Eviction rates are steadily increasing across San Diego with the end of temporary tenant protections and the neighborhoods being hit the hardest have some of the highest concentrations of poverty, according to a new study.
Some of the areas facing the highest eviction rates are downtown, southeastern San Diego, Otay Mesa, City Heights and Encanto, according to the eviction study, which was commissioned by the San Diego Housing Commission.
Mission Valley and Tierrasanta – which are home to lower concentrations of poverty – also made the list.
It’s not surprising. The study’s authors wrote that many of these neighborhoods have historically faced the highest levels of evictions, year over year, even as overall eviction trends fluctuate.
The study – which was conducted by HR&A, a real estate consulting firm – found that the expiration of Covid-related eviction restrictions along with a lack of affordable housing has increased the risk for displacement in the city’s poorest communities.
Neighborhoods with the highest rates of evictions are also the ones with predominantly Black and Latino residents.
The areas with the highest eviction rates also had another common, underlying quality. Areas where rent and home value are increasing at the highest rate are also the places with the highest rates of eviction.
When a landlord evicts a tenant in an area where rent prices have increased substantially, the landlord is freed up to charge a much higher rent price.
“As a city, we need to do much more to guarantee everyone can have a roof over their head where they can live with dignity,” said San Diego City Council President Sean Elo-Rivera in a press release. “Making sure our friends, family, and neighbors can afford to remain in and not be unnecessarily removed from their homes adds to the safety and stability of our neighborhoods and is an essential piece of our homeless prevention strategy.”
The study used court case data, Sheriff’s Department lockout data and survey responses from more than 6,000 San Diego renters. The authors acknowledge the data available doesn’t paint a complete picture.
That’s because not all evictions go through the legal process. Many evictions happen between the tenant and the landlord, long before a local sheriff gets involved. Other times, tenants may move out before the eviction process out of fear of having an eviction on record.
“The worst part is, we don’t know how much of an issue it is,” said Joseph Gibbons, a sociology professor at San Diego State University. “The best we have are these local efforts to estimate evictions. Evictions where they actually have to go to court is only a small subsection.”
Jennifer Nations, managing director of Homelessness Hub at UCSD, says people who are evicted struggle to find a rent they can afford. So, many are forced into “informal housing agreements,” such as squeezing a family of five into a one-bedroom apartment or subletting a room to another family.
“Yes, they are paying less rent. But what it does mean is that people will, potentially, take even more drastic steps to stay,” Nations said. “The overcrowding may worsen. We may see more renting of garages, more renting of RVs. And doing those things without rental contracts puts people in very unstable housing situations.”
The study recommended that city leaders create a unified system to better track evictions from start to finish. Evictions begin with a termination notice – which is not the same as an official eviction. Next, tenants receive an unlawful detainer, which goes through the court system. Finally, sheriff’s deputies perform a “lockout” of a tenant. Currently, each of these steps are tracked by different agencies, which makes it difficult to understand how many people are ultimately pushed out of their homes.
The City Council passed a tenant protection law last year that now requires landlords to notify the San Diego Housing Commission of any termination notices they issue to tenants. The housing commission is in the process of building that database.
Update: This story has been updated to include additional information on San Diego’s tenant protection ordinance.
Contrary to what the Red Necks say, losing one’s home is what is driving our increase in the homeless population. This is why for 22 months in a row,* there have been more people becoming homeless than were helped off the streets.
A solution for this has been known for some time, San Diego has not been interested in using that solution in an effective manner. A shallow subsidy of $300 – $500 per month has been shown by many studies to be enough to keep people in their homes and off the streets. San Diego’s attempt at this has been dogged by too much paperwork and slow payments, so it has been less than effective.
Another problem is the resistance of “Giving money to deadbeats.” The $500 per month subsidy is $6,000 per year per household. The first time that homeless person is taken to the ER the charges for that will be equal to 5 – 10 yrs of the subsidy. It is far, far cheaper to keep people off the streets that it is to deal with them once they are there.
* RTFH
Bruce you post this same nonsense on so many news websites, Reddit, who knows where else, and support for your ideas has only waned over time. It’s almost as if you should find something productive to do with your time.
Online Earnings $1280 per Day. A social media marketer promotes a product or a business through social media platforms. A social media marketer must understand how the social media platforms ef such as Facebook and Twitter provide and promote content to their subscribers.
GO >>>>>>>>> https://Profit3Revenue3.blogspot.com
You’re not rebutting a key point: when that homeless person goes to an ER the taxpayers pay what would amount to the subsidy.
And homeless people go to the ER more than once a year.
Can you rebut that point?
Candidates for Mayor of San Diego are not chosen for their character, they are chosen by proxy special interests who twist truth to ignorant voters. http://www.dannytri.com
Most people have no guts otherwise they would step out of their comfort zone and defend character.
You can postulate all you want, but when someone has a severe mental illness like most of these folks everything else is a moot point!
When the city raises your water rates and wants to tack on extra to the sales tax for storm water and traffic needs, and while the state lets the PUC give every rate hike to the utilities, adds to the erosion of affordability, outside of property owners circumventing these costs, and others like insurance and property upkeep. Elo-Rivera just talks the talk without regard to the ramifications their policies have contributed to the problem.
Chris is on point. Fees for; trash, sewer, and soon storm sewer maintenance are regressive and harm the lowest income households the most. If Rivera wants to help low income residents, which he does not, he would stop creating new regressive fees/taxes. He could also propose a vote to eliminate in-lieu fees which have allowed developers to ditch affordable housing for decades.
This is a totally predictable outcome of the city council’s recent upzoning practices. When Todd and the council upzoned these neighborhoods, they invited gentrification, with developers buying up older affordable housing, evicting the residents and bulldozing those homes to make room for expensive new apartment blocks. Why can’t VOSD and other local media outlets understand this cause and effect?
The government pays for another common sense report.
What was the cost of the report?
Evictions don’t start with a termination notice; they often start with tenants failing to pay their rents over an extended time or otherwise violating the terms of their leases. VOSD could do a much better job of investigating what is driving tenant evictions rather than propagating a narrative that tenants are all innocent victims of greedy landlords.
Candidates for Mayor of San Diego are not chosen for their character, they are chosen by proxy special interests who twist truth to ignorant voters. http://www.dannytri.com
Most people have no guts otherwise they would step out of their comfort zone and defend character.
What is driving homelessness is ever increasing costs created by the Democrats & environmental terrorists in this State. Never a week goes by when some cost of ownership is not going up or land is being taken away in California.
Giving money to those that cannot keep up is simply a Socialist wealth redistribution program. The fact is they should move to lower cost States.
Throw out half the Democrats and watch what happens to costs in this State.