Rent apocalypse now

QNS

Hundreds of people marched from Glendale to Bushwick, and back to Ridgewood where they held a sleep-out to demand an eviction-free New York on Saturday, Aug. 1.

 “Today is the day to pay rent, unfortunately, more than 1 million people have lost their income and haven’t been able to pay rent,” said Raquel Namuche, an organizer with the Ridgewood Tenants Union (RTU). “That’s why we’re here demonstrating to tell [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo … [we need] ‘universal rent relief, the actual cancellation of rent.'”

 While the city has entered phased opening and hundreds of thousands returned to work, the city has 1.3 million workers out of work with the unemployment rate at about 20 percent as of July — “a figure not seen since the Great Depression,” according to The New York Times


The demonstration, organized by RTU with support from Mi Casa No Es Su Casa and various other tenants associations representing Queens and Brooklyn, began at the Glendale Veterans Triangle on Myrtle Avenue and Cooper Avenue with some English and Spanish speeches.
Throughout the introduction, protesters were repeatedly heckled by a group of people and passersby watching the event.

An organizer with RTU reminds protesters about why they’re there, and emphasizes not to engage or even look at those trying to agitate them. There’s a crowd of what looks like counter-protesters across the street. pic.twitter.com/OqNP2BEuxj

— Angélica M. Acevedo (@angacevedo15) August 1, 2020

The event was one of many eviction protests held throughout the city during the months of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, as advocates fear for the safety of tenants at risk of eviction once Cuomo’s eviction moratorium expires entirely on Aug. 20. NYC Housing Court began accepting new eviction filings on June 20.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez calls for statewide rent strike

The Real Deal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — progressives’ rock star from New York — threw her support behind rent strikers Monday.

In a virtual town hall hosted by New York tenant coalition Housing Justice for All, Ocasio-Cortez called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to cancel rent and mortgage payments at the state level and expressed support for those who do not pay rent because of the coronavirus.

“When it comes to these rent strikes, to echo what each and every one of you have said, people aren’t striking because they don’t feel like paying rent, they’re striking because they can’t,” said Ocasio Cortez. “It doesn’t matter how many threatening messages a landlord sends … you can’t coerce people to do something they cannot do.”

Her message differed in one way from that of rent-strike organizers, who want even tenants who can afford the rent to withhold it — to pressure legislators to act.

Ocasio-Cortez was joined at Monday’s event by tenant organizers and advocates who called for radical measures to provide relief for renters, small landlords and the homeless. Speakers included a tenant leading rent strikes in Elmhurst, Queens, a neighborhood in Ocasio-Cortez’ Queens-Bronx district that was hit hard by Covid-19; a public housing resident striking on the Lower East Side; and an advocate who called for empty hotel rooms to be used for the homeless.

In New York, Ocasio-Cortez said that she has repeatedly asked Cuomo to cancel rent and mortgage payments in private conversations. Now she has publicly demanded he do so, noting that she has already “picked up the phone.”

“As we know here in New York, we have to fight with Democrats to make sure things get accomplished,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “Here in the state of New York, we have a Democratic governor, a Democratic state legislature and a Democratic City Council, and we are still struggling to cancel rent.”

She should have prefaced her target generalizations with the word neoliberal.

Legislation is being drawn to suspend evictions for the rest of the year

Gothamist

 Responding to dire predictions that thousands of New Yorkers, unable to make rent because of COVID-19, could soon wind up on the street, a group of state lawmakers want to block landlords from evicting tenants until the end of the year.

The new legislation would extend Governor Andrew Cuomo's moratorium on evictions, which is set to expire on June 18th, for an additional six months from when the State of Emergency is declared over.

"That moratorium, while welcome, is not enough," Manhattan Senator Brad Hoylman, who introduced the legislation on Tuesday, told Gothamist. "We have to create this safe harbor to give tenants time to get back on their feet."

The bill would ensure tenants cannot be removed from their homes for unpaid rent for the duration of the public health crisis. It would not suspend rent altogether, as other state lawmakers have proposed, and would still allow landlords to sue delinquent tenants for monetary judgements.

But housing attorneys said the bill is a critical first step in addressing a looming evictions crisis that Cuomo has largely waved off.

"Without any state action, there are going to be New Yorkers across the state who will be unable to pay their rent, and very soon the courts are going to reopen and the cases will start piling up," said Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society. "This is a step in the right direction to ensure we don't end up with hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in the street at a moment when coronavirus is wreaking havoc on the homeless population."

Expert predict that as many as 40 percent of New York tenants may be forced to skip April rent payments, as COVID-19 containment measures have pushed unemployment to historic levels. Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who introduced a companion bill in the State Assembly, said that tenants who'd lost income during the pandemic were now facing "a ticking time bomb."

For his part, Cuomo has repeatedly insisted the "rent issue" was solved through the three-month eviction moratorium. He has declined to support a bill with bipartisan support that would cancel rent payments and provide relief to landlords as well.