After a two-year dip, evictions accelerate
Landlords filing 2,000 cases every week since March
In New York, where landlords typically move to evict more people than in any other city in the nation, the housing courts sat in an unusual stupor for two years. But as pandemic restrictions ease, they are beginning to hum anew.
The roughly 2,000 eviction cases filed by landlords every week since March are roughly 40 percent more than the number filed in mid-january, after the state’s eviction moratorium expired.
Tenants have been thrown out of homes in more than 500 cases since February, according to city data, double the number in all of the 20 months prior.
Judges are increasingly asking tenants to appear in court after months of remote interactions.
Lawyers representing landlords are exasperated that cases are not moving faster, while lawyers who defend tenants cannot keep up with a rising caseload.
The courts bear little resemblance to the frenetic, prepandemic past, when lines of beleaguered tenants spilled around the block and crowded hallways featured raucous settlement talks.
The number of cases is still below prepandemic levels.
On a recent Thursday, the pews in a Brooklyn courtroom sat mostly empty, with only a few lawyers mingling in deserted hallways as tenants queued in a cramped waiting area at what was once one of the city’s busiest courts.
But after the pandemic pushed thousands of people to the brink of losing their homes, the uptick in activity is raising questions about how well the housing system can continue to avoid a wider crisis of dislocation, as soaring rents once again underscore the city’s challenges with affordability, and whether some of the ugliest features of the city’s long-standing housing crisis, such as the chaotic court system, are set to return.
Already, a new, crucial protection — a service for free legal representation — is reaching a breaking point, advocates for tenants say.
For years, nearly all landlords used lawyers in housing court, while the majority of tenants did not — a power imbalance that many felt unfairly left tenants vulnerable to eviction.
A new city law was passed in 2017 to provide free lawyers for low-income people, and went into full effect last year.
But several nonprofits tapped by the city to represent tenants, grappling with staffing shortages and the uptick in cases, say they are not ready to meet the need.
A court spokesperson said last week that legal groups had declined to take on nearly 1,400 cases since March.
In Brooklyn, for example, Legal Services NYC has had about 25 lawyers handling cases through the program since 2019.
But compared with February and March that year, the number of cases in those months this year doubled to more than 300, the group said.
Several lawyers have resigned, and the group has struggled to hire and train enough new lawyers amid a tight job market, said Raun J. Rasmussen, the group’s executive director.
“Right now we’re trying really hard to grab every single May law graduate who doesn’t have a job, and we’re all competing with each other to do that,” he said.
To cope, Legal Services NYC limited its cases last month in Queens and the Bronx and stopped accepting new cases in Brooklyn. The Legal Aid Society, another nonprofit, gradually stopped taking new cases in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn last month.
“The fear today is that we’re going to have a lot of tenants going without full representation from counsel at a time when we’re trying to come out of the pandemic,” said Adriene Holder, chief attorney of civil practice at the Legal Aid Society.
The groups have called on the courts to slow the scheduling and pace of cases moving through the system.
The spokesperson for the courts, Lucian Chalfen, said last week that the number of scheduled appearances in cases was down 41 percent compared with the first quarter in 2019, and the number of new cases filed was down 62 percent.
He said that a slowdown would “accomplish nothing,” as new cases would continue to pile up.
“Are the legal services providers really all of a sudden going to have an epiphany and be able to provide representation on all of those cases?” he said.