California’s eviction ban ended on Thursday, allowing landlords to begin legal proceedings to evict non-paying tenants. It’s time for state officials to allow the rental market to return to normal, but a recent state auditor report sheds light on the extent to which California has messed up its response to COVID housing challenges .

State-imposed business closures have wiped out the incomes of tens of thousands of workers, making it difficult for them to pay their rent. In response, the legislature imposed a moratorium on payment-related evictions and required tenants to pay only 25% of their monthly bill to stay in their apartments.

The moratorium on evictions was politically popular, but it forced a group of Californians – apartment owners, who depend on rent for their income – to bear the financial burden of the policy. More than half of the state’s homeowners are small farms that have mortgages and expenses related to their rental properties.

Many landlords are said to be leaving the business, given the uncertainties surrounding rent collection, which will exacerbate our housing shortages. Housing prices in California continue to skyrocket, making it even more imperative to get people into – rather than out of – the rental business.

While government grants are never ideal, the state’s rent assistance program doesn’t force landlords to forgo rents – and it helps tenants avoid arrears that can ultimately be recovered in court. This is the best of the bad approaches, but the auditor found that the state can lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal rent assistance due to slow processing of claims.

“Given the limited time frame set by the federal government, we wanted to convey to you the need for continued attention in order to minimize the risk and the amount of funds that the state could lose from September 30, 2021,” noted the auditor two weeks later. since.

That deadline has passed, but the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) remains behind in allocating its $ 1.8 billion rent assistance budget. The auditor acknowledged substantial progress in committing rental relief dollars since its report in June, but noted that HCD had only committed 81% of its funding.

That means he could lose $ 337 million in federal dollars. In his response, the director of HCD argued that the state was in no danger of losing this money because federal accounting rules only require it to have committed 65% of its budget. The authorities will sort out the divergent opinions on its rules, but there is no doubt that the HCD has been slow.

To complicate matters, tenants seeking state or local rent relief are granted an eviction grace period that runs until March 2022. We are seeing the results of the government intervention. He distorted the housing market by allowing tenants to avoid payments, but was unable to effectively administer the key program designed to help them.

Tens of thousands of Californians are struggling to pay their rent, leaving many at risk of eviction. At the same time, companies are signaling that available jobs will beg. The best approach is to let the market fix the problems and help the economy move beyond pandemic restrictions – not by relieving individuals of the responsibility of paying their bills, and then trying to administer a massive subsidy program.