EVICTIONS
Stuyvesant, by way of The Astra
at Gates Avenue, LLC.
The coalition is asking to
extend the eviction moratorium
until June 2022, and to
put a permanent end to evictions
during the city’s “heat
season,” when landlords are
required to turn on the heat
in their buildings, from Oct. 1
to May 31 each year, following
the lead of cities like Seattle.
Advocates and lawmakers
are pushing hard to pass
“Good Cause” eviction laws,
which would give tenants the
right to a lease renewal, cap
large rent increases, and prevent
landlords from evicting
tenants without an order from
a judge. Some have stopped
fi ghting to extend the moratorium
in favor of waging a
legislative battle to pass Good
Cause.
“I understand why people
want to move toward Good
Cause eviction,” said Amadi
Ozier, an organizer with the
CHTU. “The Crown Heights
Tenants Union believes that
Good Cause eviction protection
is important, but doesn’t
go far enough to protect the
tenants who are going to be
evicted after Jan. 15.”
More than 200,000 people
are on the docket to be evicted
immediately once the moratorium
COURIER L 26 IFE, JANUARY 14-20, 2022
is lifted, Ozier said,
and Good Cause wouldn’t protect
most of them, because the
law does not protect tenants
who have missed rent payments.
Tenants in fi ve buildings
represented by CHTU,
including at 22 Hawthorne St.
in Prospect Lefferts Gardens
and 1237 Dean St. in Bed-Stuy
are particularly vulnerable,
Ozier said, and they represent
a small number of thousands
who could be on the chopping
block.
The Tenant Safe Harbor
Act, which passed last year
and gives tenants facing eviction
due to nonpayment of
rent a legal defense in court,
isn’t much help either, Feingold
said. It does not prevent
eviction proceedings from going
forward, and it’s not clear
when the law’s protections
will end.
“We need to abolish winter
evictions forever, we need
to abolish evictions without
cause forever, and we need to
clear these 250,000 eviction
cases from the housing court
docket,” he said.
Eviction proceedings are
moving forward in some cases,
he said, including for members
of the CHTU, where landlords
have challenged a tenant’s
“hardship declaration,”
which explains their fi nancial
diffi culties and how they’re
related to the pandemic.
In one instance, Feingold
said, a landlord fi red his superintendent,
whose partner
has an autoimmune disease,
during the pandemic, and
challenged their hardship declaration
— despite causing the
fi nancial hardship himself.
In November, applications
for the Emergency Rental Assistance
Program, which had
been allotted only $2.4 billion
from the federal government,
closed to most New York City
residents. After a slow and
diffi cult rollout, the Biden administration
seems unlikely
to allot more money to the program,
and New York received
only $27 million in additional
funding after requesting $1
billion.
Four borough presidents,
including the newly-anointed
Brooklyn beep Antonio Reynoso,
have joined forces to call
for Hochul to extend the eviction
moratorium. Last week,
a coalition of faith leaders
from across the state wrote to
Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams,
and other government leaders,
including Brooklyn state Sen.
Brian Kavanagh, who chairs
the senate’s housing committee,
imploring them to enact
Good Cause and to end winter
evictions before the 15th.
“I understand that there’s
fatigue of constantly asking
for extensions to the eviction
moratorium,” Ozier said. “But
I think we’re going to continue
to ask for extensions as long as
there’s a national and global
crisis that impacts workers’
ability to pay their rent.”
“I don’t know what June is
going to look like, but if June
looks like January, then we’re
going to continue to push for
an eviction moratorium.”
Extending the eviction moratorium isn’t enough for some tenants and
activists, who hope to see an end to all wintertime evictions in the city
— permanently. Photo by Adrian Childress
Continued from page 18
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