Homeless find work evicting others in Northern California.

SAN FRANCISCO — After two months of missed rent, it was the knock on the door that the family had been dreading. Eviction brought the prospect of homelessness after months of living on the brink.

But little did they know that the man handing over the eviction documents, John Hebbring, was homeless himself.

“Believe me, we see the irony,” said Hebbring, whose job it is to deliver eviction notices with his girlfriend, Kim Hansen. Together they live in a 50-year-old trailer infested by rats.

The couple’s predicament offers a measure of how far-reaching the homelessness crisis has become in California. The evicted are doing the evicting.

It not their job to change locks or physically remove people from their homes — that is the sheriff’s domain — but several times a week Hebbring and Hansen leave the crowded, trash-filled, homeless encampment in Oakland where they live and travel to cities around the Bay Area: Newark, Millbrae, Fremont, Daly City, East Palo Alto and Hayward among them.

They go mainly by public transport, with a stack of documents. In some cases, they can post the notices on doors. In others, they are required to put them directly into the recipients’ hands.

“I’m sympathetic to their situation because I know what mine is,” Hansen said, bundled up on a rainy and cold winter night outside their trailer. “Look at us. I’m out here sick and homeless.”

Hansen said that despite the couple’s misgivings about delivering eviction notices, their options are limited.

“No one wants to be the one delivering bad news, but pretty much right now it’s our only source of income,” she said.

They have earned around $1,600 since they started the work in September, only enough to pay for food and, if they have money left, gas for their...