New York State lawmakers agreed on Wednesday to extend protections against evictions until January 15, 2022, but the new measure leaves room for landlords to challenge tenants’ hardship claim in court, consistent with the Supreme Court ruling.
On August 12, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of New York landlords, who argued that they had no way to challenge tenants seeking eviction protection by filing a hardship claim, a form that tenants can complete on their own and in which they state they have experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic.
On Wednesday, lawmakers amended the moratorium to allow homeowners to challenge those claims in court. That means that a tenant, residential or commercial, can still file a form declaring loss of income due to the pandemic; however, homeowners now have the power to go to the Housing Court to request a close scrutiny of the statement, which gives the judges the power to decide whether the eviction can be executed or not.
Tenants would have to prove loss of income related to the pandemic. And all evidence will be analyzed and debated by the court, which will have the last word in determining whether the eviction proceeds.
In addition, the new policy also gives landlords the power to initiate eviction proceedings if a tenant is “nuisance” or “intentionally causes significant property damage.”
Property owners have claimed that tenants could use the hardship form to avoid paying rent even when they have the ability to do so.
The extension of the moratorium will apply to residential and commercial evictions, as well as foreclosures.
But there is one thing that tenants and landlords do agree on: extending the moratorium is a temporary fix that will only go so far if the state does not distribute $ 2.7 billion in rent relief.
The money, which the state gives directly to landlords, is intended to prevent evictions by covering unpaid bills for low-income tenants, including up to 12 months of previous rent, three months of future rent, and utilities. But the program, which former Governor Andrew Cuomo launched over the summer, has been slow to distribute the money, partly due to technical difficulties, but also because many landlords and tenants face difficulties navigating the process, and the requirements are confusing and cumbersome.
As of Tuesday, more than $ 203 million, or about 7 percent of the money available, had been paid for about 15,000 households, according to the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which administers the rent relief program.
The program also protects tenants from eviction if their request for rent relief is pending. As of August 23, the most recent data available, the state had received more than 176,000 applications.
Landlord and tenant advocates alike agree that Governor Kathy Hochul should focus the state’s efforts on reaching all indebted tenants and getting them to apply for the program before the moratorium expires in January.
The measure passed Wednesday during a special session of the Legislature, called by Hochul, is the first by a state to establish new barriers to eviction after the US Supreme Court last week rejected the moratorium on the president’s administration. Biden.
The new agreement creates one of the most extensive protections in the nation. Only five other states and Washington, DC currently have eviction moratoriums, according to the White House, and many of those protections expire sometime this year.
But the need in New York is particularly acute. No other state has a higher ratio of renters than New York, and the vast majority live in the city. More than 700,000 homes are behind on rent, according to a recent analysis of Census data, second only to California, where some 750,000 homes are behind.
Hochul agreed on the new eviction protections with Democratic leaders in the state Legislature, who often had an adversarial relationship with his predecessor. Democrats, who control the state Senate and Assembly, approved the measures Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn the federal moratorium on evictions, the majority of the Senate is taking steps to adjust and extend the state’s moratorium on evictions to ensure that thousands of New Yorkers are protected from losing their homes and at the same time time to help smallholders, ”Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Democratic Majority Leader in the state Senate, said in a statement early Wednesday.
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