Disappointed and shocked, he considered returning to Colombia, but he had come to America for new opportunities, and this setback wasn’t going to change his plans. He vowed to save enough money to one day buy a home of his own. In 2006, after six years of renting, Lopez had accumulated enough for a down payment and applied for a mortgage.  While he wanted to buy a co-op, the bank encouraged him to instead purchase a two-family house and take on a renter as an additional source of income. 

 Although Lopez didn’t want to be a landlord, the bank was adamant, so he bought a yellow, flat roofed duplex in College Point, Queens and looked for a renter. He remembers thinking that this was simply what you did in America. 

  “You purchase a house, a two-family house and rent one unit,” Lopez said. “That’s what middle class people do in America.”

 Eventually, Lopez started to see the house as an investment, and he took out a second mortgage so that he could move and start renting both floors of the duplex. The plan worked until both of his tenants stopped paying rent. Now, Lopez finds himself bracing for foreclosure. “It’s devastating,” said Lopez. 

  Single property owners make up only 13% of New York City landlords; according to Housing Preservation and Development data compiled in 2018, the average lessor in New York City owns 21 to 60 rental properties. When it comes to lost rental revenue, large landlords have experienced a greater total loss, but Mom-and-Pop landlords have been impacted more severely because they have less of an ability to weather a loss of rental income. “If you have a smaller portfolio, it’s probably less diversified,” said Furman Center housing policy expert Charles McNally. “There’s a much greater risk in terms of the stability of your assets.” 

 Additionally, small landlords are also more likely to rent to economically vulnerable tenants.  “Our early analysis showed that households that worked in industries likely to be shut down due to [Covid measures] were disproportionately concentrated in smaller buildings, which tend to be owned by Mom-and-Pop landlords,” said McNally. 

The average New York City landlord owns between 21-60 rental properties. Mom-and-Pop landlords are in the minority. Photo courtesy of JustFix.nyc

 Lopez’s tenants are among approximately 185,000 New York City households that are behind on rent. This estimate, which was based on a poll conducted by the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), accounts for around half of the rental properties in New York City. While CHIP estimates that New York City renters owe $1 billion, the city-wide total is probably closer to two-billion. 

After Lopez’s tenant Claudia didn’t pay rent for a few months, Lopez hired a lawyer to serve her with an eviction notice.  The timing was unfortunate for him; a week after he’d filed his claim against Claudia, a city-wide shutdown brought New York City to a halt.  

 Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a 90-day statewide eviction moratorium on March 20, 2020. Suddenly, a tenant who had stopped paying rent before the pandemic was now protected from eviction indefinitely. By April, Lopez’s other tenant, Daniel, also started to withhold rent. Lopez pleaded with both tenants to pay their share. They claimed that they were unable to, but Lopez has his doubts.  “Claudia bought a new car; she has a better car than me,” Lopez said. “How can she say she doesn’t have money to pay rent?”

 The New York State legislature has extended the eviction moratorium each time it expires. The current mortarium is in place until May 1, 2021. The housing courts are technically open, but only certain emergency cases – eviction of violent tenants and hearings against landlords who lock renters out – are being heard. A huge backlog of cases is piling up. Meanwhile, landlords like Lopez are left with no income to pay a looming monthly mortgage. After more than a year of non-payment, Lopez has lost $47,600 of rental revenue. The loss comes at a difficult time. His hours as a sanitation engineer for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection were cut in April 2020. 

 He hasn’t made his $3,000-a-month mortgage payments in almost a year. While the bank gave him a six-month forbearance to delay a foreclosure, his debt is mounting.  He knows the bank will foreclose on him as soon as they are able. 

 While Lopez fights to hold onto his only rental property in Queens, a Brooklyn landlord is facing similar difficulties. 

 Clarence Hammer, 46, grew up in Brooklyn where his parents always owned a house. He witnessed first-hand the stability that comes with homeownership and wanted the same for his family, so in 2007 he bought a two-family house in Brownsville. For 12 years he lived on the bottom floor of the duplex at 618 Rockaway Ave. with his wife, son, and daughter and rented out the top floor. 

