LA County begins carrying out pre-coronavirus evictions

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department this week began enforcing residential evictions that were ordered before the coronavirus pandemic.

The sheriff’s department has a backlog of nearly 1,000 evictions decided by courts and that had nothing to do with the pandemic, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Those evictions are not affected by statewide and local eviction moratoriums, imposed in mid-March and which remain in place. The orders bar landlords from evicting tenants for rent nonpayment.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is the third such Southern California agency to resume pre-pandemic evictions. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department resumed evictions in early June and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department resumed evictions later that month.

The statewide eviction and foreclosure ban could end next week. Democrats in the Assembly and Senate have asked the state’s rulemaking body, the Judicial Council, to postpone consideration of an end to the moratorium until early September, to give them more time to draft an extension.

A recent report by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy estimated that 365,000 L.A. County renters could be evicted once the eviction moratorium expires. About one in three residents across the state could not pay all or part of their rent in July, according to a study.

Landlord advocacy groups argue that some landlords have gone months without collecting rent and some are in danger of losing their properties.

Tenant advocacy groups counter that evicting tenants during a pandemic is dangerous and contradicts local government orders to stay home to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.

An L.A. Tenants Union member said, referring to one tenant who was evicted from her North Hollywood apartment: “Sending her out on the street is as good as a death sentence.” [LADN] — Dennis Lynch