CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - A day before Nevada’s eviction moratorium was set to expire, Gov. Steve Sisolak announced plans to extend it for 45 days to provide relief to an estimated 250,000 renters facing the prospect of losing their housing because of the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
“The directive I’ll be signing to extend this moratorium seeks to maintain public safety during COVID-19 as Nevada transitions to programs that protect landlords and tenants,” Sisolak said at a press conference Monday in Las Vegas.
The Democratic governor said the moratorium couldn’t last forever but needed to be extended due to delays in getting state assistance to residents, particularly unemployed renters.
An alternative dispute resolution program passed by the state Legislature - which directed justice courts to grant 30-day delays on evictions to facilitate third-party mediation - has yet to be implemented in any county.
“We worked tirelessly to try to work this out without having to have the extension. … I’m disappointed that the court could not get the mediation program in place quicker, but they couldn’t,” Sisolak said.
In Las Vegas, a city known for its transient population, about 47% of households are rentals. The Guinn Center for Policy Priorities, a bipartisan research and policy analysis center, projects around 10% of the population could struggle to pay rent in September.
Fears of a widespread eviction crisis have been compounded by delays in state assistance and programs. About 38% of renters have been laid off since the start of the pandemic, according to the Guinn Center, and delays in unemployment insurance payouts have denied them money they may otherwise use to pay rent.
Nevada’s pandemic residential rental assistance program stopped accepting new applicants in mid-August after more than 25,000 tenants applied. Sisolak said he planned to add an additional $10 million in federal relief dollars to the $60 million that state and local governments have allocated.
Most evictions in Nevada were suspended on March 29, when Sisolak issued an emergency directive to prevent people from losing their housing during the pandemic.
The governor said he believed the state’s unemployment insurance system and county rental assistance programs could distribute funding between now and Oct. 16, when the moratorium is now set to expire.
“I’m confident those processing short-term applications will be able to send money out the door for landlords on behalf of Nevada’s renters,” he said. “This 45-day time extension allows these governments to get this money out as quickly as possible.”
In many states, landlords and property managers have sued over eviction moratoriums, claiming prolonging policies set by emergency directive violates state and federal contract law.
But Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers policy director Bailey Bortolin said the prolonged pandemic justified extending emergency measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“Nothing about the moment we’re in now is better than when this eviction moratorium was put in place,” she said.
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Sam Metz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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