Housing Justice for All, Right to Counsel NYC respond to Governor Cuomo’s announcement “extending” the Eviction Moratorium

Governor Cuomo’s announcement “extending” the eviction moratorium until January 1, 2021 is misleading and disingenuous. On October 1st, unless Governor Cuomo releases new details, eviction cases will move forward — devastating New Yorkers struggling to recover from COVID-19.

Cuomo’s announcement today simply extends the provisions of the Safe Harbor Act to pre-COVID cases. It fails to cover tenants facing holdover evictions, and leaves millions of New Yorkers vulnerable to being thrown from their homes in the middle of a pandemic. It is arguably weaker than the Federal CDC moratorium announced this month.

After months of lost income and mounting rent-debt caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, tenants across the State need a universal moratorium on evictions. A true moratorium, as detailed in Senator Myrie and Assembly Member Reyes’s Emergency Housing Stability and Displacement Prevention Act, would protect renters (commercial and residential) from filings and evictions. A true moratorium must last for the duration of the crisis, plus a year.

Furthermore, New Yorkers need real, permanent solutions to the COVID-19 housing crisis. New York must cancel rents and mortgage payments for the duration of the crisis, with financial support for landlords to ensure they remain whole (Salazar S08802/Niou A10826), and pass an urgent rent relief program — Housing Access Voucher Program (Kavanagh S7628A/Cymbrowitz A9657A) — to get New Yorkers out of shelters and into safe, permanent housing.

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