Called for Common Sense Action Amid Unprecedented Moratorium
Despite concerns about extending, yet again, an eviction moratorium that has severely inhibited the state’s housing market and threatened to further infringe on the rights of already struggling property owners, Albany Democrats dominated a special session of the legislature to send a bill to the desk new Governor Kathy Hochul.
On Thursday, she signed an extension until January 15 of a prohibition against evicting renters who claim hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hochul called lawmakers back to the State Capitol for a special session of the legislature on Wednesday. The previous eviction moratorium came to an end on Tuesday.
The Senate approved the package by a vote of 38-19, followed by an 80-60 vote in the Assembly. The legislature passed a bill that included that extension and several other provisions meant to provide relief for both residential and commercial renters, as well as property owners who have not been paid.
“It is extremely concerning that, once again, Assembly Democrats are seeking to extend the eviction moratorium leaving property owners without protections for nearly a year and a half,” said Assemblyman Fitzpatrick, Ranking Minority Member on the Housing Committee.
“This legislation will only ensure that landlords will have to reach deeper into their own personal savings and loans to cover mounting expenses, including mortgages, utilities and property taxes. Instead, the state should be focused on distributing billions in federal financial assistance in a more efficient manner to get help to those truly facing hardship, while also allowing for legal protections for small-housing providers,” he added.
Seemingly without reason, New York State has sat on billions of dollars meant to be distributed through the Office of Temporary Disability Assistance (OTDA) to landlords and tenants, but an overwhelming portion of the funds remain untapped.
“Since January, $2.6 billion in federal emergency rental assistance funding has been available to landlords and tenants, and yet OTDA has repeatedly failed to deliver to those struggling to make ends meet,” said Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay (R,C,I-Pulaski).
“The state’s eviction moratorium expired yesterday, but here we – the Legislature – are today, back in Albany for an emergency Special Session to address a matter that should have been resolved long before now,” Barclay said Wednesday.
“Had the rent-relief program been administered by the state properly, and in the manner in which the federal government intended in the first place, tenants who have fallen on difficult times due to COVID and small-property owners who have received no income for the past 18 months, would have been in a far better financial position. Once and for all, OTDA must get its act together and ease the fiscal insecurity for landlords and tenants alike,” the GOP Leader added.
Senate Agreement
Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R,C,I-North Tonawanda) also commented on the State’s eviction moratorium extension and Special Session.
“For months, my Republican colleagues and I have pushed for our Democrat colleagues to deliver much-needed relief to struggling New York tenants and landlords. For months, they have ignored our calls, as well as everyone else who isn’t a radical ‘cancel rent’ activist,” said Leader Ortt. “Their unlawful eviction moratorium, continued [at the special session], defies all common-sense if the true goal is to protect renters, small business owners and stabilize the housing market. Their failure to deliver these critical funds – combined with the devastating policies they craft behind closed doors – is an implicit acknowledgment of their own incompetence. Deliver the relief NOW,” demanded Ortt.
Months of Inaction
Fitzpatrick and the GOP leaders described the Special Session as the culmination of months of inaction and ineffective government.
As early as March, the Assembly Minority Conference called upon state officials to distribute billions of dollars in unused federal aid, and in April, the Conference pushed for a reversal of the economically damaging and illogical moratorium.
Then, in May, Leaders Barclay and Ortt stood with Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon to again call for quicker distribution of rent relief funds. For months, the county has operated an efficient rent-relief program that could have served as a model for the statewide program, they said.
Last week, the Republican leaders wrote a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul, Chief Administrative Judge of the Courts Lawrence Marks, and OTDA Commissioner Michael Hein calling on them to take immediate steps to allow tenants and landlords to receive critical financial relief and avoid potential evictions.
Flawed Measures
When the Legislature reconvened in Albany to extend the state’s moratorium on evictions, the session concluded “after many New Yorkers had gone to sleep,” noted Barclay.
Needed to extend the state’s “misguided eviction moratorium” until January 15, 2022. the bill passed is “almost as flawed as the process that led up to its passage,” he noted.
Barclay said only seven states in the country are still forcing landlords to operate under an eviction moratorium.
“Four additional months (at a minimum) of ‘cancelling rent’ here in New York comes only after Albany dysfunction and Democrats’ delays held up $2.3 billion in federal rental assistance funding. The funding from Washington was approved in January, but the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) did not begin to get money out the door until this summer.”
“By every metric, the previous administration failed miserably at moving this critical funding through the Office of Temporary Disability Assistance (OTDA), the state agency tasked with distributing relief funds. New York remains among the slowest states to deliver ERAP assistance to struggling tenants and landlords. Had OTDA simply done its job, the impetus for [the] week’s chaotic and secretive session would never have existed in the first place” Barclay added.
“Instead, landlords facing enormous financial pressure to pay their mortgages, taxes and utility bills will continue to shoulder those costs without duly-owed rent,’ Fitzpatrick agreed.
“The state’s small-property owners are damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” Barclay concluded.
