By unanimous vote, the Santa Barbara City Council adopted a measure to extend the ban on tenant evictions for those who fail to pay rent because of the COVID virus. The moratorium enacted by the council earlier this March is scheduled to expire May 31. The council’s action will have teeth only if Governor Gavin Newsom decides to extend the COVID emergency measure he adopted early this March that gave local governments the authority to enact such moratoriums. Without the governor’s declaration, city councils would not have that authority.
Santa Barbara tenants who qualify will have from six to 12 months to pay landlords the back rent. Those payments, the councilmembers agreed, need to be made in regular monthly installments and not as one big balloon payment due at the end of a 12 month period. By giving tenants more time, councilmembers reckoned, landlords in a hurry to get repaid might be more willing to agree to more amenable terms.
If Newsom chooses not to extend the emergency eviction protection declaration, then tenants could face possible eviction for failure to pay rents after May 31. As a practical matter, however, Newsom put the court system on notice that the necessary eviction paperwork could not be enforced until 90 days after the emergency declarations had lapsed.