Fani Luna and other Communities for Change activists
When the coronavirus pandemic caused a shutdown of all but essential services in March, the city’s housing courts only accepted emergency cases such as urgent repairs or tenants who’d been locked out of their homes. State legislation and a moratorium signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo prevented any tenants affected by the pandemic from being evicted.
But while landlords still can’t remove these renters until January, in late June they were allowed to start the court process for collecting their rent. Since then, the Office of Court Administration says 23,395 non-payment petitions were filed as of the end of November. That may sound like a lot but it’s less than half as many as the 49,219 filings between July and November of 2019—and it’s happening at a time of double-digit unemployment.
“I thought if there was going to be a wave, it would have been not long after June 22nd when we allowed landlords to come to court to file new cases,” said Anthony Cannataro, the administrative judge in charge of New York City’s civil courts.
If there was going to be a big surge, he explained, it would have happened already because landlords know housing court is first come, first served. “The way the court deals with cases it receives is in the order that they come in the door,” he said.
So why are the numbers so low? Cannataro acknowledged there could be illegal evictions. But he said the court hasn’t logged enough complaints from tenants for illegal activity to explain the lower number of filings. He suspects many landlords are handling things outside of court and Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the Rent Stabilization Association, agrees.
“You have another universe where the landlord and the tenant are reaching some sort of mutual agreement with regard to how much rent can be paid in the meantime, while the remainder remains due and owing,” he said.
He noted that some tenants got help from the government, such as one-shot payment deals. Other landlords might be waiting for leases to expire to remove tenants from apartments.
That’s what Delilah Bruno is doing now. She owns a two-family home in the Northeast Bronx and said the tenants in one unit haven't paid since March. But she feels like it’s futile to take them to housing court for an eviction proceeding.
“There are landlords who started non-payments last year and they’re still stuck right now unable to get a court date from last year, from tenants who haven’t paid since last year,” she said.
Bruno said her tenants owe about $16,000, and she expects to go to court after their lease expires in December (though she’ll still have to wait a long time for her case to be heard). She believes her tenants are taking advantage of the pandemic to avoid paying rent, based on what she knows about their earnings when they leased the apartment last year.
She added they’re not willing to negotiate with her or prove they’re unemployed. She lost her own job in real estate management last spring.
“My mortgage is not getting paid. My property taxes aren’t getting paid. My bank is able to give me time to pay,” Bruno explained. “But when that forbearance ends I’m still responsible, I still have to pay it.” Her debt will continue to accrue interest.
A Future Wave Of Evictions?
Tenant advocates still worry evictions could spike in the months to come. Cea Weaver, Campaign Coordinator at the umbrella group Housing Justice for All, said there’s a lot of confusion among landlords and tenants about one looming date.
“Governor Cuomo stood up on TV and said we extended the eviction moratorium until January,” she noted. “So a lot of people think there’s an eviction moratorium until January even though that’s actually not true.”
That’s because cases that aren’t related to the pandemic can still lead to an eviction. Cannataro said the city’s housing courts have an estimated backlog of at least 150,000 cases from before the middle of March. Marshals are now issuing notices to people who lost those older cases and the city said the first two residential evictions since March by private landlords were completed in November. Tenant advocates fear thousands more old cases will soon lead to evictions, as well as the new ones now going through court.
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Meanwhile, housing court cases are moving very slowly now that most hearings are virtual. Cannataro said a judge who would normally preside over more than 100 cases a day in a busy courtroom can now only schedule about 15 remotely, in half hour increments.
Jenny Laurie, executive director of Housing Court Answers, is getting many calls from frightened tenants who received eviction notices in the past few months. For months, tenants were told they were protected by the moratorium if they were affected by COVID-19. She tells them they won’t go to court before next year. “Whether it will be in January or July, we don't know that.”
Fani Luna is among the nearly 23,400 tenants who received a notice from the court since June stating their landlords have started eviction proceedings. She’s a member of the advocacy group New York Communities for Change.
Both Luna and her husband got the virus in March and were sick for about two weeks, she said. They also lost their jobs; she was a babysitter and he was a deliveryman for a restaurant. With three children to support, she said they had to stop paying the rent on their small East Harlem apartment.
“What little we had in savings we used for food and rent became secondary,” she said in Spanish.
They haven’t paid any rent since then. Luna and her husband are undocumented immigrants. They didn’t qualify for unemployment or the federal stimulus. In October, they got a notice in the mail from court stating their landlord had started eviction proceedings and they owed about $10,000. But they can’t afford it because they haven’t been able to find new jobs.
“I’m very afraid, because rent hasn’t been canceled and the payment just keeps getting postponed,” she said.
Tenants like Luna, who received their notices before November, have now been given until the end of the year to call the court or respond online. The courts are trying to discourage them from showing up in person, as they normally would, though advocates fear they may wind up doing that anyway. And tenants who don’t respond in time could lose their homes by default.
The Burden On Judges
When judges start hearing the new cases next year, they’ll have to grapple with confusing new rules defining who’s affected by the pandemic and how that affects what they owe. Even the court system acknowledges the terminology may require clarification.
“We have 50 judges in the New York City housing court and we have one order from the governor,” said Judge Cannataro. “And one judge looking at that order could read it one way and another judge looking at that order could read it still another way.”
He predicts there will be plenty of appeals stemming from these differences in interpretation.
Jonathan Lopez De Victoria is one tenant who expects he’ll be going to court. He and his roommate both work in jobs connected to the theater industry, and they’ve been out of work since March. He said they paid the rent on their Bedford Stuyvesant apartment with savings and unemployment until they ran too low on cash during the summer.
In November, he got the first notice that his landlord had started eviction proceedings, and called the Brooklyn housing court to formally respond. He said they “were pretty chill” and told him nothing would happen until at least January, though he figures that will “probably be pushed back if we’re in lockdown” again due to rising COVID-19 cases.
De Victoria, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from Florida, said he found the situation a little confusing and called a hotline for help. He sympathizes with other tenants who may not know how to navigate the system, and also with landlords.
“I think it’s a big chain,” he said. “Because it’s the same way they feel about not getting their money is the same way I feel about not getting my money. So how would you expect me to be pulling out those funds when we’re both kind of in the same spot?”
Landlords and tenants say the state could make a difference for everyone by distributing tens of millions of dollars in rent relief that has yet to be fully spent. Tenant advocates also want the governor to extend the moratorium past January. A federal eviction moratorium also expires at year’s end, and New York representatives are urging Congress to provide additional help to prevent a wave of evictions in 2021.
Beth Fertig is a senior reporter covering immigration, courts, and legal affairs at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethfertig.
