Press Release
New York Must Extend the Eviction Moratorium
Today, millions of people around the country were unnecessarily put at risk of eviction when the federal government allowed the CDC’s national eviction moratorium to lapse. This is a tragedy and a travesty, but we need not follow the same path in New York. Our state’s eviction moratorium is set to expire at the end of August. Meanwhile, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program rollout has been plagued with problems, miring tenants and landlords in unnecessarily complicated forms and disclosure requirements and doling out just a small fraction of the money it was allocated. The virulently contagious Delta variant has become the dominant strain in New York and nationwide, reinforcing the public health rational behind the eviction moratorium, and the economy is far from fully recovered, reinforcing its economic rational.
While tenants succeeded in getting some important protections into the ERAP program – including the presumption of eligibility for all who apply, theoretically forestalling evictions as people wait for their claims to be processed – this leaves too much interpretative power in the hands of judges, and leaves vulnerable tenants whose claims were unfairly denied, including those who could not make it through the 2-hour long online application without the system crashing and those without the many layers of documentation the system requests.
We call on the state legislature to return to session immediately to extend the eviction moratorium, as well to pass such other important legislation as the Clean Slate act. The state government must take immediate action to avoid a wave of evictions and homelessness, and to prevent a Covid resurgence among New York City’s most vulnerable.