As the Bay Area heads into its third week of shelter in place and the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered a statewide ban on evictions through May.
Both Newsom and officials in hard-hit Santa Clara County, which has the largest number of cases in the Bay Area, urged residents to follow unprecedented social distancing orders as COVID-19 cases continue to grow — along with the death toll.
“We don’t believe our fate is predetermined,” said Newsom, speaking from the Port of Los Angeles, where he toured the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy docked Friday morning. “It’s in our individual capacity to continue to make good decisions on physical distancing, and continuing to maintain strict standards in the state of California as it relates to our stay-at-home order.”
The governor’s new eviction order provided much-needed clarity to a patchwork of quickly enacted local legislation aimed at protecting renters and could give a break to the estimated 1 million Californians already out of work amid record nationwide unemployment.
More than 60 jurisdictions across the state, including Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Marin and Sonoma counties, have passed eviction bans in some form since the governor granted local jurisdictions that power last week. Any legislation that goes further or deeper than Newsom’s statewide order will remain intact, he said.
Renters directly affected by the coronavirus pandemic will be required to declare in writing that they have lost work, fallen ill or been forced to care for family members, according to the order. Landlords are prohibited from removing residents for nonpayment of rent through May 31, while law enforcement agencies and courts are barred from carrying out evictions during that time.
But some housing advocates found little comfort in the new order, saying landlords could easily circumvent it by filing eviction papers and waiting for the courts to re-open. Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said he will pursue legislation with more sweeping protections.
Newsom’s latest effort to soothe the pandemic’s economic havoc came as California’s cases surged to 4,867 Friday, marking the second time in two days that the state crossed a thousand-case marker, according to the Bay Area News Group’s live tracking map. Statewide, 99 people have died so far of COVID-19.
Bay Area cases have likewise skyrocketed: As of Friday afternoon, the 10-county total grew to 1,648 cases, with 36 deaths.
For a third straight day, San Francisco reported a record number of new cases Friday, with 56 new infections — and the city’s third death — bringing its total to 279. San Mateo County reported 44 new positive tests for a total of 239, along with a sixth death. Alameda County was up 42 cases, plus 16 in Berkeley, for a total of 220 cases across both jurisdictions. Contra Costa County reported 16 new cases for a total 147 cases. And Santa Clara County reported 32 new cases for a total of 574, plus one new death for a total of 20.
About 88,400 people statewide have been tested, Newsom said — a jump of about 10,000 tests since Thursday — but “tens of thousands” still await results.
The governor pointed to the rising number of positive cases as the reason to increase hospital capacity, praising the 1,000-bed Navy boat now at the disposal of Los Angeles County, which has the largest number of cases in the state. Mercy will take in non-coronavirus patients to siphon the burden off the local hospital system.
Bay Area officials, meanwhile, echoed the governor’s push for social distancing as a way to ease an impending hospital bed crunch, calling on residents to stay home as spring weather and Easter weekend loom.
In an afternoon press conference, Santa Clara County CEO Jeff Smith said it will take at least two weeks of social distancing before the county can measure its impact on the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Smith added that he expects the numbers to continue rising.
“Stay at home, stay away from other people, because if you do it, you’ll have a result like China’s — where it goes down dramatically,” Smith said.
Bay Area health officers, who were the first in the nation to order residents to stay in, are debating whether to extend the shelter in place beyond April 7 or change any of its conditions, but no decisions have been made.
Smith also cautioned against relying on projections alone, noting that statistics like death rates could vary greatly depending on geography and demographics. Instead, he said, people should trust that staying at home has been proven to stem the spread of the disease and help hospitals care for the “really sick people.”
“Lots of people want to talk about statistics and modeling, and that’s not bad, but that’s not what’s going to determine the future,” Smith said. “They don’t predict the future because they’re based on presumptions and any of those presumptions or all of them could easily be untrue.”
Santa Clara County established itself early on as one of the most aggressive Bay Area counties in terms of social distancing. On March 9, officials banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people and just four days later ratcheted that down to gatherings of more than 100 people. Two days later, seven counties enforced a regional shelter-in-place order, a move Newsom followed last week.
So far, people have largely adhered to the guidelines, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said Friday. While her deputies have fielded complaints through the District Attorney’s Office, there has been “really good compliance” with the order.
Returning to the status quo after just two or three weeks would likely not do much to slow the pandemic, Dr. Nicholas Jewell, professor of biostatistics at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, told this news organization.
“You really need to maintain or suppress transmission for 12 or even 20 weeks before you will really make a big impact,” Jewell said. “That’s a very long time for society to handle this, and I’m not able to comment on whether we can afford to do that economically.”
Staff writers Lisa Krieger, Harriet Rowan, Kerry Crowley and Jason Green contributed to this report.
