As housing courts reopen, a call for tenant protection
Activists urge extension of state eviction freeze and rent ‘‘cancellation’’
A group of about 20 people gathered in front of City Hall on Monday morning, the day housing courts reopened, to demand elected officials extend the eviction moratorium further and cancel rent.
“We are here because evictions are violence in the midst of a pandemic,” said the Rev. Joe Paparone, a lead organizer of the Labor-religion Coalition. “People are about to be evicted from their home, dragged out of their homes for their inability to pay when we’ve seen absolute record numbers on employment cases, we have record numbers of people who are unable to continue to pay their rent.”
So far in Albany, there are 150 eviction notices for unregulated tenants and 250 for supportive housing, protesters said, citing the United Tenants of Albany. They emphasized that those are just the number of cases — individuals impacted by these cases are likely double those figures.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo extended the state’s eviction moratorium from June 20 through Aug. 20, but the extension only applies to tenants who are either unable to pay rent due to COVID-19, or are receiving unemployment insurance. The earlier moratorium didn’t limit which residential and commercial tenants were protected.
Numerous state legislators sent the governor’s office a letter June 17 expressing concerns about the extension, saying it unduly puts the onus on tenants to prove that they shouldn’t be evicted. “This means large numbers of tenants
will still be sued in non-payment eviction cases and they will have to face intrusive inquiries into all their personal financial information, just to get dismissal of an eviction case that should never have been brought in the first place,” the letter reads.
Protesters stressed that a number of New Yorkers remain financially unstable as the state transitions into reopening the economy after coronavirus shutdowns, with many still underemployed or seeing their wages reduced as the economy picks back up.
In New York City, housing rights groups estimate that in the coming days, 50,000 to 60,000 cases could be filed in housing courts there. In addition, thousands of cases that were already in progress but were paused in March may now resume, according to The New York Times.
Speakers at the Albany protest Monday pointed to Ithaca as an example, which is seeking to cancel unpaid rent for residents.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s chief of staff, David Galin, said Sheehan supports the state’s extended moratorium on evictions and has implemented her own emergency suspension of evictions in the city since mid-march. “Mayor Sheehan also deeply understands the rent and mortgage burden many residents in our city and across the nation face due to rising unemployment as a result of COVID, which is why the city’s community development agency has made $250,000 available to organizations to provide rental and mortgage assistance to City of Albany residents,” Galin said in a statement.
Paparone acknowledged concerns among landlords that they would be unable to pay their mortgages or property taxes if tenants do not pay rent. However, he stressed, landlords have a choice.
“Landlords and tenants are in different positions,” he said. “Landlords need to pick which side they’re going to be on — are they gonna side with their tenants and fight against the banks who are gonna make out on this no matter what happens, or are they gonna try and deal with the bank ... and meanwhile throw people out on the streets today?”