Once seen as one of the Bay Area’s last affordable cities, San Leandro now faces one of the highest rates of eviction notices per capita as officials grapple with the end of pandemic-era renter protections.
But the city received a lifeline this week with a $1 million state housing grant and pro-housing designation, which city officials said they will leverage to develop more affordable housing as part of the city’s full court press to keep residents in their homes.
“The city council has been very focused the last couple of years on tenant protection issues,” Community Development Director Tom Liao said. “When you have the city putting in a million (dollars)… now the state or federal agency can double that or can triple that.”
The grant arrives at a time when San Leandro needs affordable housing more than ever.
In the five-year period before the pandemic, San Leandro experienced an average of 285 eviction notices per year, according to Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department data. The number of eviction notices plummeted to less than 50 in 2021 because of the pandemic-era eviction moratorium in San Leandro.
When San Leandro ended that moratorium in July of 2023, eviction notices began to skyrocket, jumping to more than 400 in 2023 and 488 in 2024, according to HCD data. That represents a 71% increase in the number of notices compared to the five-year average before the pandemic. Per capita, San Leandro had the second-highest number of eviction notices after Emeryville in 2024.
The city has worked to combat this trend through a series of policies streamlining housing production, programs to create housing around transit, and housing projects aimed at low-income residents. One city-funded project, Loro Landing, consists of a 62-unit 100% affordable housing units that opened in 2022 near the BART station.
Loro Landing was developed and is operated by Eden Housing, a nonprofit housing organization. Eden Housing President Linda Mandolini said San Leandro’s eviction moratorium had created a backlog of tenants who could not – or would not – pay rent. So when the moratorium was lifted, a wave of eviction notices followed.
“Part of what has happened with the (rent) moratoria is a very well-intended set of policies to keep people housed went sideways when some tenants decided they just couldn’t pay rent, or wouldn’t pay rent,” Mandolini said. “All of those moratoria have worn off, and landlords have to pay real bills.”
While eviction notices do not necessarily lead to the eviction of a tenant, they do initiate the beginning of eviction proceedings. Once the tenant receives a notice, they have 10 days to file a formal legal response.
Still, the San Leandro City Council is exploring the establishment of a Residential Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which officials said could impact more than 7,600 rental housing units in the city to prevent excessive rent increases and necessary displacement, Liao said.
“Depending on how far along we can move with rent stabilization, I think probably the next step for the council is to reassess some of the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance,” Liao said.