Mayor calls on feds to send more cash for rent assistance
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Mayor Eric Adams called on the federal government to send more funds to the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. Photo via the Mayor’s Office/Flickr
By Jacob Kaye
Only a few days before the state’s eviction moratorium is set to expire, Mayor Eric Adams is calling on the president to send funds to one of the state’s only remaining tenant and landlord protections, which happens to have run dry.
Adams joined a growing chorus of lawmakers Thursday, including Governor Kathy Hochul, in asking for the federal government to send funds to the state’s beleaguered Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which has a nearly $1 billion backlog of payments to make and resumed accepting applications this week.
“The federal government has the resources, and now it is time for them to take action with an immediate infusion of funds for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program,” Adams said. “New York has gotten the very short end of the stick, and I am joining Senator Schumer and Governor Hochul in demanding that change.”
New York State has spent about half of the original $2.4 billion federal rent relief funds originally put into ERAP and is saving the other half for applications with paperwork issues. Before the end of the year, Hochul requested an additional $1 billion but was told the state would only receive around $27 million.
The request came as the ERAP portal, used by tenants and landlords to request funds, was closed. Last week, a Manhattan judge ruled that the portal had been illegally closed and ordered the state to open it again, an action they took earlier this week.
Renters who apply for funds receive a one-year stay on eviction proceedings against them, regardless of funds received. Because of the stay, advocates and lawmakers, including Adams, have encouraged New Yorkers to apply for ERAP, regardless of the empty coffers.
“This is not just professional, it’s personal – I know what it’s like to live on the verge of homelessness,” Adams said. “Too many New Yorkers are feeling the pressure, barely hanging on, day after day, month after month, with the uncertainty of how they’re going to get through this.”
“Right now, New Yorkers need relief and we can get that relief,” he added.
The mayor, preparing to enter his third week in office, also called on the courts to increase their operations and make proceedings virtual, where possible, as the moratorium on evictions is set to expire on Saturday.
“We should open our Housing Courts and we should also utilize technology to properly resolve these cases,” Adams said. “I think that we’ve learned a lot about how we utilize Zoom and Webex and others. The goal is to, number one, give people the right to talk about their cases if they have real issues that they’re facing and give people the assistance they deserve.”
Three recently appointed judges are expected to take the bench inside the city’s Housing Courts at the end of the week and a fourth is expected to join at the start of February, according to Office of Court Administration spokesperson Lucian Chalfen.
“We have been anticipating the sunset of the moratorium. In that vein we have had, for more than a year, 2 to 3 gateway parts in each of the four larger boroughs to get older cases onto the calendars, get counsel appointed for the respondents and move the cases to the resolution parts so they can be settled or decided,” Chalfen said. “Some of those cases were then stayed by hardship declarations or ERAP applications.”
“In September 2021 we began calendaring new cases as they came in. We have continued and will continue to do this,” Chalfen added. “Using technology, judges have converted some in-person appearances to virtual in these cases in recent days but that has not changed the scheduling.”
