According to researchers’ assumptions based on county Superior Court documents, over 30,000 families could risk eviction in Los Angeles County by the end of the year. This is because tenant safeguards that have kept families sheltered during the pandemic are slated to expire on December 31.
In the nation’s largest county, where at least 69,000 individuals are already chronically homeless, the expiry date of tenant protections and emergency housing from the pandemic era will probably be devastating for low-income families. That’s the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s most recent count.
Evictions signal the end of many people’s newly found stability.
The city of Los Angeles’ eviction ban will end on January 31, 2023, one month after the county’s.
“[LA is] going to see the highest flood of evictions and, potentially, exacerbated homelessness on top of the conditions that they already had,” said Tim Thomas, director of UC Berkeley’s Eviction Research Network. “As these moratoria and rental assistance end, we’re seeing across the country a lot of cities have reached historical averages of eviction by August of this year — and are surpassing the average.”
According to court data, Los Angeles County had 40,000–50,000 evictions annually over the past ten years. At the pandemic’s peak, however, that number fell by more than half to 13,000 a year.
According to urban sociologist and UCLA postdoctoral fellow Kyle Nelson, this is mainly because of widespread tenant safeguards, including rental assistance and eviction moratoria. Nelson claimed evictions are rising since those protections are about to expire.
“As each tenant protection is peeled off, we see a corresponding increase in the number of evictions,” Nelson said. “My hunch is that when we get the quarterly data for the end of 2022, we’re going to see numbers returning to 2015 and 2016 levels in which well over 55,000 evictions were being filed.”
According to court records gathered by Nelson, filings have reached pre-pandemic levels, totaling more than 3,000 each month.
Families Worry About Losing Stability
Martha Escudero, a single mom of two girls, ages 10 and 13, is one of those facing homelessness. She works full-time, balancing grant-based work for nearby organizations with caregiving employment for senior citizens.
On a bright Sunday morning in November, Meztli, her youngest child, practices the piano in the family’s garage in the East LA neighborhood of El Sereno, where Escudero runs a no-cost informal group-learning program with 12 participants at its peak. Whiteboards, pink scooters, and books surround the piano. Since October 2020, the three of them have been residing here as part of a city-run transitional housing program.
They spent more than a year alternating between short-term visits to friends’ and families’ houses before they moved in. Escudero grew up in East Los Angeles, but the average price of a home in the El Sereno neighborhood is now over $800,000. As a result, she can no longer afford to live there. In 2019, Escudero could no longer afford to rent a house or apartment for her family due to the rising costs of housing and daycare.
Meztli, 10, attends a neighborhood charter school, and Victoria, 13, is homeschooled in their garage. Frequently, neighbors deliver supplies to the homeschool cooperative.
“All these places are our community and my support system as a single mom,” Escudero said of the El Sereno neighborhood.
But Escudero may soon sever the bonds he has built up in the community. Her two-year contract with the Los Angeles Housing Authority expired in October. She subsequently received a notice to leave the property.
For individuals transitioning out of this interim program, which has permitted households to reside in previously empty homes owned by the California Department of Transportation, the city’s housing authority is attempting to locate additional long-term housing options. Escudero warned that she risks losing the safety net she built during the pandemic.
“The housing options they’re giving me are outside my area of support and outside my daughter’s school, which she just started and is barely getting some stability and balance in her life,” Escudero said.
Victoria, the oldest child of Escudero, is an eighth-grader. The “Sister Show,” which Victoria and her younger sister host, is their podcast. They talk about cuisine, music, and housing insecurity, which they both know all too well.
“We talk about everything going on, especially in the city, how there are so many unhoused people,” Victoria Escudero said. “Just having a place where you can feel your feelings and no one could say anything about it – everyone in this world should have that.”
Victoria Escudero claimed that couch surfing was brutal because she lacked the room to be a child. She hopes that she and her sister will be able to remain in the exact location.
“I’m more nervous when it comes to that,” Victoria Escudero said about the looming eviction. “We got to stay here for a long time, so I have a little hope.”
The Escudero family intends to file a lawsuit to contest their eviction. However, they are embracing most of the community they have created throughout the pandemic, hoping it will endure while they wait.
