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.”

The post COVID-19 has left many Black and Hispanic landlords in serious debt appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Instead of visiting potential housing opportunities in person, I had to conduct impromptu meetings with other tenants or landlords through Zoom a couple thousand miles away from my future home. Because of the unprecedented housing circumstances caused by COVID-19, I – like far too many other young people looking to live in New York City – fell prey to an extremely predatory and illegal housing situation.

Upon finding what seemed to be an idyllic metropolitan solace in the very first Bed-Stuy brownstone I virtually toured, I naïvley moved in sight-unseen on July 15th. Initially it seemed like a perfect fit; the property itself was a traditional Brooklyn brownstone first constructed in the late 1880s. There was immediately some obvious structural damage to the building, but I was charmed by the Tiffany-blue interior, the 13-foot ceilings, the bay windows in my room and my five wonderful roommates. Because of these cosmetic, surface level attractions, I thought I would be able to ignore the sagging floorboards or the occasional sparking electrical outlet.

“The house has always been something we stopped and looked at for as long as we lived on this street,” said Tio Hernandez, one of my neighbors. “But after a while it wasn’t because the house looked good no more. It was because it was starting to crumble.”

In August of 2020, I had my very first encounter with the dangers the house on Willoughby Avenue posed. I was taking the trash out and inadvertently stepped on a rotted piece of plywood painted the same terracotta shade as the concrete surrounding it. Instantly my foot burst through the structure and I collapsed down the flight of stairs leading to the basement that the decomposed basement cover had concealed. Luckily I only sustained superficial injuries, but the incident itself led to a series of confrontations from our hostile landlord. Initially he accused me of tampering with the basement in order to lead to my fall, then claimed I had never fallen down in the first place, before finally saying he would fix the damages. 

After enduring months of endless new property damages and a second personal injury – where my bedroom window gusted into my room at a high speed hitting me in the face – my household decided to call 311, a NYC citizen hotline of sorts that allows individuals to seek help for numerous types of disputes, COVID related questions, report power outages and other public issues. We contacted the hotline to request an inspection of the property to be conducted in order to document the lack of repairs and inaction on the part of our landlord.

Following the inspection, on Dec 22, 2020 my household awoke to several alarming notices attached to our front door. The most glaring of them all reading in bolded print “The City of New York has deemed this property uninhabitable and all residents must vacate the property within seven days”. 

On Dec 29, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed and approved an eviction ban or moratorium, essentially establishing that no one in the state could be evicted from their homes on the basis of COVID-19 related non rental payment. Tenants must show documentation of a “COVID related hardship” that led to their inability to continually pay rent in order to qualify and benefit from this moratorium. However, this new eviction ban doesn’t protect many populations of New Yorkers who are facing housing instability or homelessness. 

New Yorkers – like me – who were forced to vacate their homes due to unsafe living conditions documented by New York City’s Housing Preservation & Development office (HPD), are not protected by Cuomo’s eviction moratorium because they don’t meet the criteria necessary for federal protection. Because of this, thousands of tenants are threatened with homelessness if they cannot or do not have the means to relocate or find new dwellings by the allotted time frame. 

“It is really a frightening prospect for many tenants who maybe don’t have the means or options to live in safer homes or are being threatened by predatory landlords,” said Alexander Morris, a volunteer with the mutual aid group, Brooklyn Eviction Defense (BED). 

One perhaps unforeseen silver lining in the struggle for equitable housing and defense against exploitatory landlords is the increase in community organization and aid. When I first moved to NYC, it was my expectation that I wouldn’t necessarily be embraced by my surrounding community. Perhaps there would be polite interactions and daliences, but I subscribed to the belief that New Yorkers simply weren’t neighborly and didn’t concern themselves with the everyday goings of the strangers around them. However, I was entirely mistaken.

The day we woke up to the vacate notice I called several mutual aid groups and free legal service hotlines to see what, if anything, could be done to advocate for myself and my roommates. Immediately I was met with an outpouring of support, concern for my well being, and an abundance of help.

One day my landlord threatened to come and illegally change the locks before Dec 29, the day we were supposed to leave the premises. Fearing for my safety and my belongings, I contacted Brooklyn Eviction Defense and within 30 minutes, nearly 15 volunteers arrived to physically block anyone from Smart Equities or my landlord himself from entering the premises. This constant circulation and rotation of strangers were not only putting their own health and wellbeing at risk, but doing so because they knew we needed help and didn’t have any other options or resources. And BED is only one of dozens of similar organizations in the five boroughs that offer similar services. 

“When I was being illegally evicted from my home on Dean street this summer, I couldn’t believe the sheer amount of people who showed up for us,” said Scout Gottfried, a tenant who was this past summer similarly embroiled in a tenant-landlord housing dispute. “I mean, our community raised thousands of dollars for us during the whole ordeal, brought us meals regularly, and stood guard in front of our house to make sure we were ok. It was something beautiful during such a horrendous ordeal”.

