Heastie urges NY tenants to 'stop worrying' about evictions, with no details
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Speaker Carl Heastie (right, with Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins) told tenant organizers to “stop worrying” about evictions during a demonstration Sept. 15, but he did not provide details to bolster his assertion. Photo via Heastie’s Office
By David Brand
New York renters who fear being evicted during the COVID-19 pandemic can “stop worrying,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said last week, though he did not provide details to bolster that assertion.
Heastie made the comments outside his Bronx office Sept. 15 while addressing a group of demonstrators. Advocates have pushed Heastie and New York’s other top lawmakers — Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins — to take action on behalf of vulnerable tenants before the state’s latest temporary eviction moratorium expires Oct. 1.
“Sometimes y’all have to take ‘yes’ as an answer. Stop worrying about the evictions,” Heastie said near the end of a roughy nine-minute back-and-forth with the group.
The latest eviction moratorium established by the state court system and reaffirmed in an executive order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo runs out in ten days. The state’s top judges have said they will not extend the existing moratorium, instead leaving the policymaking up to the governor and state legislature.
“There is no way that the New York State Assembly is going to see people being evicted,” Heastie told the crowd, in a a video posted on Instagram by the Housing Justice For All coalition. "I'm saying to you that there will not be mass evictions in this state.”
Heastie, however, did not explain the justification for his pledge. He did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The lack of information has left tenants, landlords and advocates unsure what to expect in the coming days and months.
“Heastie is saying we should rest easy because Cuomo, the Assembly and the Senate are not going to let this thing expire, but I think tenants and landlords would want some more certainty,” said Housing Justice For All campaign coordinator Cea Weaver.
Weaver said she expects Cuomo to issue another executive order right before the current measure expires, as has been the case several times since the initial eviction freeze in March. Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Tenants have compared the series of incremental eviction moratoriums to “psychological warfare,” Weaver said.
In July, the state enacted a law halting evictions for tenants whose cases began after March 16, but the measure, known as the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, does not apply to tenants whose cases were adjudicated prior to the pandemic. The Mayor’s Office has identified 14,000 households eligible for eviction when the current moratorium expires.
A federal eviction ban that lasts until Dec. 31 also has several gaps, advocates say, including a failure to protect tenants at risk of eviction in holdover cases, which are proceedings that a landlord commences for reasons other than nonpayment of rent.
For months, Weaver and fellow advocates have called on state lawmakers to return to Albany and pass legislation that would halt evictions and foreclosures until a year after New York’s COVID-related state of emergency expires.
The bill, introduced by Brooklyn State Sen. Zellnor Myrie and Bronx Assemblymember Karines Reyes, would provide stability for tenants and concrete expectations for landlords, said attorney Judith Goldiner, the head of Legal Aid’s Civil Reform Unit.
“Between the 200,000 pending housing court cases and the 14,000 households with an active eviction warrant, allowing the moratorium to expire and these cases to proceed would be nothing short of catastrophic,” Goldiner said.
