Lots of people vacate their homes after the landlord’s first threat of eviction, unaware of the formal process involving legal papers, court documents and judges. To make sure you receive the due process afforded by the law, read below about how the eviction process works and where tenants can go for legal help. The flowchart is from the the California government website, but click on the tags to learn more about each step of the process.
Now, there was an eviction moratorium in Los Angeles during the pandemic — but the moratorium wasn’t really what it sounds like. A common misconception is that landlords could no longer evict tenants; in reality, landlords were still able to evict tenants for a variety of reasons — the moratorium only provided a “defense” that tenants could use in court.
So let’s take a case like Mayben’s , written about here. Illegal activity may indeed have increased in his building during the pandemic, but landlords were legally allowed to evict tenants for reasons such as drug dealing — as well as for nonpayment of rent.
Tenants could avoid eviction due to nonpayment, but they needed to be at 80% of the area median income and send a notice to their landlords within seven days of rent being due declaring their inability to pay rent because of coronavirus. In all eviction cases, Judges have wide discretion in deciding whether a tenant is or is not evicted, which means tenants can still be evicted regardless of specific protections.