 In May 2019, keeping a promise to his wife that they would someday leave the city, they moved an hour north to Harriman, New York. Keeping the Brownsville apartment as an investment, they found a renter, Chantel, for the bottom floor of the red brick rowhouse.  Starting that summer, Chantel paid only half of her $3,250 rent. In September 2019, she paid nothing.

 Hammer filed for non-payment litigation in New York City Housing Court and had three court appearances: November 2019, December 2019, and January 2020.  By March 2020, Hammer was confident that he was nearing legal recourse. Then, the pandemic halted his litigation.

 Today, Chantel owes Hammer more than $58,500, leaving him unable to make his $5,000 monthly mortgage payments. Other financial obligations are falling to the wayside. Taxes and bills sit unpaid as he struggles to pay off what he can.  “I’m constantly getting harassing phone calls from the financial institutions that chose to lend me the money,” Hammer said. “And I don’t really even blame them, I understand. It’s really embarrassing.”  

 Hammer purchased his Brownsville apartment in an attempt to establish intergenerational wealth. “This was something that I thought I was going to pass on to my kids to establish financial stability,” Hammer said.

 In New York City, only 27% of Black households and 17% of Hispanic households own their homes, according to The Furman Center at NYU. 

 “Homeownership is a key wealth generation strategy,” McNally said. “In the wake of the foreclosure crisis [of 2008] we saw a huge destruction of Black and Hispanic wealth. That’s a real concern here as well.” 

 Black and Hispanic landlords are disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 housing crisis that is reaping havoc on their primary investment. As their eviction cases sit stagnant, these landlords are left waiting in limbo, hoping for financial relief, but dreading the inevitable. “I’m going to lose my home,” Hammer said. “That’s the reality.”

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Leonor Talamantes, 20, is of Mexican heritage and identifies as a gender non-confirming trans femme. For her, the gendered label “Latina” does not accurately describe her identity, and she prefers to self-identify with the gender neutral terms Latinx or Latine.

“I appreciate Latinx in the sense that does kind of allow all gender identities to be included,” the Washington Heights resident said. “It allows us to break down the binary.”

“Latinx” is a gender-neutral alternative to describe Latinos and Hispanics that has gained traction in the United States in the past years, particularly among younger generations. “Latine” is another gender-neutral variation that has gained popularity in Latin American countries. 

While some have embraced Latinx, there has been push back from Latinos in the U.S.

Last month, market research company ThinkNow released a poll on how U.S. Latinos identify and the acceptance of “Latinx.” Of the 508 Latinos surveyed, only 2% favored “Latinx,” while “Hispanic” polled at 44%, followed by “Latino” at 24% and country of origin at 11%. 

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Claudia Ramirez Marcano identifies most strongly with Hispanic because the term includes people only from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and Spain, whereas Latino refers to anyone with ancestors from Latin America, including Portuguese English, French and Dutch-speaking countries. 

“It feels more like home. I’m very tied to my language,” the 22-year-old said, switching between Spanish and English. “Saying I’m Hispanic unites me to a community of people who speak Spanish and it connects me to my home. It feels warm to me.”

Like French and Portuguese, Spanish is a gendered language that lacks a neuter noun form. In Spanish, nouns and adjectives are either masculine, usually indicated by an “o” ending, or female, usually indicated by an “a” ending. This is why “Latino” is used for men and “Latina” for women, and the plural for a group of male and female Latinos is the male-form “Latino.” 

“Latinx” aims to break with Spanish’s inherent gender binary. 

President of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hugo Balta said the term was brought about in the early 2000s and that it aims to advance inclusivity within the Latino community. His exposure to the term, he said, has come mostly through media, particularly from younger generations of journalists. 

“It’s about removing gender from Latino and Latina and integrating both,” Balta said. “We live in a society that is very sensitive and sensible to the pronouns that we use describing one another.”

For researcher and educator Monxo López, in addition to being an inclusive term, the concept of “Latinx” responds to the diversity of the Latino community and puts forth the idea that it is an identity that is still in the process of defining itself. 

