More and more Nevada families are being left without roofs over their heads – but don’t count on Joe Lombardo to do anything about it. New reporting from the Nevada Current shows how evictions spiked throughout the state after Lombardo vetoed SB335, which would have paused eviction proceedings if a rental assistance application was pending. It’s no surprise that Lombardo would veto this vital legislation if you just take a look at who funded his gubernatorial campaign: a billionaire real estate mogul who Lombardo is now taking his orders from. It’s becoming more and more clear that Lombardo will always put his donors and interests first and kick Nevada families to the curb.
Read more below:
Nevada Current: For a while, a series of measures protected renters from NV’s harsh eviction laws. Not anymore.
December 11, 2023
- Around the same time Kathleen Dominguez filed a response with a court to the eviction notice she received in June, she also applied for rental assistance through Clark County in hopes of getting help paying $1,035 of back-owed rent.
- The 7-day pay-or-quit notice came the day a statewide eviction protection expired, meaning there was no guarantee the landlord would have to work with the CARES Housing Assistance Program, the county rental assistance program known as CHAP.
- At the start of the pandemic, state and local officials implemented a series of measures including a statewide eviction moratoria, diversion programs and funding wide-scale rental assistance to prevent a feared tsunami of evictions.
- The last of those protections ended in June. Now landlords get to decide if they want to accept rental assistance from the county in lieu of moving forward with an eviction for nonpayment of rent.
- Dominguez was one of the 3,045 people evicted at the Las Vegas Justice Court in August, the month that had the highest number of evictions granted since January 2022 according to court data received by Nevada Current.
- In its Covid-19 Housing Policy Scorecard, which monitored state eviction protections between March 15, 2020 through June 30, 2021, the Princeton University-based EvictionLab, which collects and analyzes nationwide eviction data, scored Nevada as 4.3 out of 5 stars. It was the second highest score, attributed to the various policies set up throughout the pandemic.
- Two years later, the Las Vegas metropolitan area has seen eviction filings 62% higher than prior to the pandemic, one of the highest jumps since the pandemic, according to EvictionLab.
- What for many was the protection of last resort from eviction, referred to as the “Assembly Bill 486 defense” for the law passed during the 2021 legislative session that paused eviction proceedings while rental assistance applications were being processed, sunset June 5.
- Senate Bill 335, which was passed in the 2023 legislative session, sought to implement a scaled back version of that protection, but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo after languishing on his desk for several days after being passed.
- The aftermath was felt immediately.
- The number of evictions granted at the Las Vegas Justice Court this summer spiked: 2,847 in June; 2,710 in July and 3,045 in August.
- Jonathan Norman, the statewide advocacy, outreach and policy director for Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers, argued the vast majority of the evictions could be avoidable if there was a mechanism that ensured rental assistance is allocated to tenants and landlords.
- “As our community grapples with rising homelessness and what we’re going to do about those people living unsheltered, we are letting people slip into homelessness because we’re not dealing with those avoidable evictions and getting rental assistance in a timely manner, which is what AB 486 allowed for,” he said.
- Nevada Current requested data from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson justice courts, overseeing all evictions handled in Southern Nevada, to get a better understanding of how many evictions had been filed and granted since January 2022.
- All three courts collectively granted 30,813 evictions in 2022. As of September, the number was at 24,537, which Norman said could outpace previous years.
- Williams with HELP of Southern Nevada said family is one option HELP looks at for clients facing eviction in need of assistance.
- “All of a sudden in June going into July, we were so busy, with lines over 100 people a day,” she said. “I honestly thought we had until the end of the year. Not this fiscal year. It didn’t even end on the fiscal year. What is June 5? Where did that date come from?”
- The date coincides with the end of the legislative session.
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