‘Eviction Time Bomb’ Looms For Santa Clara County Renters: Report

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA – An “eviction time bomb” is looming for upwards of 43,000 Santa Clara residents and many others throughout the Bay Area, KQED reports.

The county’s undocumented population and low-income workers are at greatest risk of eviction amid the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus crisis according to the report.

People of color, households headed by women and families of young children are among the most vulnerable according to KQED, which cites a report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Law Foundation of Silicon Valley (LFSV).

The LFSV report was released ahead a county eviction moratorium for those who can’t afford rent due to the pandemic’s economic impact that expires Aug. 31.

"We're looking at an eviction time bomb," LFSV attorney Michael Trujillo told KQED.

"There's a huge risk of a surge in homelessness, which could be over a 200% increase."

The expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits at the end of this month figures to exacerbate this crisis.

And if reports from around the country are any indication, landlords don’t appear to shying away from the opportunity to evict tenants for nonpayment of rent amid the pandemic, with some filing notices before they’re legally permitted to do so, The New York Times reports.

The Cares Act shields tenants who receive federal assistance from eviction through July 24 amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The fallout of an “eviction time bomb” could have devastating implications from an epidemiological standpoint according to a Reuters report.

COVID-19 cases have spiked 150 percent in Milwaukee since its eviction moratorium expired May 26, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health infectious disease expert Dr. Nasia Safdar told Reuters.

Although it’s impossible to specifically correlate the coronavirus case spike with the eviction moratorium’s expiration, Safdar told Reuters the prospect of displacing people from their homes amid a pandemic is dangerous.

“A key tenet of prevention in a pandemic is to have the infrastructure that will minimize transmission from person to person,” Safdar said.

“Any activity that breaks down that structure ... makes containment of a pandemic exceedingly difficult.”

And the Bay Area’s “time bomb” figures to hit the nation on an exponentially larger scale.

Up to 28 million people could face eviction in the upcoming months as a result of the Care Act protections expiring, Princeton University’s Eviction Lab national research co-creator Emily Benfer told Reuters.

That figure far exceeds the 10 million people who were displaced amid the 2008 financial crisis.

In Santa Clara County, tenants will have up to six months to pay half of their past due rent when the moratorium expires next month. They’ll have a year to get fully caught up.

Nearly half of Latinx renters (46 percent) and a majority of Black renters said they had little to no confidence they’d be able to pay their rent in July according to a survey conducted by U.S. Census Bureau last month.

Low-income residents throughout the Bay Area are at risk according to the report, which notes that approximately 12,000 Contra Costa County households, including an estimated 10,400 children, could be displaced when the county’s eviction moratorium runs out.

Read more at KQED