“Latinx,” he said, is a result of the cultural shock Latin Americans face when confronted with social dynamics in the U.S. Manifestations of “machismo” (sexism) and racism, for example, are different in Latin American countries than in the U.S. and that these contrasts are what lead Latinos to rethink their identity, López said.

“‘Latinx’ is a product of internal dynamics in the U.S. by Latinos that are suddenly faced with all these differences,” López, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York, said. “It’s looking for the space to explore how to understand ourselves and how to name ourselves.” 

Even though she would not self-identify as Latinx, Ramirez Marcano, of the Bronx, recognized the importance the term has for Latino people within the LGBTQ community whose gender identities are not aligned with the male/female binary. 

“I am not a part of the community so it’s not a priority for me. I understand if a person from the community wants to identify and you make up your own word,” she said. “I don’t see why it should not exist. I would not use it for myself.”  

 But she pointed out the complexity of trying to make every noun in Spanish gender neutral if the “x” ending is adopted for every noun or adjective.

“Everything has a gender in Spanish. My brain is just wired like that,” said Ramirez Marcano, who has lived in New York since 2015. “It will be harder for older people to adapt.”

Sitting at a domino table at Toñita’s, the last Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Hector “Chino” Torres, who was born and raised in the burrough, proudly spoke of his Puerto Rican descent. For him, those born on the Caribbean island are “puertorriqueños” (Puerto Ricans), while he and others of Puerto Rican descent born on the mainland are “boricuas.”

“Boricuas are Nuyoricans (a person of Puerto Rican birth or descent who lives in New York City) and Puerto Ricans are from the island,” the South Williamsburg resident said over the sound of speakers blasting salsa. “It’s not a division, it’s only a distinction. That way you know where you come from.” 

In addition to identifying as boricua, Torres self-identifies as Latino over Hispanic or Latinx. 

“Latino sounds nicer. It’s a phrase that unites all Latinos in general,” he said. “By saying ‘Latino,’ you talk about the culture that unites us.” 

Although he identifies with the gendered term “Latino,” Torres said he is not opposed to a gender neutral alternative. 

“Anything goes if it’s for the best, and if it’s a trend we could adapt (to) it,” he said. “Latinos always stand out in the crowd. If you look at all the cultures in New York, the Latino culture is the most united one.” 

Mayra Molina, 24, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, self-identifies as Mexican over any other term, but uses the label “Latina” in certain contexts.

“I think it depends on the area where I’m in,” Molina said. Let’s say I’m put in a social aspect where there’s a lot of white people and there’s a few Latinos or Latinas, then I would probably identify myself as Latina because I identify as a girl or a woman. When it comes to more of a smaller setting amongst Latinos or Latinas or Latinx I would identify myself as Mexican.” 

Mayra Molina, 24, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She identifies as Mexican and Latina. Photo by Amanda Pérez Pintado

Molina, a senior at Baruch College, is not against the use of “Latinx” and understands why others would prefer the term. 

“It doesn’t have to be feminine or masculine,” she said. “It’s much more than black and white and much more than just to genders.I don’t really use the term Latinx for myself, but if anyone else identifies themselves as Latinx, I think that’s perfect because I think that it’s more than just a woman or a man.”

Camila Hernández, 22, an NYU junior, prefers to self-identify as Colombian, but also uses the label Latina. When speaking about another person or a group of people of Latin American origin or descent, she uses the term “Latinx.”

Hernández was born in Colombia and has lived in the United States for five years, but it wasn’t until she moved to New York last year that she learned about “Latinx.” 

“I didn’t really know the term existed, the ‘Latinx’ term and I started to understand why people were using it instead of Latino or Latina,”  she said. “Before that I would not think about it.” 

Now, she said, she is aware of the importance of using inclusive language and thinks “Latinx” opens the possibilities for  people who don’t identify as either male or female.

“I think that language has a lot of power and that it defines a lot of things,” she said. “If we start to be more inclusive the use of our language, that would really change the way we see people and we talk about people and respect people.” 

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