Tenants not paying rent and applied for Covid Rental Assistance

[Cathy S.]

Not sure if anyone has any advice on this situation / is in a similar one.

I have inherited tenants and they were great about paying rent since I got my property. They paid on time for about 4 months. Then they told me on the first of this month that one of them was in between jobs for a bit during Covid, and so they wanted to apply to the Covid rental assistance program for the city of San Diego

Essentially this Covid rental assistance program provides 80% of the past due rent and directly deposits it to me if their application is approved and I sign off on it. I would have to sign and say I am willing to forfeit the remaining 20%. However the tenants said that if / when approved, they would cover the remaining amount.

I called the city and they said they’re super backed up - it’ll take them maybe 2-3 months to review the application. This whole situation seems a bit weird. I have no proof but I feel like they are trying to tap into the “free money” from the government. Their lease ended end of April and they resigned a 1 year lease for May. They also started this application in April (I got notified), so they had been planning this for at least 2 months.

What does everyone think I do about this? There’s actually nothing I can do until the city reviews the application. This could drag onto September.

Thanks for reading!