City leaders call for immediate action against evictions and to ensure Right to Counsel
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Borough presidents and elected officials are calling on the city to ensure tenant representation as eviction proceedings resume. Photo courtesy of Right to Counsel Coalition
By Rachel Vick
With eviction cases set to resume, several of the city’s borough presidents and elected officials are calling for Housing Court cases with unrepresented tenants to be adjourned and for the moratorium, which ended over the weekend, to be extended.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine was joined by Brooklyn Antonio Reynoso, Deputy Bronx Borough President Janet Peguero and advocates to demand action as the moratoria ended and residents face uncertainty despite a legal right to attorney support in their cases.
“We are sounding the alarm today in the face of what could be an avalanche of evictions to crash over tenants in this city on a scale that we’ve never seen,” said Levine, who led efforts in the citywide expansion of Right to Counsel alongside now-Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson. “Judges have this discretion, many of them to their credit, have been exercising it, but we want an across the board policy for all tenants now and in the future that no housing court case will go forward unless the tenant has representation.”
“Even prior to this wave we faced a shortage, we needed more tenant representatives, needed more supervisors, to lower the case load; we've been talking about that for a long time,” he added. “But now the stakes are even higher.”
A large majority of the eviction filings are for nonpayment, according to Levine.
The lawmakers and advocates urged action at the state level to renew and extend the moratorium while instituting statewide right to counsel, and to demand the federal government provide additional funding to support the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
Prior to the expansion of right to counsel, just 30 percent of tenants had lawyers, compared to 80 percent of landlords. When access to counsel increased, 84 percent of tenants were able to stay in their homes.
“We've been fighting for tenants for a long time,” said Randy Dillard, a tenant leader at New Settlement Apartments Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) in the Bronx. “No one has said how many tenants have lost a loved one, no one has said how many tenants couldn't go to a funeral. No one is talking higher food prices, remote learning [and the other] small suffering of tenants … and now, they have added another burden — eviction.”
In the last two weeks, there have been just under 2,000 housing court cases filed, according to court data. In Queens, there have been 21,355 cases filed in 2020 and 2021.
Earlier this month, an Office of Court Administration spokesperson told the Eagle there was an estimated backlog of 224,000 housing court cases.
Housing lawyer-turned Queens Councilmember Shekar Krishnan underscored the need for officials to take tangible action, particularly for already-vulnerable populations. The courts, he said, bear responsibility.
“We cannot be talking about rights on a piece of paper; we have to be talking about what they mean in reality, on the ground, because if they don't have meaning in reality they’re worth nothing more than the piece of paper they're printed on,” Krishnan said. “If we're talking about right to counsel in the middle of a public health crisis… we need to make sure that every single tenant has access to a lawyer in proceedings.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict but is supportive of his colleague’s demands, a spokesperson told the Eagle.
