Tangela Babbitt, a senior project manager and consultant in Elk Grove who previously spent more than 11 years working for Sacramento County’s Department of Human Assistance, says she saw the problem from inside the safety net system. Her work included helping administer CalFresh, CalWORKs and Medi-Cal benefits for residents in crisis.

Babbitt points to the case of a Sacramento County mother facing eviction who spent two months calling 211 and the county for help. Each agency directed her back to the other, with neither able to clearly identify what assistance was available or who was responsible for guiding her through the process.

The woman, Babbitt said, was not simply lost in a bureaucratic gap. Rather, the system was structured in a way that allowed agencies to operate separately while assuming another office had the answer.

That concern has implications across California, including in Southern California and the Inland Empire, where rising rents, limited affordable housing and evictions continue to pressure low-income families.

A UC San Francisco study found that one-third of unhoused adults in California had previously held long-term leases and had been evicted, many for the first time. The research also found that an eviction order increases the likelihood of homelessness by more than 300%.

Those findings, Babbitt argues, show that California understands a major pathway into homelessness but has not built a coordinated prevention system capable of intervening before families lose housing.

The state has funded several rounds of homelessness prevention and response programs, including the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program. But Babbitt says the state has not consistently required measurable outcome reporting tied to continued funding.

In other fields, she noted, organizations typically do not approve repeated rounds of funding without evidence that earlier phases worked. California, she argues, has distributed billions of dollars without creating a uniform statewide accountability system to measure results.

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness was created to help provide that oversight. In 2021, it was directed to gather statewide data on homelessness programs. But according to a state audit cited by Babbitt, the council produced one report and then largely faded from public view.

Babbitt said the result is a system that often measures activity rather than success. Dollars awarded, shelter beds funded and programs launched may show movement, but they do not answer the central question: whether people are still housed six months or a year later.

She emphasized that frontline workers are not responsible for the failure. Instead, she said the problem stems from decisions made at the policy and program-design level.

One proposal, Senate Bill 1160, would require county courts to report eviction outcomes by ZIP code. Babbitt called the bill an important step, but said better data will not be enough unless the state also changes how it governs funding and measures results.

She argues that California should require outcome reporting as a condition of ongoing homelessness prevention dollars, give the interagency council a more active oversight role, and measure success by what happens to people in crisis — not simply by how much money is distributed.

In the case of the Sacramento mother, Babbitt said the calls eventually stopped. She does not know whether the woman kept her home, entered a shelter or became homeless.

The larger problem, she said, is that California’s system did not require anyone to find out.

Original source: CalMatters

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On the final day of Women’s History Month, Acting Governor Eleni Kounalakis signed legislation that extends eviction protections for Californians participating in rental assistance programs, making her the first woman in California’s history to sign a piece of legislation into law.

“California’s nation-leading rent relief program has provided much needed relief for more than 220,000 households across the state. This action will provide additional time to thousands more who are in the process of acquiring emergency relief,” said Acting Governor Kounalakis. “I am deeply humbled to take this action and to be part of history as the first woman in state history to sign legislation into law. I remain more determined than ever to ensure that while I may be the first to do so, I will certainly not be the last.”

AB 2179 by Assemblymember Tim Grayson (D-Concord) and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) extends eviction protections through June 30, 2022 to help ensure housing stability for eligible tenants who apply for assistance from state or local rental assistance programs by March 31, 2022.

“California is leading the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, and we’re committed to ensuring all of our communities can access the supports they need to get back on their feet,” said Governor Gavin Newsom last Thursday. “Today’s action preserves important protections so that struggling families can keep a roof over their heads as the state works to provide critical assistance to thousands of households across California.”

Acting Governor Kounalakis was joined by Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Assemblymembers Grayson and Wicks, Senator Josh Becker, and Assemblymember Blanca Rubio.

California’s $5.5 billion COVID-19 Rent Relief program is the largest statewide renter assistance program in the country and covers 100 percent of past-due rent payments for qualified low-income Californians. The state program has to date assisted more than 220,000 low-income households, with thousands of additional households assisted by local rent relief programs. Under the state program, tenants can access rental funds directly if their landlord chooses not to participate, and landlords can receive compensation even if their otherwise income-qualified tenants have already vacated a unit. Additional program information is available at the Housing Is Key website.

Acting Governor Kounalakis also signed SB 504 by Senator Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), which will allow military and overseas voters and voters with disabilities to complete a same day voter registration and cast a ballot. Additionally, it provides the Secretary of State more accurate voter rolls and streamlines the process for the state’s universal vote by mail system by removing a number of unnecessary provisions.

For full text of the bills, visit: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified a legal authority for a new and different moratorium that would be for areas with high and substantial increases in COVID-19 infections.