While the dramatics of my own housing dilemma are drawing to a close – squatters recently occupied the vacant hull of the building I used to call home and we have attended our last virtual NYC housing court proceeding – it is obvious that the coronavirus pandemic will only continue to intensify the dire housing situation in this city. With thousands of tenants facing eviction come May when the eviction moratorium is lifted, it is imperative that we continue to serve the needs of those facing housing insecurity and enact a more exhaustive eviction moratorium for the duration of the pandemic. 

The post Willoughby Avenue housing nightmare appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“You’d think people are lined up to go to a really popular concert or something,” said Julia McNally, a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society. In reality, the people on line are struggling tenants, many of them facing the hovering threat of eviction.

Inside the cramped courthouse, tenants make their way through crowded hallways cluttered with baby carriages, walkers, and wheelchairs, as they settle in for what is often a grueling day in a system that has become known to attorneys like McNally as New York City’s “eviction mill.” At security, tenants are told to give up any food and water they have on hand and funneled into wide hallways to await their time slot. There is no child care available at the Bronx housing court so wailing babies and impatient toddlers often accompany their anxious parents.

But today, the stressful hustle and bustle of housing court has been traded in for silence. There is no line outside or inside housing court, in the Bronx or in any other New York City borough. On March 13, as coronavirus continued to spread throughout the city, a coalition of New York’s largest landlords announced a voluntary 90-day stay on evictions. Then, two days later, New York courts made it official, putting an eviction moratorium into effect indefinitely, with Governor Andrew Cuomo later specifying that it would last at least 90 days. Non-essential court employees were told to stay home. Housing court went dark.

Throughout the city’s five boroughs, tenants are waiting in limbo, anxious to see how the coronavirus crisis will unfold and how it will impact people who have  only recently stopped paying rent and those already in eviction proceedings. New York’s City Council reported that tenants in more than 19,000 New York City apartments were evicted during the 2018 calendar year. By the end of 2020, that number could look positively minuscule.

With many tenants out of work and rent strike movements growing, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find any kind of historical precedent for the current crisis.

“This pandemic is unique, in terms of its economic impact,” said Céline Gounder, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “So it’s going to have an impact in terms of evictions in a way that, frankly, most of the others have not. You haven’t seen the world economy destroyed by a pandemic like this before.”

For one of New York’s busiest courts, it has been a considerable adjustment. As of 2018, the City Council reported that the Bronx had the highest eviction rate of any New York City borough, with 1 eviction for every 79 units in the county. Eviction petitions in the borough have steadily risen even as the median household income has remained stagnant, skyrocketing to more than 69,000 in 2017 – 39 percent of the city’s total. The state’s eviction moratorium means those petitions are effectively on pause for at least the next three months – and that tenants can continue to withhold rent for as long as the moratorium proceeds. As the first day of April drew closer, landlords and real estate experts prepared for as many as 40% of tenants to skip their rent payments.

“This rent moratorium has definitely made it very difficult both financially and emotionally,” said Richard St. Paul, director of the New York Small Home Owners Association, which represent small landlords in the city. “These small home owners depend on the income to provide for their families and also take care of their homes.”

With a rent cancellation bill stalled in the state legislature, skipping rent could prove a temporary solution to a widespread problem for tenants. As current legislation stands, tenants cannot currently be evicted for failing to pay rent. But once the state’s eviction freeze ends, the courts may well have to deal with a surge in holdover evictions, including both the thousands that were being processed when the freeze went into place, and potentially thousands more thrown into the system as out-of-work tenants delay rent payments during the pandemic.

A study from the non-profit Community Service Society found that only 30% of New Yorkers have more than $1,000 saved in preparation for an emergency. With the country’s unemployment rate rising as high as 13 percent, those numbers could be a recipe for disaster.

For Mary O’Leary, who belongs to a Brooklyn tenants association, this hypothetical precarious financial situation is all too real. “I am able to pay back rent currently,” she said, “but that’s because I haven’t gotten sick. Say I do get COVID-19. To pay those medical expenses, I will no longer be able to pay rent.”

Tenants at 1234 Pacific Street in Brooklyn are staging a rent strike to press landlords to reduce rent during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo provided by Mary O’Leary.

In April, O’Leary joined two-thirds of her building’s residents in a rent strike, refusing to pay rent until landlords meet a set of demands, including cutting rent in half for tenants for the duration of the crisis and potentially removing the requirement in full for tenants who have lost work as a result of the pandemic. It’s a choice she made partially to support neighbors in more precarious positions, and partially to make sure she’ll be protected in the future, as the crisis continues.

