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COURIER LIFE, JANUARY 14-20, 2022 13
BKLYN
moratorium looms
“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
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.
CHTU is planning another
protest on Wednesday,
when they’ll be
marching to Billionaire’s
Row to hold the city’s
wealthiest landlords accountable,
Feingold said,
and another on Friday
morning, the day before
the moratorium expires.
“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.”
1-800-469-6292 (TTY 711)
H2168_MKT22-11_M
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