The New York legislature is expected to pass on Monday one of the most comprehensive anti-eviction laws in the country, as the state faces high levels of unemployment and a pandemic that claimed 37,000 lives across the state.
For months, tenants and advocacy groups feared the end of the year of eviction bans that kept people in their homes, despite their inability to pay rent. Under the new measure, landlords would be banned from evicting most tenants for at least another 60 days.
A tenant in danger of being evicted from a home could present a document stating financial difficulties related to the coronavirus to postpone eviction.
The legislation would also make it more difficult for banks to foreclose on smaller owners who are struggling to pay their bills. But homeowners’ advocacy groups said the project could leave many in trouble.
The legislature is calling for an unusual special session between Christmas and New Year to approve the measure, acting quickly because the governor’s executive order banning many evictions is expiring on December 31.
Lawmakers expect Governor Andrew M. Cuomo go sign the measure, which would take effect immediately. Cuomo’s office did not immediately comment on the legislation.
The state’s emergency action comes after President Trump signed a $ 900 billion aid package on Sunday, which included $ 1.3 billion in rent relief for New Yorkers – and two days after the benefits of unemployment has expired for millions of Americans. State and federal laws speak of the precarious financial situation faced by millions of Americans, nine months after the start of the pandemic.
In New York State, eviction procedures continued, but landlords were prohibited from physically removing tenants from their homes. A handful of evictions resumed in October, especially for tenants who failed to convince judges that their financial difficulties were related to the coronavirus. Tenants whose cases revolved around disputes other than non-payment of rent could also be evicted.
In late November, there were 38 requests for eviction warrants in New York City, according to a recent analysis by the New York University Furman Center. Each of these cases started before the pandemic and most involved properties in central Brooklyn.
Since October, Zellnor Myrie, a state senator who represents downtown Brooklyn, has had at least three eviction warrants issued in his district. The most recent warrant was issued to a tenant who could not pay the rent.
“So, even with the constellation of default, there are still landlords chasing tenants,” said Myrie, a sponsor of the legislation.
During the pandemic, Winsome Pendergrass, 63, a tenant and activist in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, lost his main source of income by providing home care. Three months late in rent, she said the legislation would bring relief.
“I myself suffer from high blood pressure and I don’t want to run and try too hard in the pandemic, because the money I’m getting is just to pay the rent,” she said.
Tenant lawyers and advocacy groups said state law would prevent landlords from throwing thousands of tenants in financial trouble in the streets in the winter, as the number of virus cases continues to rise.
“It will save many people’s homes,” said Ellen Davidson, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. “It will save lives.”
But homeowners argue that the bill extrapolates, allowing tenants to avoid eviction by merely declaring financial difficulties rather than proving it.
“Without the requirement for proof that the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affected their income and without income limitation to qualify for eviction protection, a tenant whose family income went from half a million dollars to $ 250,000 would qualify for eviction protection. declaring that their income has been ‘significantly reduced’, ”said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a group of owners.
The new state law would allow evictions to continue in cases where judges find that tenants have created persistent nuisance for neighbors, such as playing loud music at 3 am, or have created dangerous conditions.
Under the new legislation, a tenant can send a written statement to an owner indicating loss of income or increased costs due to the pandemic, or that the change during the pandemic would pose a “significant health risk”. The owner would not be allowed to start the eviction process until at least May 1st.
For eviction cases that are already pending in the courts, the law would suspend proceedings for at least 60 days.
Since March, the governor, state courts and the legislature have instituted a series of sometimes overlapping measures designed to prevent evictions during a crisis that left millions of people unemployed and made rent payments for many tenants unsustainable. Tenants’ inability to pay homeowners, in turn, made it difficult for some homeowners to pay their own bills.
But the ever-changing state rules and court guidelines have sown substantial confusion among tenants seeking to make sense of the legal mire. Tenant lawyers also expressed dissatisfaction with the way some housing court judges interpret the law.
More than elsewhere, courts in the Albany region and in Rochester “have been remarkably unfriendly to the tenants’ situation,” said Davidson.
The new law is not a panacea. Tenants will continue to owe homeowners arrears that they have not paid once the moratorium ends.
The $ 1.3 billion discount on federally authorized rental should help, said Davidson, but it will not be enough to cover all tenants’ late rent.
Michael McKee, the treasurer of Tenants PAC, a tenant rights group, praised the law as “very close” to everything his organization wanted, but also warned that, “when all this is over, there will be people owing thousands and thousands of rent money that they can’t afford. ”