McNally and her fellow tenants are bracing for their landlord to take them to court if the moratorium ends and rent cancellation legislation has not been passed. But if a backup in eviction proceedings leads to a three-lane pileup once the current crisis is resolved, this already-complicated situation may become virtually impossible to navigate.

Set foot in Housing Court and you’ll often hear a chorus of names being called by landlords’ attorneys, struggling to settle with the tenants they’ve been tasked to find. After discussing the possibility of reaching a settlement, attorneys and tenants will go before a court attorney, who may in turn encourage a settlement. Only then does the tenant appear before a judge.

In a normal time, this standard level of institutional crowding means speed is king in Housing Court. For landlords who may be in the process of evicting multiple tenants, that speed is an asset. For tenants, it often means settling with landlords without a chance to find a lawyer,  said McNally, the Legal Aid attorney.

Tenants have only recently gained the right to counsel. And since the introduction of the right to counsel model in 2017, which was part of broad housing reform legislation, the cacophony in the bustling court has only grown louder. When McNally, now a supervising attorney at Legal Aid who works in Queens, enters the courthouse, her first priority is to find the tenant she is representing. “We just go into the courtrooms and yell out the tenants’ names to try to make that connection with them,” she said. Courtrooms scattered across three floors mean attorneys have to run back and forth as the day progresses.

Along with Housing Court reform came a movement towards staggered appointment times, at 9:30, 10:30, and 11:30. As the next appointment time closed in, McNally described a frantic rush to dispose of earlier cases, with court attorneys yelling out every name on their list even as tenants’ and landlords’ attorneys are doing the same – all in the same courtroom where a judge is hearing cases at the same time.

These changes aren’t the only piece of legislation in New York’s movement towards housing reform. In June 2019, the newly-elected Democratic majority in the New York State Senate passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act.

For activists in pursuit of more affordable housing in cities like New York, the new law instituted important changes. It placed limits on how much rent landlords can recover after renovating or otherwise improving a building, as well as limits on security deposits and an attempted limit on broker’s fees, which is currently in arbitration.

Most significantly, the law made it easier for tenants to avoid huge rent increases between lease renewals. Before the Tenant Protection Act, landlords were able to charge tenants a “preferential rent,” somewhere below the legal regulated limit, before raising the rent up to that limit when the tenant renewed their lease. The 2019 law restricted this ability.

“Before the HSTPA, landlords could charge tenants below what the legal regulated rent of the unit was, but then at lease renewal could raise that up to the legal regulated rent, even if that represented a dramatic rent increase for the tenant,” said Charles McNally, who serves as communications director at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy. (He also happens to be the husband of McNally, the Legal Aid lawyer.)  “Now, if a landlord offers a preferential rent, the tenant is entitled to a rent increase based on that preferential rent, not on whatever the legal regulated rent is, even if it’s higher.”

Some landlords say these new restrictions are making it difficult to keep buildings in order. A lawsuit filed by the Buildings and Realty Institute of Westchester in the February following the law’s passage charged that the bill, which changed the existing Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, created new hardships for landlords.

St. Paul of  the Small Home Owners Association agreed.

“The new [Tenant Protection Act] of 2019 already placed a number of limitations on landlords’ ability to deal with tenants who are not paying rent,” he said. “This rent moratorium has added more financial pressure….that they already had to bear as a result of the change in law.”

But according to Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, the laws still leave landlords with the upper hand. “What we have right now is a lot of folks fac[ing] retaliatory evictions, or consequences for complaining about living conditions, or landlords simply raise the rent because they want someone out,” Weaver said.

Now, Housing Justice for All is fighting for a rent freeze, as well as rent, mortgage, and utility suspension for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.

Housing Justice for All is also continuing to push for a good-cause eviction provision, which would prevent landlords from evicting tenants for retaliatory or frivolous reasons.  “A good cause eviction would give you the right to renew your lease with a limited rent increase that covers the landlord’s costs and allows a modest profit but doesn’t allow for price-gouging,” Weaver said.

A good cause eviction provision was originally included in the Tenant Protection Act, championed by freshman State Senator Julia Salazar, but it failed to pass in June. Now, tenants are facing a world that feels primed for exactly the concerns Weaver raised, with landlords pushing renters out of homes over concerns that may not take the current global crisis into account.

Within moments, the Zoom chat was blowing up. It was a recent weekday evening and a local city council member was hosting a virtual town hall on housing issues during the pandemic, and tenants had lots and lots of questions.

“What is the impact of notice of late payment for future leases and credit?” read one text.

“How do I go about breaking my lease?” said another.

The meeting’s host, Michael Grinthal of TakeRoot Justice, had to ask attendants to limit their questions until the end of the Zoom call. There was a lot to get to first.

In the past, Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal’s office had held a housing clinic in person, on the first Wednesday of every month. Tenants in the councilwoman’s district on the Upper West Side could attend and raise questions about their rent, about conflicts with landlords, and about housing policy in general. In New York, housing can be a sticking point in even the best of times, and meetings like this one are a necessity for tenants throughout the five boroughs.

