Governor Mike Dunleavy told KSRM News on Tuesday that he does not yet have advice for Alaskans who are no longer protected from evictions and foreclosures. The legislation protecting renters expired at the end of the day on June 30.
Passed in March, Senate Bill 241 protected renters from evictions, as well as protecting Alaskans from foreclosures, due to COVID-19-related financial hardship until June 30. As the clock struck Midnight on July 1, Alaskans faced the prospect of courts holding hearings in eviction proceedings.
KSRM News asked the Governor what he proposes the next step should be for Alaskans facing eviction. He replied that for now, Alaskans should be ready to get on the internet: “What we’ll do is we’ll get something up on our website. We’ll field questions individually from renters on that website. We’ll get the information out to them. I can’t answer that right now, what advice I would give folks. Certainly, we don’t know how long this whole process is going to go – this pandemic. Literally, it has disrupted everybody’s lives. We’re writing a playbook, we’re trying to get out as far as we can, in front, but we’re writing a playbook to try to deal with some of these things. That’s a great question; we’ll try to get some answers up on our website so we can help folks with that particular issue.”
The state ultimately has the option to extend the moratorium on eviction hearings, but the debt to renters would only continue to pile up. As of this publication, there is no proposed solution that would offer relief to landlords in lieu of renters growing rental debt that they may not be able to pay back before being evicted.