A set of temporary protections for commercial renters facing financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic were set to expire at the end of September, but a day before the expiration date, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted to extend the protections through January 2021.
At a meeting on Sept. 29, the board voted 4-1 in favor of an urgency ordinance that temporarily bans commercial evictions arising from missed rental payments during the coronavirus pandemic. Supporters of the ordinance, including 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, hailed it as a simple way to help businesses struggling to stay alive amid ongoing health and safety closures and restrictions.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve felt through this whole pandemic that, as a local official, my hands have been tied on a number of very important issues,” Lavagnino said at the meeting. “And I think this gives us one tool in the toolbox of being able … to provide much-needed relief to some of our local business owners.”
Through the ordinance, landlords and property owners will be prohibited from evicting commercial tenants who have missed rental payments if said tenants can prove that they’ve suffered substantial financial hits due to the COVID-19 pandemic and governmental responses. Commercial tenants who can demonstrate that they’ve lost income due to coronavirus-related closures or layoffs, or who have had to pay significant out-of-pocket medical expenses related to the pandemic are protected.
The ordinance, which will remain in effect until Jan. 31, 2021, and only applies to unincorporated areas of the county, does not relieve a tenant’s obligation to pay rent, according to a county staff report, and tenants will be required to pay 25 percent of all missed payments by the end of January of next year.
The move is essentially an extension of the county’s previous moratorium on evictions for both residential and commercial tenants, which the board first adopted on March 24 and then extended in May and July. Then on Aug. 31, Gov. Gavin Newsom approved Assembly Bill 3088, which offers various protections for homeowners and residential renters facing financial hardship due to the pandemic. Because of the protections for residential renters already outlined in AB 3088, the county wasn’t allowed to extend its eviction moratorium, and it expired on Sept. 30.
But, according to the county staff report, AB 3088 doesn’t include protections for business owners renting commercial space. Second District Supervisor Gregg Hart, who partnered with Supervisor Lavagnino to develop the urgency ordinance, said he wanted to offer protections to businesses that would mirror those available to residential tenants through AB 3088.
The pandemic isn’t over, Hart said, and lots of Santa Barbara County residents are still just trying to stay afloat.
“And so the businesses that have been able to survive very tenuously to this point may be in very difficult circumstances in the very near future,” he said at the meeting. “And the point of having this protection is to give them every opportunity they can to survive and keep people employed and continue to keep the economy going as best as possible at least for this near term to get us into January.”
But supervisors Peter Adam (4th District) and Joan Hartmann (3rd District) both had concerns about how the ordinance would be enforced and how it would impact landlords and property owners. Both said they’d heard about tenants taking advantage of the previous eviction moratorium, and restrictions on court proceedings have left both landlords and tenants without a clear and speedy way to have such disagreements resolved.
Although Hartmann voiced concerns about the ordinance creating circumstances that are “ripe for abuse,” Adam was the lone vote of opposition to the urgency ordinance. To explain his decision, Adam pointed to the comments of resident Jim Knell of the SIMA Corporation, a real estate company that rents out a number of commercial properties throughout Santa Barbara County.
Knell said the ordinance would hurt landlords and would only offer minor aid to businesses suffering from a much larger problem.
“I’m surprised to hear everyone’s concerned about the survival of businesses and business owners,” Knell said at the Sept. 29 meeting. “And I think it’s ironic that you have that much concern for business owners, but you don’t do anything about opening businesses. I mean this onerous process that’s being developed by the state and backed by the county is causing commercial tenants to have the problems.”
This article appears in Oct 1-8, 2020.