New York state enacts 60-day eviction and foreclosure protections
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Tenants’ rights advocates unfurled banners at a No. 7 train platform urging the state to cancel rent and halt evictions in May.AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File
By David Brand
New York state lawmakers on Monday enacted new protections to keep renters and small property owners in their homes for at least two more months following an emergency session of the legislature.
The Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act, signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo late Monday, halts for 60 days all pending eviction proceedings and any proceedings that began within the past 30 days. Tenants can seek an additional delay until May 1, 2021 by submitting a “Standardized Hardship Declaration Form” — a newly created document — demonstrating they were financially impacted by the COVID crisis.
The measure will also protect residential landlords from foreclosure or tax lien sales if they own ten or fewer units, including their own primary residence. Under the law, landlords will be able to submit a version of the hardship declaration form to their mortgage lender, local assessor or local Housing Court demonstrating that COVID has affected their ability to pay their mortgage or taxes.
New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said the bill “will help ensure New York tenants, homeowners, and small landlords will not have to fear being kicked out of their homes if they’ve been impacted by this pandemic and economic crisis.”
The hardship declaration form standardizes a key component of the state’s Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which gives tenants a potential defense against eviction if they can prove their ability to pay rent was impacted by the COVID crisis.
Cuomo said the legislation will protect landlords as well as tenants.
“We want to make sure that homeowners are protected, that it doesn't affect their credit rating, there's no mortgage foreclosure,” he said during a press briefing Monday morning. “We want to get to May 1 and we'll see what happens by May but we want to protect tenants.”
State court leaders first suspended evictions March 16, with Cuomo then issuing a series of executive orders establishing an eviction moratorium. That moratorium ended in November, allowing marshals to execute evictions in cases adjudicated before mid-March.
Marshals have completed at least nine evictions in New York City since the legal resumption, including one in Corona on Nov. 30, the Eagle reported earlier this month.
The 60-day suspension bill received praise from tenants’ rights advocates who have warned of a pending surge in evictions as a result of the COVID-19 health and economic crises.
Judith Goldiner, head of the Legal Aid Society’s Civil Law Reform Unit, said the legislation will “literally save lives.”
“Not only does it institute a true and full moratorium for 60 days – enough time hopefully to carry people through the darkest remaining days of this pandemic – but it creates tools enabling tenants to seek to halt an eviction at any point in the process, even after a case has been adjudicated and resulted in an eviction warrant,” she said.
But the Rent Stabilization Association, the largest organization representing small residential property owners in New York, said a blanket eviction moratorium without a requirement for proving financial hardship will only discourage tenants from paying rent.
“This proposed bill extends the eviction moratorium for residential tenants based on the submission of a simple declaration of financial hardship without proving such hardship caused by COVID-related job loss or income reduction,” said RSA President Joseph Strasburg.
“The tsunami of evictions is not occurring; in fact, a minimal number of evictions have been executed since March 7 — and those cases pre-dated March 7,” he said. ”Tenants have been protected by the Governor’s eviction moratorium executive orders and the Safe Harbor Act.”
