With the impending reopening of housing courts in New York City, tenant advocates call for a … [+]
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New York City is set to restart residential evictions later this week for renters who fail to prove a coronavirus-related financial hardship, but tenant advocates are demanding protections against widespread displacements.
While New York’s initial halt on evictions was set to expire on June 20, Governor Andrew Cuomo extended the ban another two months. Yet, his new executive order covers only those who qualify for unemployment benefits or can otherwise demonstrate they have suffered an adverse coronavirus impact.
“People just need more time,” said Sandra Mitchell, a tenant leader in the Bronx, during a Monday press call. “Some people aren’t back at work. Some people are sick. We need more time to figure out what we have to do.”
In May, about 25% of New York City renters did not pay rent, according to a survey by the Community Housing Improvement Program. Even with a prolonged eviction halt, unpaid rent is still due.
As a result, a coalition of tenant groups is calling for five updates to New York City’s housing courts. As outlined by Right to Counsel NYC, the demands include a year-long universal eviction moratorium, a promotion of tenants’ right to counsel during eviction proceedings, the slowdown of the latter (which currently serve as quick remedies for landlords, the organization states), accountability for property owners as well as a the prioritization of health, safety and accessibility.
The right to counsel is especially important to Mitchell, who said she would not have been evicted from her apartment in Bronx’s Riverdale neighborhood had she received legal aid. As a result, she spent two years in a shelter.
“This is really, really personal for me because when I was going through my eviction process in Riverdale, right to counsel did not exist and I wound up in a shelter because I couldn’t fight by myself,” Mitchell said. “I don’t want to see anyone go through what I went through.”
In late 2017, New York City established the right to counsel – or a free access to an attorney – for some low-income renters. Only 20 zip codes, however, are currently included in the program.
Right to Counsel NYC claims that 84% of tenants who had an attorney won their eviction cases and, thus, remained in their residences.
Mitchell said, “No one should have to suffer from being evicted because of something we didn’t know. We didn’t know that Covid was going to come. It wasn’t our fault, so we shouldn’t be evicted because we were displaced from our jobs.”
Evictions mostly impact renters of color
Evictions disproportionately impact renters of color and immigrants, according to the Community Action For Safe Apartments (CASA).
“Evictions are a pawn of a long history of a structure of inequality and racism,” said Randy Dillard, a tenant leader with CASA. “Almost everyone who is being evicted in New York City is a person of color. This isn’t right, is it? I have gone to the courts in Bronx and in Manhattan. It is people of color.”
According to a CASA ranking, New York City’s top 20 evictors, whose portfolios have sizable shares of rent-stabilized apartments, displaced 1,650 families in 2019, most of them living in the Bronx. Overall, there were nearly 17,000 residential evictions in the city, according to NYC’s open database.
New York City Housing Authority, NYCHA, was behind 722 evictions last year. NYCHA’s safeguard against the anticipated spike in evictions is the rent hardship program, which requires public-housing tenants to certify a Covid-19-related loss of income, said Sasha Wijeyeratne, executive director of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities.
“While it exists, it does not work,” she said. “We have had members apply and get denied because they couldn’t prove that they have lost work or because they are choosing not to go to their dangerous job as elders or people with health conditions.”
Some 3,000 evictions have taken place this year, before the March closure of the courts, the city’s open database shows.