as “half-baked” and “rushed” and said they wanted more assurances the federal government would reimburse the city.
Bredefeld said he believed Mayor Lee Brand might veto the proposal anyway.
The mayor’s office could not immediately be reached for comment after hours Thursday. But in an interview with ABC30, Brand said he’s not sure if this is an eligible use of funds from the CARES Act. “Making commitments now, unless I can be justified through this criteria for the CARES Act, would be really, in my opinion, very risky because we’re gonna have to track every single dollar we have.”
Multiple housing advocacy organizations voiced their support for Fresno’s emergency fund. California Apartment Association representative Greg Terzakis said he is philosophically supportive. “We support measures to keep people in their homes in these times.”
Eviction protections extended
The council also extended its eviction protection ordinance, which would remain in place until shelter-in-place orders are lifted.
Under the order, tenants must provide written notice within 10 days of a missed rent payment that they were financially affected by COVID-19. They will have six months to pay back the missed rent.
Tenants can provide letters from their employers, bank statements and hospital bills to show the effect of the crisis. The language was made more flexible to prevent the confusion several Fresno residents have been experiencing.
Central California Legal Services has received dozens of calls about the issue. Chavez said at least eight residents in his district had contacted his office over confusions about the protections in place for renters, including Juan Carlos Carrillo.
Carrillo, a father of three living in southeast Fresno, received a 30-day eviction notice on Sunday. He said he’d already provided his landlord of 14 years with a letter explaining why he would be unable to pay April’s rent. He is a self-employed DJ, and once the shelter-in-place order set in, his work came to a screeching halt.
But even as lockouts have been halted and courts closed, Carrillo said tenants like him continue to fear evictions.
“Sadly, with this letter, I think they were trying to intimidate us,” Carrillo said.
Amber Crowell, a Fresno State sociology professor who studies evictions, worries 30-day notices may set off informal evictions, where a tenant decides to leave to avoid legal troubles.
“Even before the state of emergency, all a landlord had to do is threaten them by saying we’re going to call ICE,” she said. “Now, it’s even worse.”
Can a tenant still face eviction after COVID-19?
The city has gone further than many other communities in the central San Joaquin Valley by providing rent deferral, according to Sara Hedgpeth-Harris, supervising attorney of the housing team at Central California Legal Services.
“Outside of the city of Fresno, in the county and our greater service area, there isn’t anything like that,” she said. “There is no defense.”
But essentially, the order is nothing more than a legal defense should a landlord take the tenant to court, advocates explained. Landlords can still sue over missed rent, once the courts open back up.
The state Judicial Council has halted eviction proceedings, unless they’re related to health and safety violations, for 90 days after the state of emergency is lifted.
It will be up to the judge to decide whether the tenant’s proof of financial harm is valid.
“I expect there to be just a deluge of lawsuits to start an eviction process for nonpayment of rent,” Hedgpeth-Harris said. “You are going to have a lot of homelessness unless the government comes up with some sort of protection for tenants, small business owners and gig workers. They’re not going to be able to pay this back.”
Soria said she hopes consumer grants will help ease the pain, and prevent a surge of homelessness, as the rent deferral ends.
“While they may not end up homeless now, six months later they will end up homeless because they’re unable to keep up with their rent,” Soria said.
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