The Impact of Eviction Moratoria in San Diego County
Homelessness Hub is a research lab in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. Our mission is to engage in research and education that support impactful solutions to end homelessness. Research on reducing housing loss, including preventable displacement, is critical to this mission. This research was supported by a County of San Diego Board of Supervisors Community Enhancement Grant.
Residential eviction refers to a legal process whereby a property owner removes a tenant from a housing property. Tenants can be evicted through a formal legal process, but they can also be displaced through informal processes, such as when a property owner informally requests a tenants’ departure or a tenant leaves a property due to poor conditions or because they cannot pay rent. This analysis focuses on formal evictions, measured as civil court filings and sheriff orders to forcibly remove tenants through "lockouts." We use data for San Diego County between January, 2018 and December, 2022 to show how the volume and rates of filings and lockouts were impacted by changing local and state policy contexts, in particular eviction moratoria enacted in response to COVID-19. For an overview of the eviction process and general information about trends in San Diego County, please visit Eviction Trends in San Diego County, California .
State and local policy context
California state law has historically not placed limitations on a property owners' ability to file unlawful detainer actions in the event a tenant is ill or cannot pay their rent due to lost wages. During the COVID-19 pandemic this changed as state lawmakers sought to avoid large increases in evictions due to reduced income from job loss and illness. Local lawmakers pursued local constraints on evictions for similar reasons.
March 1, 2020 -August 31, 2020
California Legislature AB 3088 --> Prevented evictions due to "COVID-19-related financial distress."
September 1, 2020 -September 30, 2021
California Legislature SB 91 & AB 832 --> Limited evictions for nonpayment of rent to certain circumstances, masks (or hides) identity of tenants in all nonpayment of rent cases. County of San Diego O-10724 --> in effect 6/3/21-8/10/21, prohibited unlawful detainer actions unless based on "imminent health and safety threat"
California state law protects the identity of tenants who have had an unlawful detainer claim filed against them (Cheng 2021) , so county superior courts can share only limited information about case filings. Sheriff lockout data falls outside of these protections and includes identifying information. Homelessness Hub does not request or post the names of people appearing on lockout orders; we do use this public information to map the near-location of lockouts.
October 1, 2021 - March 31, 2022
California Legislature SB 115 --> required proof of rental assistance application or denial in order to proceed with nonpayment of rent unlawful detainer actions
May 22, 2022 -September 30, 2022
City of San Diego O-21447 --> Placed stricter requirements on no fault eviction cases, but allowed residential eviction when property owner sought to withdraw all rental units in structure from rental market, recover possession of unit for repair or other work due to safety or habitability, or family of property owner intends to inhabit property
July 1, 2022 - present
City of San Diego O-21291 --> ordinance adopted February 12, 2021 but is superseded by state law and did not take effect until July, 2022; limits evictions due to non-payment of rent for tenants impacted by COVID-19 when tenants take affirmative steps to provide written notice and proof; allows tenants to use documentation of financial impacts from COVID-19 as valid defense when filing a response to unlawful detainer action in court; did not limit ability of property owners to file actions
Trends in filings and lockouts
The data presented below was obtained through public records requests made by Homelessness Hub to the San Diego Superior Court and San Diego County Sheriff's Office. The data covers the period from January 1, 2018 to December 31st, 2022. The following figures include annotations providing context for policies during the COVID-19 pandemic that limited property owners' ability to file unlawful detainer actions against residential tenants, as outlined above.
Data from the San Diego Superior Court shows volume of cases filed by property owners to evict tenants per month and by ZIP code. Filings are de-identified by the courts, so only the ZIP code of the property being disputed is available, making it possible for us to understand broad patterns in filings but not neighborhood-level correlates. It does not include the reasons for evictions (e.g., non-payment of rent) or eviction type (e.g., no fault, at fault). Filings do not represent all evictions or necessarily represent an eviction outcome for a tenant.
Data from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department shows orders sheriffs received to forcibly remove tenants after an unlawful detainer action was decided in favor of the property owner. The sheriff data includes addresses and names of known tenants in a household who were subject to a court order to vacate a property after the conclusion of an unlawful detainer case. Lockouts are categorized into three statuses: not found, canceled, and served; lockouts may be canceled due to a more peaceful resolution of the case between tenant and property owner, or because the tenant leaves before the sheriff comes to evict. Served lockouts were used to count the volume of sheriff lockouts.
We use the filing and lockout data together to estimate trends in the volume and rates of formal evictions over time.
Mapping trends: filings and lockouts
Comparing filings and lockouts
Conclusion
We note that the data presented here is for filings and sheriff lockouts, not evictions. The impact of different state and city laws may not be fully represented here. Specifically, state policies tended to limit the conditions under which property owners could file residential unlawful detainer actions. City policies provided tenants with recourse to an eviction defense based on COVID-19 financial hardship and may have had less effect on filing volume, even if that additional recourse led to lower judgements against tenants. Further analysis is needed to understand the disposition impacts of the state and local policies.