BY BEN BRACHFELD
Housing advocates, including
a number of local politicians,
were arrested on Thursday
morning in Downtown Brooklyn
while protesting against the
US Supreme Court’s ruling that
struck down the state’s eviction
moratorium — potentially ushering
in a wave of evictions at
the end of the month.
Activists were arrested after
sitting down in the middle of the
roadway at Court and Remsen
streets, adjacent to St. Francis
College, where the State Senate
was holding a hearing on New
York’s lackluster Emergency
Rental Assistance Program.
After repeated warnings,
cops with the NYPD’s Strategic
Response Group arrested
around a dozen protesters in
the roadway and charged them
with disorderly conduct.
Among those arrested were
Sunset Park Assemblymember
Marcela Mitaynes and Queens
Assemblymember Zohran
Kwame Mamdani, as well as
City Council candidates Sandy
Nurse and Alexa Avilés.
They were arrested with the
intention of bringing awareness
COURIER LIFE, A 10 UG. 27-SEPT. 2, 2021
to the plight of the state’s
renters in the wake of the Supreme
Court’s ruling, as well
as the impending expiration of
the moratorium and the state’s
slow rollout of rent relief to tenants
and landlords.
While in cuffs and being
led to a prison transport van,
Mitaynes said that legislators
needed to return to Albany immediately
to restore protections
for tenants.
“As soon as I get out of jail,
we have to go back to Albany,”
Mitaynes told Brooklyn Paper.
The Supreme Court last
week struck down a key tenet of
the state’s eviction moratorium,
which had allowed tenants to
avoid going to Housing Court
and stall eviction proceedings
if they submitted a “hardship
declaration” form showing that
they had experienced economic
distress as a result of the pandemic.
The state has had an eviction
moratorium in place
since March of 2020, when
the COVID-19 pandemic fi rst
washed over New York. The
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention recently announced
a new federal eviction
moratorium for counties
with high COVID transmission
rates, guidelines that
currently include all fi ve boroughs
— though that could
stop applying to New York
City if transmission rates get
low enough.
Landlords sued to stop the
moratorium, arguing that
their lack of ability to challenge
tenants’ claims violated their
rights to due process. Landlords
have also said that their
inability to collect rent from
those tenants experiencing
hardship produced a hardship
on them, especially for smaller
property owners.
The nation’s highest court
untimely sided with the landlords,
with the three liberal justices
opposed to the 6-3 conservative
led ruling.
The Emergency Rental Assistance
Program (ERAP), the
state’s major attempt to address
this problem, which allows tenants
to get credit for up to a year
in back rent and three months
of prospective rent — with state
payments going directly to landlords
— has been a bungling disaster:
The City reported that
less than 5 percent of the $2.7
billion allocated for rent relief
statewide had been disbursed
as of Aug. 17.
Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes
was arrested on Aug. 19.
Photo by Ben Brachfeld
Activists protest evictions in Downtown Brooklyn. Photo by Ben Brachfeld
‘We’re going back Albany’
Legislators, advocates arrested protesting evictions