Gotham Gazette

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eviction

eviction

  • No Tenant Should Face Eviction Without Representation: New York’s Budget Must Include and Fund the Right to Counsel

    New Yorkers getting help (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


    I was a teenager in the 1980s when I learned firsthand what it meant to face eviction and landlord harassment. Three different landlords, but they all used the same playbook: they failed to provide adequate heat, thinking they could take advantage of my family’s difficult economic situation. Allowing dangerous living conditions is a form of eviction in which landlords don’t even need to sue their tenants in court. Instead, they push tenants out with threats to their health and safety. Each year, countless

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  • Courts and Other Officials Must Act Now to Protect Right to Counsel in Eviction Proceedings

    Protect housing for the most vulnerable (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Five years ago, New Yorkbecame the first city in the country to create a right to counsel for low-income tenants facing eviction. Unfortunately, this right is now being hollowed out by the combination of a recent explosion of eviction cases and a shortage of tenants’

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  • Housing Courts Must Change: Every Tenant Should Have Right to Counsel as Eviction Moratorium Lifts

    (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)

    New York housing (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)


    New York City’s Right to Counsel (RTC) has proven to be successful at stopping evictions and protecting tenants’ rights. Evictions in New York City have plummeted, landlords are suing tenants less, and almost everyone who fights their eviction with an RTC attorney stays in their homes. This has been especially true during the pandemic. Amidst ever-changing laws and complicated government relief programs and administrative orders, RTC has been critical.

    And it’s now even more

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  • Max Politics Podcast: New York's Eviction Moratorium and the Housing Justice Movement

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    Housing justice protest (photo: @housing4allNY)


    September 01, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: New York's Eviction Moratorium and the Housing Justice Movement

    Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator at Housing Justice for All, joined the show to discuss the extension of New York's eviction moratorium and the bigger housing policy picture.

    Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the

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  • Max Politics Podcast: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program

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    Major housing questions linger in New York (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    July 27, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: New York's Covid Emergency Rental Assistance Program

    Emma Whitford, a reporter for Law360 who covers real estate and more, joined the show to discuss New York's pandemic housing crisis, eviction moratorium, and state emergency rental assistance program, which has seen major initial problems in its rollout.

    Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter ...

  • In First Two Mayoral Campaign Plans, Maya Wiley Takes on Preventing Gun Violence and Evictions

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    Maya Wiley at her campaign launch (photo: Gotham Gazette)


    Democratic mayoral candidate Maya Wiley released her first two detailed policy plans last month, and they focus on two pressing issues in New York City: preventing gun violence and evictions. While shootings and murders spiked in 2020 in New York City, as they did in many other cities across the country, residential evictions would have as well if not for preventative government measures — namely an eviction moratorium, which New York State recently extended through at least April for those who have

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  • Survey Shows Extent of Suffering, Challenges for Low-Income New Yorkers

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    A line for emergency food (Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    Low-income New Yorkers are doing worse financially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic than they were during the Great Recession, according to survey findings being released Friday by the Community Service Society (CSS), a non-profit focused on disadvantaged New Yorkers.

    The Unheard Third is an annual survey conducted by CSS in partnership with Lake Research and named based on the third of voting-age New Yorkers who live in low-income households that are often overlooked by politicians.

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  • Requests for Emergency Rent Grants Fell During Pandemic, But Expected to Skyrocket When Evictions Resume

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    Tenants on edge amid eviction moratorium (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)


    A city-run emergency grant program that helps keep people in their homes has seen fewer applications during the COVID-19 pandemic, seemingly due to a moratorium on evictions. But housing advocates worry that the program will be hard pressed to respond to a “tsunami of evictions” that is likely to follow once the moratorium ends, which could happen as early as next month.

    As the pandemic raged across New York City, more than a million people lost

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  • Max & Murphy Podcast: The Looming Eviction Disaster

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    The housing picture is tenuous (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


    July 15, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: The Looming Eviction Disaster

    Fitzroy Christian of CASA Bronx joined the show to discuss housing, rent, and the looming eviction disaster amid the coronavirus crisis that has devastated people and communities across New York on several fronts.

    Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMaxand ...

  • Staving Off an Eviction Nightmare by Expanding New Yorkers' Right to Counsel

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    An eviction nightmare looms as housing court reopens (Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


    A new threat is looming for the very Black and brown communities in New York City that have been hit the hardest by the dual pandemics of coronavirus and racism in policy: a massive wave of evictions. 

    That’s because phase 1 of New York “reopening” didn’t just apply to construction and curbside retail. It also applied to housing courts. This could have disastrous consequences for tenants. Housing court personnel have already started

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  • Now More Than Ever: Abolish The City Marshal

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    The city should eliminate the marshal position, the author writes (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office:)


    Since the 17th century, down on their luck New Yorkers have faced a familiar spectre: a New York City Marshal.

    The marshals are enforcers of court judgments including evictions, foreclosures, utility shut-offs, and debt collections. The difference between the New York City Marshals and New York City Sheriffs are that sheriffs are salaried public servants employed by the city while the marshals are technically private entrepreneurs who, despite being

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