“Affordable housing has been a crisis in California actually for years, and it’s been made even worse in every part of our state by COVID-19,” she said. “So housing will be back.”
The Assembly on Monday reelected Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, for another term as speaker over Republican leader Marie Waldron of Escondido. Rendon said the Assembly must pass laws to provide more high-speed internet access to residents.
“It has to happen this session,” he said, noting that the pandemic has shone a spotlight on the many needs of underserved Californians.
“We’ve seen a need to protect people in dire circumstances from being evicted. We’ve seen a need to provide greater unemployment benefits in crisis situations,” he said. “We’ve seen an upsurge in racial tensions and bigotry as segments of our population are unfairly singled out and ignorantly blamed for starting or spreading the virus.”
Rendon said the incoming Biden administration will be good for California and that it will be remarkable to have Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who has represented California in the U.S. Senate, advocating for the state.
One looming deadline for lawmakers is Jan. 31, when eviction protections expire for tenants who have been unable to pay their rent because of the economic fallout from the pandemic.
Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a law allowing tenants to stay in their homes through at least Jan. 31, but only if tenants could pay at least 25% of rent owed since Sept. 1.
Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said he will introduce a bill on Monday that would extend those protections through Dec. 31 of next year.
“We are again staring down an eviction cliff that could leave millions homeless in the middle of a deadly pandemic,” Chiu said in a statement. “We must keep Californians housed and look toward providing relief to struggling renters and landlords.”
Republicans said they will push bills to tackle the state’s struggles to process unemployment benefits for millions of people who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Assemblywoman Marie Waldron, the Republican leader from Escondido, said she will author a bill that puts a deadline on the state Employment Development Department to process new claims.
And Assemblyman Phillip Chen, R-Diamond Bar, said he will author a bill requiring the state to cross check unemployment claim applications with state and county correctional inmate data. That follows revelations that the state OK’d about $400 million in fraudulent unemployment benefits in the names of state inmates.
Other potential bills include a proposal from Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, to require the Employment Development Department to offer the option of receiving unemployment benefits via direct deposit instead of from debit cards in a bid to reduce fraud.
Democratic state Sen. Lena Gonzalez of Long Beach said she will introduce a bill to spend $1 billion to install high-speed internet access for low-income, rural and minority communities.
“This is a crisis for students and the education community and a growing barrier to accessing health care for our most vulnerable populations,” she said.
The post includes additional reporting from the Associated Press’ Adam Beam.