Two State Bills Aim to Head off San Diego’s Coming Eviction Crisis

With housing courts set to reopen on Sept. 1, thousands of tenants in San Diego now face possible eviction. 

Greg Knoll, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, sees the two bills as heading off an eviction crisis in a city already struggling to house its low-income residents.

“[They provide] the protections we need for tenants, to prevent them from being homeless and having a bigger problem on our hands, while at the same time, allowing landlords to get some remuneration in some way for the unpaid rent,” he said. 

But Grace Martinez, a San Diego-based organizer with the tenant-advocacy group ACCE, said only AB 1436, which would continue to pause evictions, has their full support. She’s worried that some landlords wouldn’t opt-in to SB 1410, and instead pursuing eviction of their tenants for non-payment. 

With Sept. 1 on the horizon, state leaders are now working to reconcile the two bills, hoping they’ll come to some solution before the end of the legislative session, and the beginning of a wave of mass evictions across the state.

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