Eviction moratorium

State Legislature considers meeting before year’s end to extend, toughen moratorium

Legislature considers meeting before year’s end to extend, toughen moratorium.

State legislators could meet for a rare December session early next week to extend and strengthen New York’s eviction moratorium.

While Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo recently pledged to extend the current eviction moratorium beyond its Jan. 1 expiration, housing advocates have criticized that measure for its patchwork protection for renters in New York and have called for a blanket moratorium to prevent any evictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the current moratorium, tenants who can prove financial hardship as a result of COVID -19 cannot be evicted from their homes. It does not prevent a landlord from filing for eviction and doesn’t protect tenants who can’t prove financial hardship — a high hurdle for undocumented and gig-economy workers, housing advocates say.

Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie on Monday said members were working with their Senate colleagues to address housing concerns.

“We want to make sure that people stay in their homes,” Heastie said. “We don’t want people to have to walk into court to prove a hardship, so we are working on that language.”

The Democratic conferences in both houses met this week to hammer out revised legislation that would broaden the eviction moratorium to prevent evictions of tenants with hardships for nonpayment and holdover cases, the latter being those evictions initiated prior to March 7, before the pandemic took its grip on the country.

The bill also gives similar protections to small landlords and homeowners facing potential foreclosure, tax lien sales and credit discrimination, according to a summary of the bill obtained by the Times Union. It also renews property tax exemptions for seniors and people with disabilities without requiring recertification.

But nothing has been finalized, and discussions with legislative leaders and the executive branch continue, said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor.

“The standard for the current moratorium was set by the original Safe Harbor law passed by the Legislature and we respect the legislative intent, but we continue to discuss next steps with the houses,” he said.

The revised bill would create a “standardized hardship form” tenants and homeowners could sign under penalty of perjury if they have a financial hardship that prevents them from paying their rent in full or need to obtain alternative housing if a tenant or member of the household has an increased risk of severe illness from COVID -19 due to age or underlying medical conditions.

Hardship would include lost income; increased health, child care or family care expenses; the inability to obtain gainful employment; or a lack of funds to cover the cost of moving. Small landlords could claim decreased rent collections as part of their hardship declaration. Tenants and property owners would also have to affirm that any public assistance received since the start of COVID -19 has not fully made up for lost income or increased expenses, according to the memo.

The signed form could then be returned to a tenant’s landlord, mortgage holder or a court, which would then prevent a landlord from filing an eviction — or suspend one already in process — until May 1, 2021. The state Assembly met Thursday and changed the expiration of the protections, which initially were proposed to sunset July 1. The protections would apply to both nonpayment and holdover evictions, as well as pending preCOVID -19 cases.

Evictions due to a tenant allegedly causing a safety hazard or infringing on another tenant’s use and enjoyment of the property can proceed.

Homeowners and landlords with fewer than five units, based on the current proposed bill, also could utilize the protections through the hardship form.

Heastie previously had said the Legislature could also return to Albany to pass revenue-raisers in an attempt to shrink the $15 billion budget deficit the state faces this year from responding to the pandemic, but Cuomo’s public assertions that tax hikes should be done in next year’s budget appear to have scrapped those plans.