PHOTO: Jamell Henderson, an activist with New York Communities for Change at an Evictions Moriturium rally in New York City.
With New York’s eviction moratorium expiring, the State Legislature will reconvene for an extraordinary session on Wednesday to extend the pandemic-era ban on evictions, a move that would protect tens of thousands of tenants.
In a rare move, Gov. Kathy C. Hochul called state lawmakers back to Albany to consider extending the statewide moratorium, which expired on Tuesday, to Jan. 15. Lawmakers are also expected to modify the moratorium so that it complies with a Supreme Court ruling that blocked a significant provision of the state’s moratorium two weeks ago.
The legislative action would come less than a week after the Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration’s federal moratorium on evictions, heightening the significance of the state-level safeguards for renters in New York.
“We’re not going to exacerbate what is already a crisis in terms of the homelessness problem,” Ms. Hochul said on Tuesday evening during an address from the State Capitol. “We are not going to allow people who through no fault of their own lost income, were not able to pay and are facing eviction.”
The Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago, which effectively cleared the way for thousands of eviction cases to move forward, blocked a key section of the state law that barred eviction cases from proceeding if a tenant submitted a form declaring that they had experienced economic hardship because of the pandemic.
The court sided with a group of landlords who argued that they had no way of challenging a tenant’s so-called hardship declaration. Landlords argued that tenants could use hardship declarations to game the state law and remain in a landlord’s property without paying rent even when they had the ability to do so.