But now, with in-person gatherings restricted, the housing clinic has moved online. “We’re improvising, just like everyone else,” Councilwoman Rosenthal said in her introduction.

“We’re going to try to reach as many questions as we can,”  Grinthal said. “I know there’s a lot of people and there’s a lot of things that people want to know, so we may not get to every question.”

Across the occasionally scratchy connection of Zoom’s video chat, lawyers from TakeRoot Justice and the Goddard Riverside Law Project described the changes tenants would face with Housing Court’s closing.

Some answers were simple. Evictions remain restricted in New York, except in cases where a landlord can prove a tenant is an immediate physical threat.

Others were more complex. Grinthal noted that as part of the eviction moratorium, the governor had ordered all sheriffs and marshals to cease carrying out evictions.

“It is illegal, and it always has been illegal, even before this crisis, for a landlord to evict somebody without using a marshal or a sheriff,” Grinthal said. “[That’s] what we call a ‘self-help eviction,’ where a landlord locks somebody out on their own.”

In cases where a tenant has been in residence for more than 30 days, such a situation is indeed illegal, and New York City police officers are trained specifically regarding how to handle them. But that hasn’t stopped some landlords from taking advantage of the crisis to change apartments’ locks, according to a Buzzfeed News report.

“We are definitely concerned that more landlords are going to be tempted to resort to illegal lock-outs, now that they cannot use marshals or sheriffs to do legal evictions,” Grinthal said.

In such cases, Grinthal noted that Housing Court remains open and available to assist tenants in emergency situations. Tenants must simply file a claim reporting an illegal lockout.

But for eviction cases already in progress when the state’s eviction moratorium came through, tenants remain in limbo – granted a brief reprieve, but unsure of what the future may hold. Tenants who have been ordered to leave  their apartments have seen their cases frozen. Landlords may not move to evict them until the moratorium has been lifted.

Grinthal said some of those tenants who had retained legal services may hear from judges about the possibility of settling with their landlords, but remote court proceedings will not extend to eviction cases for as long as the moratorium remains in effect.

On April 6, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks released a statement announcing that state courts would resume operations remotely, allowing essential and emergency court operations to proceed. Landlords pounced, hoping that the memo might provide an opportunity to continue hearing existing eviction cases.

Tenants’ attorneys disagreed, and after a few days, so did the courts. Housing Court Supervising Judge Jean Schneider penned a letter confirming that eviction cases would not proceed remotely. “The court system’s administrative orders and the governor’s emergency orders continue to stay all eviction proceedings and bar all evictions statewide,” Schneider wrote. “Within this major limitation, we are looking for ways to move cases along where we can.”

When the crisis does come to an end, tenants and landlords alike are preparing for what State Senator Brad Hoylman called a potential “tidal wave” of evictions. In early April, Hoylman and fellow state representatives Liz Krueger and Jeffrey Dinowitz introduced the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants for nonpayment of rent during the eviction moratorium and for six months after it ends. Another bill, from State Senator Michael Gianaris, would cancel rent for 90 days following the act’s passage.

Housing Justice for All has voiced concerns with Hoylman’s bill, claiming that its allowance of “money judgements” for landlords essentially amounts to a form of debt collection. “Basically, a money judgement says that while you can’t be evicted, your landlord could still take you to Housing Court,” Weaver said.

But it will still take some time for any tenants to head back to Housing Court. Back in Councilwoman Rosenthal’s remote housing clinic, Grinthal warned that the courts are unlikely to reopen at full operating capacity. “What will happen when the courts reopen is an excellent question,” he said. “It’s very unlikely that the courts will just suddenly one day be completely open for business and everything will go forward, because the courts themselves are going to take some time to phase back in and get things going again.”

St. Paul, who represents small landlords, sees the situation concluding in much the same way it did before the crisis began. “It’s going to be resolved with a lot of negotiation that already takes place in the courts now, where most cases are negotiated with a settlement, versus going to a trial,” he said. “What we’ll see right now is that there will be a huge uptick in people…looking for money rather than still seeking evictions, because it’s so difficult to evict a tenant based on…the fact that they haven’t paid rent.”

To Weaver and her colleagues at Housing Justice for All, the situation remains dire, for tenants and landlords alike, and clearly requires immediate attention.

“We’re trying to get the governor to cancel rent,” Weaver said. “We want a hardship fund for small landlords, but the reality is that we think the economy’s going to be suffering for long after COVID-19’s public health crisis has receded, so we really need some longer-term intervention.”

John DiLillo  is an NYU undergraduate journalism student in Prof. Rachel Swarns’ Advanced Reporting: Law & Order

The post During pandemic NYC tenants in limbo appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The moratorium, scheduled to end on June 20, will now last for an extra 60 days, until Aug. 20. 

