New York Landlords to Fight Extended Eviction Moratorium in Court

     New York’s largest landlord group, the Rent Stabilization Association, is fighting back against the state’s just-extended freeze on evictions for tenants who cannot or will not pay their rent.

     After the nation’s first eviction moratorium, which was created in March 2020, expired last year in the height of the pandemic, former President Donald Trump directed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to extend the eviction moratorium to the end of July 2021.

     On Aug. 26, the US Supreme Court called the ongoing eviction freeze unconstitutional.

     “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts,” the Supreme Court opinion said.

     “Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it claims,” the landlords argued in their filing in the Supreme Court,” argued a group of landlords, who said they have been collectively losing as much as $19 billion a month.

   Additionally, many economists, who now consider the American economy to have recovered and job opportunities to be abundant, wonder why eviction bans are still necessary a year and a half after they were first instituted.

     In ribald defiance of that US Supreme Court ruling, last week, New York lawmakers extended until Jan. 15, 2022, an 18-month eviction moratorium, and sought to address landlords’ struggles and complaints by adding an option that allows landlords to challenge tenants’ claims of financial in court in court.

      The landlords’ association, however, said that New York’s eviction ban extension new provision for landlords does not adequately address their ability to contest tenants’ hardships.

    In addition, yesterday, a group of New York property owners, who are experiencing significant financial hardships themselves, filed a motion with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, to sue the New York legislature.

     “No matter the spin by state lawmakers and Gov. Hochul, this is a reimplementation of the previous law: completely disregarding last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision and ignoring key elements of our complaint,” landlord association President Joseph Strasburg said in a statement, according to the New York Post.

   Although Gov. Hochul had called “cruel” the ending of the 18-month eviction moratorium that has left property owners with no income to pay their mortgages nor their own expenses, the landlords’ motion uses launches back the same language, when it said, “The State has now cruelly continued to impose the exact same irreparable harm [to landlords],” the motion states. “This Court should not stand for it.