TITLE
Recommendation to direct City Attorney to prepare an urgency ordinance amending Long Beach’s COVID Eviction Moratorium (LBMC 8.100) and The Housing Authority of the City of Long Beach Moratorium on Section 8 terminations in the following three ways, to align Long Beach’s COVID tenant protections with the County and City of Los Angeles: (1) extend the moratorium date from May 31, 2020 until August 31, 2020; (2) extend the amount of time to repay rent from six months to twelve months; and (3) add provisions to address tenant harassment. These proposed amendments would apply to residential and commercial tenancies; and direct City Attorney to bring this urgency ordinance back, with these revisions, to the Council for consideration at a special meeting on or before May 26, 2020.
DISCUSSION
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have devastating impacts on our local economy in Long Beach. Working families are seeing reduced or eliminated paychecks and there is great uncertainty as to how long it will take for Long Beach residents to regain economic stability. The City has a responsibility to continue to act urgently in this fast-moving crisis to prevent thousands of families and small business owners from facing eviction and homelessness. Service workers, gig economy workers, retail workers, small business workers and port workers are just some of the categories of Long Beach working families who will be unable to pay their rent due to the coronavirus pandemic. Preventing evictions is necessary not only to protect renters, but to protect all Long Beach residents from the spread of the coronavirus.
When we adopted our COVID-19 moratorium on evictions and Section 8 terminations, we had hoped this crisis would end by May 31, 2020. We now know that this is not the case. Therefore, we must act swiftly again and amend the timelines in our eviction moratorium and Section 8 termination moratorium to protect our residents. To ensure intent of the moratorium is carried ...
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