“I hope it gives families a deep breath,” he said during his daily coronavirus briefing. “Nothing can happen until Aug. 20. And then, we’ll figure out between now and Aug. 20 what the situation is.”

Cuomo added that officials will ban late-payments or missed-payment fees during the eviction moratorium and will allow renters to use their security deposit as payment.

Last week, protesters called for Cuomo to cancel rent for New Yorkers facing financial hardships due to the pandemic. Tenants rights groups and nonprofits across the country have rallied to halt rent and mortgage payments, holding online and in-person protests and using the hashtag #CancelRent on social media.  

“I understand the anxiety, I understand the stress,” said Cuomo, “but let’s remember who we are and what we’re all about and what principles matter to us.”

So far, New York has reported over 332,900 Covid-19 cases and more than 26,200 deaths. The rate of hospitalizations and intubations in the state have gone down, said Cuomo. The governor said the infection rate of healthcare workers is about the same or lower than the general population, according to data from Westchester, Long Island and New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

This evening, JetBlue flew three planes approximately 2,000 feet above New York City to salute health-care workers, law enforcement and firefighters as part of the citywide initiative Clap Because We Care. 

The New York-based airline, however, was met with backlash as New Yorkers who pointed out the city’s history with terrorism. During 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S., two low-flying planes crashed into the World Trade Center, leaving over 2,700 people dead. 

JetBlue tweeted a reminder for the flyover this morning, and users did not hold back, calling the initiative a “terrible idea” and pleading the airline to not go ahead with the plan. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “Nothing like a corporate PR campaign that burns jet fuel at low altitudes over vulnerable communities dying from a respiratory virus that compounds on our preexisting and disproportionate exposure to air pollution to show healthcare workers we care.”

But not everyone agreed.

Thank you @JetBlue for always outwardly supporting law enforcement & all first responders! 💙

It was a beautiful sight seeing our NYPD flag flying high in the sky during tonight’s flyover salute to healthcare heroes & first responders! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/0BE68zRveC

— NYPD 19th Precinct (Stay home. Stop the spread.) (@NYPD19Pct) May 8, 2020

Earlier today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced officials may limit entry to parks to prevent crowding and enforce social distancing norms during the pandemic. 

“At some parks, just the configuration of the park lends itself to overcrowding,” de Blasio said during a briefing. “We can’t let that happen and we have to limit the number of people going in.”

He did not provide specifics of the plan or mention which parks would be shuttered, but said details will be announced tomorrow. Playgrounds within parks had already been closed. 

New Yorkers recently flocked to parks amid the warm May weather after spending weeks indoors to prevent the spread of Covid-19. De Blasio said he directed police officers to prioritize breaking up large gatherings and enforcing social distancing norms. 

In Brooklyn, almost every person arrested for not social distancing has been black or Hispanic, according to the New York Times. The burrough’s district attorney’s office said that, from March 17 through May 4, 40 people had been arrested. Of the arrests, 35 were black, four were Hispanic and one was white. 

At the White House, President Donald Trump today said his staff will be tested daily for Covid-19 after a member of the U.S. Navy who works as one of his personal valets tested positive for the virus. 

The valet, member of a military unit dedicated to the White House, started exhibiting symptoms on Wednesday morning, said CNN, which first reported the story. Both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were tested once again after officials learned the military aide tested positive. Trump and Pence tested negative, according to White House press secretary Hogan Gidley. 

Trump said he’d had “very little personal contact” with the person. 

The post Rent relief in NY, JetBlue’s flyover and Trump’s valet tests positive for coronavirus in today’s news appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Janet Goldner, sat in her 300 square foot studio space in South Slope Brooklyn. Void of windows, her only ventilation is the hole in the center of the ceiling. It is the last room on a cold hallway of closed wooden doors and concrete floors. She is a welding artist, something she describes as an added difficulty when it comes to finding affordable space to work.

“Welding is particularly difficult to find a place you can do it in New York…it’s not dangerous, but people think it’s dangerous,” Goldner, 63, said.

She bought a loft in Tribeca, where she lives now, over 30 years ago. That’s where she used to weld before her neighborhood changed into what she described as “gentrified beyond anything.”

“Tribeca got too fancy to get welding gas deliveries,” Goldner said.

In recent years gentrification has taken New York by storm, boosting real estate prices, ushering in big businesses and giving a facelift to historically impoverished neighborhoods. Rents have risen and so have the cost of artist studios.

“Artists are paying more for less square footage,” said Jenny Dubnau, an organizer for the Artist Studio Affordability Project (ASAP), an effort that began in 2013 after a group of artists were priced out of their studio space in Sunset Park’s Industry City.

