For weeks, state leaders have insisted that it’s time for the emergency eviction moratorium to end as payments accelerate from a $5.2 billion federally funded COVID-19 rent relief program. While patchwork state and local programs got off to a slow and confusing start, lawmakers stress that California tenants with pending rent relief applications — as well as those in areas with stronger local eviction bans, like Oakland — will continue to be shielded from certain eviction proceedings through early next year.
…Lawmakers in Sacramento have in recent weeks passed a string of housing reform bills backed by $24 billion in funding to make it easier to build in the state facing a shortage of some 1.2 million affordable homes, according to one estimate by the California Housing Partnership…