More than a dozen housing activists were arrested in Lower Manhattan on Thursday morning, as hundreds of protesters demanded that state lawmakers intervene to keep New Yorkers from getting kicked out of their homes or dragged to housing court during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"There's so much uncertainty out there about what's going to happen this winter," said protester Bianca Cunningham, a union organizer with the nonprofit Labor Notes. Cunningham said she was kicked out of her Crown Heights apartment a year ago, forcing her to couch-surf with friends for a month before the courts determined her eviction was illegal. "They trick you, trick tenants into thinking they have to be out. But they don't. I was one of those people."
Cunningham added, "I can't even imagine what people are going through, people are struggling right now trying to survive in a pandemic."
The protests specifically targeted the downtown offices of the state's two legislative leaders, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. For months, housing advocates have been lobbying for a full eviction moratorium and stronger tenant protections, to no avail. Spokespeople for the two lawmakers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After marching from Foley Square, housing activists set up living room furniture in the street outside 250 Broadway to simulate an eviction, and chanted "housing is a human right, fight fight fight!"
Dozens of NYPD officers monitored the action. Shortly after cops told activists to leave the roadway through a loudspeaker, the arrests began. The NYPD confirmed that 16 people were arrested. Officers loaded piles of furniture into a truck.
The protest comes on the day the state courts system is permitted to execute eviction warrants after Governor Andrew Cuomo failed to extend the eviction ban. Instead, he signed an executive order that extends protections to tenants facing eviction before the pandemic under the legislation known as the Tenant Safe Harbor Act until January 1st. That law helps keep tenants housed if they can show financial hardship during the health emergency.
Though the governor presented the news as a moratorium, tenant attorneys say that framing could further confuse tenants who assume they're in the clear if a landlord files a case against them.
"It really doesn’t add much, and it’s certainly not an eviction moratorium," said Joanna Laine, tenant attorney and member of the Association of the Legal Aid Attorneys. She said it could be interpreted to include holdover eviction cases—though it is unclear if that was the intention.
Before the pandemic, about 14,000 tenants faced eviction warrants, according to estimates from the Department of Social Service and the Office of Court Administration.
Those cases prior to March 17th require landlords to file a motion for a new eviction warrant. Landlords are seeking warrants in about 2,000 of those cases, according to Law360. In the Bronx, those motions began being heard on September 14th, and the other boroughs will start hearing them Monday, an OCA spokesperson said. After those hearings, a judge is permitted to issue an eviction warrant, which city marshals can then execute.
"Part of what's so scary about this for tenants and tenant advocates, is we just don't know what's going to happen," said Julia McNally, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society's Queens Neighborhood Office. "What is the legal standard that judges will be using to evaluate these motions? Because this is so new. We don't know if judges are just gonna rubber stamp it, which is a real fear."
None of the motions that have been heard have resulted in an eviction warrant, according to the OCA spokesperson, but tenant attorneys have said letting eviction cases move forward at all puts renters at risk of coronavirus as hot spots pop up around the city.
City marshals are required to comply with state orders.
"We are not aware that any eviction warrants have been authorized by the Courts," said Department of Investigation spokesperson Diane Struzzi. "If courts begin issuing warrants, Marshals are required to give the tenant at least 14 days notice before enforcing the eviction."
The Governor's office has not responded to questions about the order. Cuomo spokesperson Jack Sterne listed efforts to aide struggling New Yorkers through the pandemic, like unemployment benefits, a partial rental assistance program, and the eviction protections the protest was about.
"Histrionics aside, we understand that New Yorkers are struggling as a result of this unprecedented pandemic and State government has taken decisive action to help," Sterne said.
Protesters pointed out that evicting tenants during a pandemic could place people in danger.
"The pandemic is nowhere near done, so for this action to be taken now, it’s just throwing people onto the streets and into the shelters while at the same time, we’re experiencing new outbreaks in Queens and Brooklyn," said Roberto Mangual, a housing activist who's living in a hotel shelter on the Upper West Side. "So I just feel like this move is a power move just made out of greed and not made out of looking at things through the human side of things."
This story has been updated with a comment from the Governor's office.