“My first workspace was probably about 50 cents per square foot: it was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the late 80’s,” Dubnau said.

Now, she said she pays about $2 per square foot, which is considered a “good deal” though it is at the higher end of what she and most artists can afford.

What artist paid $400 in the late 1980’s, they would pay roughly $1600 today for approximately the same amount of space.

Half of a 360 square foot shared studio space in East Williamsburg is going for $472.50 a month according to New York Foundation for the Arts, an organization dedicated to empowering artists and art organizations.

While tight living and workspaces are not unique to New York City they do present big challenges for working artists because the size of studio space effects the size of the work an artist produces.

“I cannot have a small space because I have big sculptures and I have to store it somewhere,” said Gabriel Koren, 68, an artist who creates life size sculptures.

The Hungarian born sculptor of life size African-American figures, said her work requires more space, which costs more money

She is currently facing eviction, due to a raise rent, that she can’t afford. She lives and works in a 1000 square foot studio space, that she says in unlivable, her move out date is Dec. 31^st.

“I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know,” She said through tears. She has no where to put her work once the time comes for her to leave her DUMBO, Brooklyn studio.

“I don’t have a place to stage them and they can throw [them] to the garbage,” Koren said in tears over her Dec. 31st move out date.

Because Koren’s work is life size, her studio space has to be large enough to accommodate it, which she said could be upwards of $2500.

“I’m scared to death,” Koren said.

The city has made strides towards remedying this issue of affordable workspace, through mayor De Blasio’s initiative to have the city build 1,500 artist live-work spaces by 2024 for New York City’s artists, which is part of his Housing New York Five-Borough, Ten Year plan. But many artists feel that this will only benefit a small portion of artists and would much rather prefer separate living and work spaces.

“The projects that are coming down the pipe are like a drop in the bucket compared to the need,” said artist, Rejin Leys as she sat in her workspace that has dwindled to a small room on the second floor of her Jamaica, Queens home.

Leys, now in her 40’s has lived in New York City all her life and has had several work studios over the years, each move affecting the size of the work she creates.

“I feel like ideally housing and workspace would be addressed separately because there will never be enough artist housing for everyone,” Leys said.

She feels that the construction of live-work spaces in low-income areas essentially makes the incoming artists gentrifiers. While the needs of one community are met “there will still be a housing crisis for everyone else.”

This is why Leys said she, along with Dubau support ASAP’s efforts to secure “commercial space for people to work and housing for people to live” which she said will benefit artists, small business owners and local community members.

With all the efforts that have gone into addressing the issue of gentrification and its adverse effects on New York City’s artist community the fact remains that each artist faces unique issues with varying levels of severity.

“I feel like in the past I made it work better than I can figure out how to make it work now,” Goldner said. “It was expensive but possible, and now it’s expensive and impossible.”

The post Artists get priced out of rising NYC rents appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

It seems fitting that a teenage political activist in Ecuador would one day work with a social justice organization in the largest Hispanic city in the US. Gladys Puglla has been a representative for Make The Road New York, a non-profit whose goal is to empower Latino and working class communities in New York City, for the past seven years.

On the eve of President Obama’s executive action speech on immigration reform, Puglla and members of Make the Road New York are galvanized by the fact that many of the issues they fight for as Latino immigrants are slowly becoming part of a national dialogue. Chief among the group’s concerns is the difficulty they experience holding down safe and economical housing in a city in the throes of an affordable housing crisis. With language barriers, and bereft of an understanding of their rights as renters, thousands of Latino immigrants experience harassment and unsafe living conditions in the city.

Puglla downplays her stint as a political organizer for an Ecuadorian presidential candidate in the 80s. “I was helping in the marching and passing the word about him a little bit, but my school and my grandmother didn’t let me go out so much,” she said with a laugh. But her work on the housing committee at Make The Road New York cannot be underestimated. Last year alone, Make The Road New York helped prevent the eviction of more than 60 families and worked to repair unsafe living conditions for thousands in New York City.

Funded through private donations and a $120 membership fee (which members have three years to pay off), Make The Road New York provides members with legal representation in Housing Court and informs members of their rights as renters. They meet every Thursday. Zoraida Conde, of Bedstuy, Brooklyn, attends because she wants to learn her rights. “They put me in jail if I don’t comply with the law. But if the landlord does the same thing — they break the law — they get away. And it’s not fair,” said Conde, who claims her landlord steals and reroutes gas in her building, resulting in exorbitantly high bills which are beginning to jeopardize her credit.

Tenant harassment and the threat of eviction can be most devastating to the elderly.

Maria Khochaiche, who has called 1351 Hancock St. in Bushwick, Brooklyn, home for the last 40 years, now faces eviction after her refusal to pay rent after it was raised by an additional $2,100. In her 70s, Khochaiche says her health has declined on account of the situation.

