Tenant protections linked to the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. are about to expire, which could lead to a major wave of evictions across the country affecting the lowest rents.
In Los Angeles County, the moratorium ends on December 31 and more than 30,000 tenants may have to leave their homes, according to projections based on data from the county’s Superior Court, as reported by the U.S. public broadcaster NPR.
At least 69,000 people are homeless in this county, the most populous in the United States, according to a count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Los Angeles «will have the highest number of evictions and possibly worsen the issue of homelessness,» warned the director of the Eviction Research Network at the University of Berkeley, Tim Thomas.
«August saw historic averages for evictions following the end of the moratorium in many parts of the country and we are already exceeding the historic average,» he added.
Over the past decade there have been between 40,000 and 50,000 evictions annually in Los Angeles County, a number that dropped to around 13,000 because of the pandemic primarily due to public rental subsidies or the eviction moratorium, noted University of California-Los Angeles sociologist Kyle Nelson.
Nelson noted that evictions are already at more than 3,000 a month, so they could return to the 55,000 a year that were recorded just before the pandemic.
