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NY State Legislature Drops Rent Cancellation Bill, Takes Up "Totally Inadequate" Measure Instead
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published May 27, 2020
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Courtesy of Emily Silnicki
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published May 27, 2020
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After nearly two months away, New York state lawmakers reconvened on Wednesday to take up a slew of measures related to COVID-19. Among the bills expected to pass this week are a pair of protections for homeowners, allowing for a long-term postponement of mortgage payments and a short-term deferral of property taxes.
Notably absent from the agenda: legislation to waive rent for tenants facing hardship during the pandemic. That bill, introduced in March by Queens State Senator Mike Gianaris, won't get a vote this week, despite its 21 co-sponsors in the Senate and 22 in the Assembly.
Some lawmakers blame Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who they say blocked the proposal from coming to the floor, after it was deemed a non-starter by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
"It sucks," lamented Brooklyn State Senator Julia Salazar. She said that Democratic majorities in both chambers could have tried to reach a two-way agreement even without the governor's blessing, adding that several members were "deeply disappointed that we aren’t getting an opportunity to vote."
Instead, legislators are poised to vote Thursday on a far more modest form of tenant relief. Dubbed the Emergency Rent Relief Act of 20201, the bill would provide vouchers to landlords on behalf of a small subset of rent-burdened tenants who lost income during the pandemic.
To be eligible, a landlord's tenants must earn below 80 percent of an area's median income, and have been paying more than 30 percent of their household income in rent before March 7th. The vouchers would help cover missing rent payments between April and July — though checks likely wouldn't go out until some time in July.
Funding would come from money designated for New York's recovery in the first federal stimulus, with total spending spending capped at $100 million. That's enough to provide 50,000 tenants with two monthly vouchers of $1,000. There are 5.4 million renters in New York City alone, about one quarter of which did not pay any rent last month.
State Senator Brian Kavanagh, who introduced the Emergency Relief Act this week, freely admits that his bill is "totally inadequate."
"I agree with anybody who says this bill is not nearly enough," Kavanagh, who represents brownstone Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, told Gothamist on Wednesday. "It’s not enough money. It’s not enough of a response to broader question of tenant rights. But it's a modest step in the right direction."
Housing activists, meanwhile, say the legislation isn't just insufficient, but actually a step backwards. They take issue with offering vouchers to landlords without providing additional renter protections, and note that the legislation leaves out undocumented New Yorkers, who were also ineligible for additional unemployment benefits.
"This is about giving landlords relief," said Cea Weaver, the director of organizing for the Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance, which is urging lawmakers to vote against the bill. "It's the uncanny valley of housing bills — it's bizarre, it's not a real solution at all."
A spokesperson for the Senate Democrats, Mike Murphy, defended the legislation, describing it as a "a stopgap measure to make sure struggling New Yorkers have the help they need now as we continue pushing for the federal government to act."
He added that Senate would also take up the issue of extending the ban on evictions. Cuomo's moratorium on evictions is set to expire in mid-June, though tenants have until August 20th if they're receiving unemployment or can prove financial hardship. Either way, housing attorneys predict a tidal wave of evictions once the order is eventually lifted.
At the federal level, the latest stimulus bill passed by House Democrats included $100 billion in emergency assistance to low-income renters — around 8.3 billion of which would be allocated to New York in the form of block grants. But that bill has been deemed dead on arrival by most Senate Republicans, as well as President Trump.
On Wednesday, a survey by the real estate group PropertyNest found that 37 percent of New York City tenants said they could not make rent next month, more than double the number who couldn't pay in May. The figures are only expected to worsen this summer, as the federal government stops its weekly $600 payments to jobless workers at the end of July.
If substantial federal support does not materialize, its unclear what, if anything, the governor or state lawmakers plan to do about New York's ballooning rent crisis.
"Between now and August is a lifetime," Cuomo said this week. "If we're still in this chaos, we'll figure it out then."
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COVID-19
rent
coronavirus
Cuomo
state legislature
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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