“I don’t know what I going to do. I couldn’t sleep and I’m getting sick. I had a heart attack. I have a lot of problems,” she said.

Lawyers working for Make The Road New York are currently representing her in Housing Court. With the transformation of Latino communities like this one in Bushwick, Puglla said the group will continue to fight for its members.

“We are trying to get more housing lawyers so that no one who comes in here goes empty handed,” she said.

The post Bushwick’s Dispossessed Latino Community appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

H&H Bagels on the corner of W. 80th St. and Broadway has since moved out of its Upper West Side location. Photo by Elizabeth Vulaj.

After the recent closing of the popular H&H Bagels on W. 80th St. and Broadway, area residents now worry about the commercialization of the Upper West Side.

Marc Fintz, the business manager for H&H, attended a community meeting last month to discuss the store closing. James Besser, who led the meeting, said that it was the first gathering of the newly created Upper West Side Preservation Committee.

“Neighbors say hello to each other, we’re like a small town,” said Besser, the committee president who lobbied to keep the H&H open prior to its closure. “We want to keep it that way.”

After the store’s landlord, Friedland Properties, raised the monthly rent to $67,000, Fintz said H&H could not make the new payments without also raising it prices. He added that Friedland Properties is now trying to replace the old corner store with a bank – something that residents say takes away from the neighborhood charm.

“It takes away small businesses and makes everything appear cold and corporate,” said Martin Samama, who has been living on the Upper West Side for three years.

Residents like Samama say this closing could mean the neighborhood will eventually lose its cozy appeal and bring in more chain stores.

While the closure comes as a shock to some residents, Upper West Side H&H—which first opened in 1972—has experienced financial woes since last year when the shop’s president and founder Helmer Toro pleaded guilty to grand larceny after cheating on his taxes. According to reports, he stole more than $500,000 in employee taxes.

Still, the change does not sit well with those who frequented the eatery.

Polly Carter, who used to live on the Upper West Side, said each time she visits the area, she sees that another chain store has replaced a well-liked neighborhood joint.

“So many things change here,” she said, leaning back on a bench in Riverside Park, surveying the block. “Every time I come, there is something different. But I am glad to see places like Hot & Crusty and Filene’s. I’m glad to see those things haven’t moved.”

Other neighbors feel the same way.

“I don’t want the Upper West Side to be corporate,” said Laurie Graff, who has lived in the neighborhood for 19 years. “We are losing the individuation, the charm. I’m not excited to be able to go to the same five stores across the country.”

Fintz said he believes they will open up another H&H on the Upper West Side. But before the W. 80th St. location officially closed on June 22, Fintz said both employees and customers were reveling in the nostalgia, remembering how long the store has been in business.

“If you saw these employees working, they feel they are a part of something much bigger,” Fintz said. “People will come in and say, ‘My children are in their 40’s and they were teething on H&H bagels when they were small.’”

The post Bagel shop closure could mean more Upper West Side development appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

A Hasidic Jewish man walks down the street in Williamsburg. Photo by Kathryn Kattalia/NYU

Walking into Solomon Wagmar’s world is a lot like walking onto a movie set. The dressmakers and cobblers peddling wares along Lee Avenue exude an old world vibe, reinforced by the bearded men ambling down the street in stockings, black overcoats and wide-brimmed hats. Signs hanging in the windows of delis and restaurants clearly spell out the neighborhood’s dress code: “No shorts, no sleeveless.”

Indeed, not a single knee or elbow is revealed on the unusually warm late October afternoon as women in headscarves chat animatedly in Yiddish, pushing their baby strollers around a Klein’s Real Kosher Ice Cream truck unloading on the sidewalk.

For the tourists passing through on Saturdays (Wagmar says they come to see the kolpiks — large fur head-dresses worn by men on the Jewish day of rest), the enormous Hasidic district stretching through southern Williamsburg, Brooklyn, looks like a community frozen in time, immune to the trendy cafes, organic food stores and condos overwhelming the hipster-centric streets north of Division Avenue. For Wagmar, it’s simply the neighborhood he calls home.

“Some people don’t know exactly who we are,” Wagmar said. “They don’t get into our lives and don’t get our point of view or don’t know exactly what’s happening. We are very friendly people and a nice community. We like to live here.”

Wagmar, whose red beard makes him look older than 26, moved to Williamsburg from his childhood home in Monsey, N.Y., seven years ago with his wife Chaya, a schoolteacher. He has a quiet demeanor, but is eager to answer questions, apologizing ahead of time for his grammar. Like most Hasidic families, Wagmar and his wife speak Yiddish at home, using English only when they don’t want their three young children to understand what they’re saying. A student of Jewish law at his synagogue’s college, Wagmar breaks to pray three times a day. He loves Twitter and avoids politics.