The extension helps to heal a rift with liberal Democratic lawmakers who were calling on executive action to keep renters in their homes as the delta variant of the coronavirus spread and a prior moratorium lapsed at the end of July. Administration officials had previously said a Supreme Court ruling stopped them from setting up a new moratorium without congressional backing, saying that states and cities must be more aggressive in releasing nearly $47 billion in relief for renters on the verge of eviction.

The new policy came amid a scramble of actions by the Biden team to reassure Democrats and the country that it could find a way to halt potential evictions.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen briefed House Democrats Tuesday on the administration’s efforts to prevent widespread housing evictions after a moratorium lapsed, but lawmakers protesting outside the U.S. Capitol said more needs to be done, intensifying pressure on President Joe Biden to act.

Yellen told Democrats on a private call about the work underway to ensure some $47 billion in federal housing aid approved during the COVID-19 crisis makes it to renters and landlords. She provided data so that lawmakers could see how their districts and states are performing with distributing the relief, according to a person on the call.

The White House has said state and local governments have been slow to push out that federal money and is pressing them to do so swiftly after the eviction moratorium expired over the weekend.

The treasury secretary tried to encourage Democrats to work together, even as lawmakers have said Biden should act on his own to extend the eviction moratorium, according to someone on the private call who insisted on anonymity to discuss its contents.

Yellen said on the call, according to this person, that she agrees “we need to bring every resource to bear” and that she appreciated the Democrats’ efforts and wants “to leave no stone unturned.” But progressive lawmakers, who have been camped for days outside the Capitol with dozens of supporters, are trying to pressure the administration to put the moratorium back in place.

“What we need is for the White House to actually do, to do the thing — and they need to actually extend the moratorium,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at the Capitol.

The administration had repeatedly resisted another extension because the Supreme Court appears likely to block it. When the court allowed the eviction ban to remain in place through the end of July by a 5-4 vote, one justice in the majority, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that Congress would have to act to extend it further.

As the eviction crisis mounts, the White House has frequently said that Biden is doing all he can under legal constraints to keep renters in their homes and landlords paid what they are owed. While as many as 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, the administration has emphasized that money has already been approved and many Americans will be able to stay housed with the efforts underway.

The focus on states comes as Biden faces stinging criticism, including from some in his own party, that he was was slow to address the end of the moratorium.

Some people were at immediate risk of losing their homes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had called the prospect of widespread evictions “unfathomable.” The Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other progressive lawmakers intensified pressure on the White House to issue an immediate extension.

One Democrat, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, has been camped outside the U.S. Capitol in protest since the weekend. She was joined overnight Monday by Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Jimmy Gonzalez, D-Calif., and others who gave her a brief reprieve so she could rest indoors. Bush also had a brief conversation Monday at the Capitol with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“People could be helped right now,” said Bush, a first-term, St. Louis-area lawmaker who has shared her own story of living temporarily in her car as a young mother years ago. “We need that moratorium.”

Late last week, Biden announced he was allowing the ban to expire, pushing Congress to act, but lawmakers were unable to swiftly rally the votes as even Democrats questioned prolonging the eviction ban for a few more months.

The CDC put the eviction ban in place as part of the COVID-19 response when jobs shifted and many workers lost income. The ban was intended to hold back the spread of the virus among people put out on the streets and into shelters. The White House noted that state-level efforts to stop evictions would spare a third of the country from evictions over the next month.

While the administration is still investigating legal options to forestall evictions, officials said their options were limited. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the CDC, which issued the eviction ban, was “unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium.”

Mass evictions could potentially worsen the recent spread of the COVID-19 delta variant as roughly 1.4 million households told the Census Bureau they could “very likely” be evicted from their rentals in the next two months. Another 2.2 million say they’re “somewhat likely” to be evicted.

Gene Sperling, who oversees the administration’s coronavirus relief plans, said the administration will continue looking for additional legal avenues to keep people in their homes. Yet he stressed the complexity of the problem by also noting that the Trump administration developed guidelines for providing aid to renters and landlords that were unworkable. Those guidelines which required extensive documentation were changed once Biden was in office.

“This is not an easy task,” Sperling said. “We as a country have never had a national infrastructure or national policy for preventing avoidable evictions.”

Democratic lawmakers said they were caught by surprise by Biden’s decision to end the moratorium, creating frustration and anger and exposing a rare rift with the administration. The CDC indicated in late June that it probably wouldn’t extend the eviction ban beyond the end of July.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the powerful chair of the Financial Services Committee, has been talking privately for days with Yellen and urged the treasury secretary to use her influence to prod states to push the money out the door.

But Waters also called on the CDC to act on its own. “I don’t buy that the CDC can’t extend the eviction moratorium – something it has already done in the past! Who is going to stop them?” Waters said in a tweet. “C’mon CDC – have a heart! Just do it!”

___

Associated Press writer Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report.

JOSH BOAK and LISA MASCARO | AP News

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