Burbank’s City Council will reconsider a decision made April 21 to let their Eviction Moratorium expire at the end of April. When it expired on April 30, an Order by the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors which included incorporated cities took effect.
According to a staff report prepared for tonight’s meeting, an earlier Urgency Ordinance entitled “An Uncodified Urgency Ordinance of the Council of the City Of Burbank Prohibiting the Eviction of Residential and Commercial Tenants for Non-Payment of Rent Caused by the Coronavirus” passed on March 17 and was due to expire on April 30.
According to the report, “The Urgency Eviction Ordinance prohibited a landlord from evicting a residential or commercial tenant for failure to pay their rent due to a documented loss of income caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, or by any local, state, or federal government response to COVID-19. The Urgency Eviction Ordinance did not forgive the payment of rent, but rather acknowledged the tenant was still obligated to pay the rent and deferred payment. Lastly, language was added in the Ordinance to afford the tenant with protections that could be used as an affirmative defense in an eviction proceeding.”
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the unusual move to amend their own eviction moratorium order to have it apply to incorporated cities who did not have an eviction moratorium. Since Burbank had one in effect until April 30, theirs took precedence over the County’s.
At Burbank’s meeting April the Council voted not to extend theirs and let the County take over. The vote was 4 to 1 with Mayor Sharon Springer casting the dissenting vote.
At last week’s meeting, the Council decided they wanted to revisit their decision and take up the moratorium again. At the tie they voted the first time, Burbank’s staff had supplied the Council with the following memo:
The City’s eviction moratorium is set to expire on April 30, and under the terms of the County Order, the Order’s prohibitions would apply in Burbank starting May 1, 2020. Staff recommends the Council allow its eviction moratorium to expire, as explained in the Staff Report. If Council follows staff’s recommendation, then arguably the County’s moratorium applies in the City. Ultimately, whether this is true will be decided in the courts, once evictions may be processed again. A court will need to determine which ordinance or order applies in the particular circumstance.
If the Council decides to reinstate their expired moratorium, it will be an extension of the Urgency Eviction Ordinance to May 31, 2020, retroactive to May 1, 2020 with a modification that tenants must give the landlord notice of their inability to pay rent as provided in the ordinance.This ordinance applies the eviction moratorium to both residential and commercial tenants.
Tonight’s meeting starts at 6 pm and can be viewed on Cable Channel 6 or their YouTube Channel.
