Stockton City Council shows support for ending COVID eviction moratorium early

The Stockton City Council is poised to vote on Tuesday to end commercial and residential eviction protections ahead of schedule.

Council members unanimously approved to end the COVID-19 local emergency proclamation on Feb. 28, 2022, in line with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s date for ending the California state of emergency.

Outgoing Councilmember Sol Jobrack asked city staff to return with an agenda item Dec. 13 to also end the commercial and residential eviction moratoriums Feb. 28. He received support from his colleagues on the dais.

“The city really went out of its way to not only protect people, but to help people financially through COVID relief funds to be able to pay rent back,” Jobrack told the Record. “I’m of the belief that we’ve tried to do everything we can to help.

"It’s really run its course and we need to allow property owners the opportunity to, in the end, protect their investment.”

The commercial and residential ordinances were designed as temporary measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when the governor ordered issued stay-at-home orders in March 2020.

The city ordinances went into effect to protect residential and commercial tenants from economic impacts to come. The commercial ordinance was allowed to expire in May 2020 but the council renewed it in January 2021.

The ordinances were extended again and would have expired shortly after the end of the California state of emergency — 90 days for residential and 30 days for commercial. But it appears there is enough support on the council to end them earlier. Tenants will have six months to repay unpaid rent when the moratoriums end.

For Karen Carlson, president of Property Management Experts, the change couldn’t come soon enough.

“We are obviously empathetic toward our customers, our tenants. However, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our owners … and they’re struggling,” Carlson said. “These are small business owners; these aren’t corporate owners.”

PME serves about 500 Stockton property owners who have been paying mortgages, property taxes and insurance on their rental properties through the pandemic and the eviction moratoriums, Carlson said. About half of the 100 PME tenants that applied for rental assistance from the city and county never received any money, Carlson said. She said one of her tenants owes $28,000 in late rent.

“The city and the county ran out of money very quickly,” Carlson said. “It would be different if there we funds available to help these people … Most of them are working or getting their same income."

Rental property owners are also facing additional financial burden from tax liens for their tenants’ unpaid utility bills, many of which are over $1,000, Carlson said.

“(The city) is forcing owners to put utilities in their name … the city was losing money because the tenants would leave and not pay the bill,” Carlson said. “Now what they’re doing is every month they’re billing the tenants, and if they don’t pay, the owner gets a copy … After six months, it goes to lien and goes on the owner's tax bill if it's not paid.”

Carlson said she’s concerned about the impact the extended pressure on rental property owners will have on the rental market in Stockton. She said she’s already seen about 15 of her owners get out of the rental market this year because they “can’t handle it anymore.”

“(Those homes) are not going back onto the rental market. So that’s going to create a shortage, especially if there’s going to be a shortage in building,” Carlson said. “Especially after all these evictions come to light a year from now, there’s not going to be many places to rent, which causes the rents to skyrocket … when you have less inventory, you can get a higher (rent) price.”

Fred Sheil, administrator at Stocktonians Taking Action to Neutralize Drugs, or STAND, said as a landlord for low-income residents and homeless in primarily southeast Stockton, he doesn’t see the end of the eviction moratorium as a problem of people not paying rent.

“We haven’t had a problem with people abusing the moratorium as a way of not paying rent. For us, it’s been maybe 2% of our tenants, which is typical even before COVID,” Sheil said. “We’re renting to very low-income people. They realize they’ve got a good landlord and they don’t want to screw it up, and the rents are very affordable.”

STAND buys blighted properties and foreclosures to sell to low-income families. The problem Sheil does see is his competition.

“What I’m seeing is investors have blown into town, these billion-dollar agencies, and they’re buying up everything they can find here,” Sheil said. “They take over the property … and they evict (tenants,) cash for keys to get them out … they end up homeless because there’s nowhere for them.”

Sheil said in the “wild west of Stockton,” investors and some landlords have not played by the rules.

“The moratorium was supposed to protect tenants,” Sheil said. “I don’t think it was very effective.”

This article originally appeared on The Record: Stockton council could end COVID eviction protections early