Page 28 - AAGLA-MAY 2022

Multifamily News
(iv) Due between September 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021, a housing provider may not be able to evict their renter for that unpaid rent if the renter has submitted the above-referenced declaration to their landlord and also paid at least 25% of the September 2020, to September 2021, rent by September 30, 2021.
For renters who are involved in an eviction case about rent that accrued because of COVID-19 and they are approved for governmental rental assistance, they may ask the court to pause their eviction case while waiting for the rental assistance to pay their past due COVID-19 rent.
If the rental assistance received by the tenant does not cover all the rent they owe, the renter will need to pay the rest to your landlord. Once rent is paid in full, renters are entitled to petition the court to dismiss the unlawful detainer (eviction) case. Further, renters with disabilities are entitled to additional protections. Owners who have renters with disabilities that owe COVID-19 or other past due rent should seek legal advice on how to proceed.
Efforts Being Made to Recall District Attorney Gascón Exceed 200,000
Signatures
As of early April, the campaign to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney, George Gascón, has collected over 200,000 signatures and raised more than $4 million. To make it on the November 2022 ballot, recall organizers need to collect a total of 566,857 signatures by July 6, 2022, from registered Los Angeles County voters. More than 33 cities within Los Angeles County have already issued votes of no confidence related to Gascón’s job performance.
New California Senate Bill Fights Back Unnecessary Criminal Record Restrictions Contributed by ApplyConnect
Last year, a California court case sought to redact date of birth information from court records and succeeded. The ruling added unnecessary barriers to the criminal background check process in your tenant screening, added another burden to landlords and tenant screening companies, and jeopardized the objective information housing providers rely on. A new Senate bill has been introduced to eliminate these obstacles.
All background checks rely on personally identifiable information (PII) like dates of birth (DOB) and social security numbers to accurately match the record to the renter. Most courts across the country enable criminal record searches with these identifiers, except in California and Michigan. After “All of Us or None of Us vs. Hamrick,” DOBs and driver’s license numbers were excluded from California criminal records. Superior courts across California have deleted DOB search fields, making it significantly more difficult to verify your renter’s identities during the criminal background check.
Imagine playing a game of ‘Guess Who?’ and being unable to ask if the person you’re trying to match has glasses. While it’s not impossible to accurately match the person without knowing if they have glasses, it makes it harder. And, if more rules get put into place like banning questions about facial hair or if they have a hat, it makes matching more time-consuming and less reliable.
Landlords and property managers depend on criminal records to protect the public, their assets and ensure the tenants meets their criteria. For example, in your tenant screening you can not only find records of evictions, but also discover in the screening if the person has a record of property damage. Once that is seen, you can decide whether that chance of damaging your property balances well to your needs. Eliminating important PII from criminal public records pokes unnecessary holes in the California criminal database. While this ruling currently only makes your background screening trickier, it’s an alarming trend in the wrong direction. Proposed Senate Bill 1262 aims to fix that.
Introduced by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Inglewood), Senate Bill 1262 would return court record searches to before this new ruling. It would require superior courts to allow criminal searches with driver’s license numbers and DOBs. Ultimately, it would be as if the restrictions from All of Us or None of Us v. Hamrick never existed. So, your tenant screening company can go back to quickly and efficiently matching individuals to their eyeglasses – or in this case, their DOB or driver’s license number.
28 MAY 2022 • WWW.AAGLA.ORG