A handful of California cities still enforce laws protecting tenants from eviction or rent increases, extending pandemic-era policies that most of the country wound down more than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The San Francisco board of supervisors voted in March to maintain a local eviction ban for unpaid rent until at least the summer. In Oakland and Berkeley, similar laws will also run into the summer months. Los Angeles, meanwhile, extended a prohibition on evicting tenants for unauthorized pets or occupants. It also renewed a rent freeze on rent-controlled apartments.  

Eviction moratoria, initially enacted nationwide in 2020, sought to limit the spread of COVID-19 and prevent tenants who lost income in the pandemic from losing their homes. Although those concerns have receded, proponents of the California bans told the WSJ that lifting all protections would exacerbate homelessness in cities with some of the country’s highest housing costs.

“As we work to bring Angelenos inside, we also have to work to prevent Angelenos from falling into homelessness,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said last month.