“In Monsey, I was scared,” Wagmar said. “When I walked out at 11 o’clock at night, I was scared because it was very quiet. When you see a car passing by with loud music, I was scared about what was going to happen. Here, whenever you walk, you see other Jewish people are in the street. I feel more safe than in other neighborhoods.”

Nestled in the northern part of Brooklyn, one quick stop away from Manhattan on the L train, Williamsburg has become an increasingly popular place to live, drawing a diverse population that continues to grow. Boasting almost 150,000 people, the neighborhood is home to vibrant Polish and Puerto Rican communities and is a hot spot for young people lured in by the artsy glow of the area’s bars and restaurants.

It’s a neighborhood rich in history that’s constantly changing face. The Domino Sugar refinery still looms along the East River, an abandoned relic of Williamsburg’s 19^th Century industrial boom. Other factories have since transformed into hip, indie nightclubs fueling the neighborhood’s underground music scene. A shrinking subculture of hipsters still cling to the non-conformist attitudes first introduced to Williamsburg by an influx of artists who set up shop in the 1970s and left just as quickly in the 90s, no longer able to pay rising rents on their trendy brownstones.

Despite the mesh of cultures, the Hasids have managed to maintain a certain level of exclusivity, if only just barely. The Jewish community was one of the first ethnic sects to settle in Williamsburg, arriving in droves from Hungary and Romania following World War II. Today, it is the largest community of its kind in the world and continues to grow, though at a price — literally.

“You notice outside people coming in,” Wagmar said. “Prices are rising, and some people are moving to Manhattan or other places in Brooklyn to try to grab some better prices. It’s getting more expensive here.”

It’s getting more expensive everywhere — especially in Williamsburg. The Hasidic community is not the only group wary of encroaching commercial chains and shiny high-rise condominiums popping up in a neighborhood whose zoning laws once capped buildings at five stories. In 2009, the first Duane Reade to infiltrate Williamsburg opened on Kent Avenue and North Fifth Street, four blocks away from the locally-owned King’s Pharmacy. A CVS is expected to open along Kent Avenue later this year.

The roar of construction pierces the once-quiet sidewalks running through McCarren Park as developers move forward with plans to build a luxury hotel along North 12^th Street between Bedford Avenue and Berry Street. Half-finished apartment complexes along the East River give the waterfront a new look that some fear will translate into a more overarching neighborhood makeover.

“The crowd here is going to change,” said Caren Becker, a 28-year-old Williamsburg resident. “All those construction sites that you see everywhere are going to change the picture so much.”

Becker moved to Williamsburg a year ago from Prospect Heights. An architect working in Manhattan, she was attracted to the area’s close proximity to the city. She said she is unsure how much longer she will stay.

“The house where I live, it’s mostly young professionals with high-paid jobs,” Becker said. “It’s no longer just artists with no money. That’s an issue for Williamsburg. People with money can afford to live here and are pushing the other ones away. It’s scary.”

Brian Lentini, a project manager with aptsandlofts.com, a Brooklyn-based real estate firm marketing many of the new high-end condo buildings, said the new developments are aimed at bringing in young families looking to escape Manhattan who no longer want to rent. He expects the new wave of homeowners to increase as more buildings are completed in the near future, despite the lofty $550,000 starting price accompanying most one-bedroom condos.

“A lot of people from Manhattan are coming here because it costs less and there is a cooler neighborhood vibe,” Lentini said. “There is a ton of people coming over. Here, there’s a more laid-back feel. They’re getting a better product.”

Young Jewish families are  increasingly moving to new housing developments going up along the Hasidic neighborhood’s eastern edge — an area Wagmar calls “New Williamsburg.” He moved his family there two years ago, no longer able to afford the rising cost of living in his community. He said despite increasing rents, most Hasids are reluctant to move from the area they’ve called home for more than 50 years.

“In all Jewish places and towns, there are very high prices,” Wagmar said. “It should push people out, but the fact is that most people are staying here, which actually makes it more expensive. If people started moving then business owners couldn’t keep prices so high. But because people are staying, prices are staying that way.”

Despite the financial challenges Hasids face in the wake of Williamsburg’s revived housing flux, Wagmar said he is most anxious about living in closer quarters with other Jewish families in his building — an inconvenience he said he didn’t have to worry about before coming to Williamsburg.

“When you live so close to each other, everyone knows what’s going on,” Wagmar said. “It’s a little more uncomfortable than in other neighborhoods where you’re living (your) life and no one knows everything going on behind your doors.”

Still, he said he does not see himself moving, nor does he fear his neighborhood’s values will be compromised by newcomers.

“Normally we are friendly to our neighbors,” Wagmar said. “The children are happy here. It’s a good place for them to grow up. People are moving out and others are moving in. The neighborhood is changing definitely, but the Jewish people are here to stay.”

The post Jewish neighborhood copes with change appeared first on Pavement Pieces.