Eviction cases still soaring in the Bay Area five years after COVID-19

Miami Herald

11 hours ago

The eviction court of Alameda County, California, was crowded on a recent Wednesday. It usually is.
Tenants, family members, landlords and attorneys - about 100 people in all - waited long hours to appear before a judge at the Hayward Hall of Justice. Fifty-six people were slated to appear that day in a marathon of back-to-back sessions. Many of the renters were nervous.
"Desperate, scared, depressed, filled with anxiety, as you can see," said Chris, 60, his hands shaking. A former software engineer who rents an apartment in Alameda, he asked not to use his last name, fearing it would further threaten his housing. In eviction court, state law requires that case files remain confidential until 60 days after judgments.
"I can't sleep at night," Chris said. "Lost my job - that's why I'm here."
An eviction might force some of those at the court to move in with family. Landlords might be reluctant to rent to them in the future. Or, they might have to live in a tent or in their car, another statistic in the Bay Area's crisis of homelessness.
Crammed eviction courts are the new normal in the Bay Area. Nearly four years after pandemic-era pauses on evictions began to expire, landlords are seeking to evict tenants through the court system at a higher rate than they did before COVID-19 disrupted life and work for millions in the region. That's the case in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties as well as San Francisco, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of superior court data.
Two years after the expiration of its eviction moratorium and a "wave" of evictions that followed, Alameda County leads the region in eviction cases.
In the eviction process, a landlord gives a tenant notice to move out or meet certain terms, for instance, getting caught up on rent. If the tenant doesn't pay up or move out in time, the landlord can try to evict them by filing a lawsuit.
In 2019, Alameda County tallied 226 eviction cases filed per 100,000 residents. After its pandemic-era eviction moratorium expired in 2023, that spiked to 293 cases per 100,000 residents that year, then 362 filed per 100,000 residents in 2024. Filings this year were on track to pass that high-water mark as of late April.
"It turns out, it's not a wave. It's just the new normal of evictions filed every week, every month," said Grant Kirkpatrick, a staff attorney at the Oakland-based Centro Legal de la Raza, which represents tenants in court.
The exact reasons for the continued uptick are unclear. Landlords can take renters to court for missing rent payments, violating their leases and more. In the Bay Area, local governments apparently don't track the causes of evictions.
According to attorneys for low-income tenants and advocates for landlords - two groups usually at odds - most tenants are being taken to court for failing to pay rent. That stark reality is accelerating, but it's nothing new in the Bay Area's notorious housing market.
It's also unclear how many of the eviction filings result in an eviction. If a tenant responds to their eviction notice in time and appears in court, they may be able to reach an agreement with their landlord to stay housed. Or, they can take the case to trial. But many don't try their hand in court and simply move out when given notice, attorneys said. When that happens, it isn't reflected in the case filing data.
"It's expensive and time-consuming to move forward with evictions," said Whitney Prout, executive vice president of legal affairs at the California Apartment Association, which advocates for landlords. "It's not something our members like to do. The main reason you do that is if someone isn't paying the rent."
Low-income tenants "cannot sustainably afford the cost of rent," said Tristia Bauman, directing attorney at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, which represents low-income tenants in eviction court in Santa Clara County.
The high rate of evictions is persisting in spite of local rent control measures, such as those in Berkeley and Oakland, and protections for tenants. In Silicon Valley, the wealth divide has widened at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S. over the past decade, with stark disparities in housing and other necessities for Black and Latino residents. Eviction attorneys there and in the East Bay say the vast majority of their clients are people of color. Plus, many are seniors or disabled.
In April, the typical renter in the San Jose area needed to earn $136,532 per year to pay apartment rents at just 30% of the median income - the highest threshold in the U.S. that month. In Oakland, about half of all households are "rent burdened" and spend more than 30% of their income on rent.
At the Hayward Hall of Justice, veteran eviction attorney Anne Tamiko Omura sifted through a stack of files on a desk in the crowded hallway. Every week, her nonprofit, the Oakland-based Eviction Defense Center, represents about 40 tenants at court for free.
She took a file and walked to a group of renters seated at a bench. They told her they owed more than $17,000 in payments, but they could make progress on that debt if their landlord agreed to a monthslong repayment plan.
Omura recommended against it.
"If you miss a single payment, the sheriff comes and throws you out the door," she told them. "Do you understand that?"
Nearby, Chris anxiously waited for his appearance before the judge. At one point, he felt too dizzy to speak. He said he fell behind on rent after his partner left him, and then he lost his job. He too hoped his landlord would agree to a payment plan as part of a settlement.
"That's my prayer," he said. Two crucifixes hung around his neck.
Two legal aid attorneys conferred with Chris in the crowded hallway. It's common for tenants to appear at court without an attorney, and that day, 23 arrived without a lawyer, including Chris. Unrepresented renters tend to have worse outcomes in court, studies show.
But some cities and counties fund legal aid groups to cover that gap, including Centro Legal de la Raza. Between that organization and Omura's, all the tenants would have an attorney by their side that day, said Kirkpatrick, the Centro staff attorney.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, an influential Democrat who represents a swath of the East Bay and Silicon Valley, said the high eviction rates are "disappointing," but not surprising. She chairs the Senate Committee on Housing and has played a key role in top Democrats' splashy campaign to make California more affordable this year.
A cornerstone of that push is Wahab's SB 681, which would prevent landlords from charging fees that aren't spelled out in a rental agreement. Democrats passed that bill in the state Senate on June 4. Wahab and Democrats also advanced legislation that would give tenants two weeks before a landlord could begin to evict them for nonpayment. The status quo is currently three days.
Wahab, who is skeptical of developers, said the Bay Area can't simply build its way out of its housing crisis.
"The reality is, we need to keep people housed longer," she said.
Prout, of the apartment association, doubts that Wahab's plan would reduce the eviction rate much.
What would, she said, is a permanent and "robust" rental assistance program. Currently, the Bay Area is a patchwork of rent assistance; some cities and counties run such programs, such as Santa Clara County and Oakland. Elsewhere, tenants facing tough choices must fend for themselves.
(Bay Area News Group Data Reporter Jovi Dai contributed to this report.)
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