Hell, not help
Booted tenants sue NYCHA over delays
LOW-INCOME tenants evicted through no fault of their own wind up homeless because the city Housing Authority is so slow finding them new places to live, a class-action lawsuit charges.
The suit, filed Monday by the Legal Aid Society, says NYCHA takes months to respond when families are evicted, forcing some families into shelters — even though the agency is required to “promptly” relocate tenants under the federal housing subsidy program known as Section 8.
“NYCHA routinely delays processing participants’ emergency requests for transfer vouchers for months at a time,” the suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, alleges.
About 30,000 NYCHA resi- dents who get the subsidy live in unregulated apartments where landlords can evict them without cause.
Legal Aid says this often occurs when NYCHA cuts off funding after finding apartment conditions are unsafe, prompting landlords to seek eviction.
About 3,000 of these households requested emergency transfers to safe housing in 2008.
Tenants say NYCHA routinely loses their paperwork, demands unnecessary documentation that they’re not in arrears in rent, and delays help.
An internal consultant’s report released last month confirmed NYCHA’s troubles, finding that the agency’s new computerized system for processing Section 8 payments was causing “major backlogs and slow turnaround times” processing paperwork for both landlords and tenants.
A NYCHA spokeswoman said she could not comment on the suit. Plaintiff Jonelle Shepherd said she and her two kids waited more than a year after she requested a transfer. During that time, the family was evicted and is now doubling up with Shepherd’s mother in a two-bedroom Flatbush apartment.
Shepherd, 31, says her troubles began in 2011 after NYCHA deemed her Chelsea apartment unsafe due to dangerous conditions, including a window that would suddenly slam shut. She says her landlord evicted her when she refused to say everything was fixed when it wasn’t.
Shepherd asked for an emergency transfer in July 2011, but was told soon after that NYCHA lost her paperwork. She filed a new request.
Months later, NYCHA demanded a sworn affidavit from her landlord saying she didn’t owe back rent. They requested this even though the court had already determined she didn’t.
Last month NYCHA told her that it had stopped processing that request, so she filed again.
“I did everything NYCHA asked me to do,” she said. “My kids, they depend on me. They’re looking at me, why did you let them kick us out? I have nothing to tell them.”