California will pay off people’s unpaid rent if they fell behind on their payments because of the pandemic. People must apply to get the money and state law says they cannot be evicted while their application is pending.

That law was scheduled to expire at midnight Thursday. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of households still have pending applications as of Tuesday. It would have been impossible for the state to process all of those before the deadline, meaning households still waiting to get the money could have been evicted beginning Friday.