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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian today. Here are some stats that might hit home for some of our listeners. In 2023, there were more than 12,000 evictions across the city. That's the biggest spike since the pandemic-era moratorium on evictions ended the year before. Evictions have already hit 9,000 for this year. There's also been a spike in car bootings, those ugly yellow wheel clamps that keep a car from moving.

About 135,000 cars were booted last year generally for unpaid tickets. That's up from roughly 87,000 in 2022. In both of those cases, it's a group of people known as city marshals who are locking tenants out of their apartments and booting those cars. For those individuals, this work can be really lucrative business. My colleague, David Brand, has been digging into this data and talking to people behind it on all sides and he joins me now. David, great to have you here as always.

David Brand: Thanks for having me, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: You wrote a piece for Gothamist about the spike in evictions and car bootings in 2023. The numbers I mentioned, they're striking, but I also learned something that I didn't know about the people doing this work. Tell us a little bit more about who city marshals are and what exactly they do.

David Brand: Sure. Well, that spike in evictions, in car booting, in wage garnishments and debt collection, utility meters, seizing, that's the work that marshals do. It's big business. Last year, they grossed $37 million doing that work. They took home net income of $19.5 million. That's after kicking back about 5%, 4.5% to the city. They have to pay their staff. They have to pay for offices and stuff.

A lot of these marshals are making more than $1 million a year just in net income and profits. There's 28 of them. The city has a potential for 83. There hasn't been a new marshal appointed in several years, but there's 28 of them. They're doing all of this work around the city. They're appointed by the mayor after a committee of experts, lawyers consider applicants. Yes, often these marshals, it's a family business. Their father did it or a relative did the job. They're kind of lined up to take over.

Brigid Bergin: Do they have to have any other qualifications or training to be able to do this work?

David Brand: Yes, so on the city website, it tells applicants the criteria they need to meet to qualify. They're looking for people with past law enforcement experience or finance experience or other types of related work. They list health care in there and then they apply. I guess they would meet with this committee that the mayor appoints. The committee makes a recommendation to the mayor and then the mayor can appoint. I mentioned there's 28. Last year, there were 31. One marshal died, two retired. There's space for 83. I think in the not-too-distant future, the city will be appointing another handful of marshals, but we shall see.

Brigid Bergin: You mentioned that we're talking millions of dollars that some of these folks are making and they're kicking back some of it to the city. Is the city losing money by outsourcing this function in any way?

David Brand: A couple of years ago, the Independent Budget Office, budget watchdog in New York City, estimated that the city is foregoing about $10 million or $11 million by outsourcing this work to these private contractors, to the marshals. Because in most parts of the country, pretty much everywhere else, this is handled by city employees like we have here in New York, the sheriff's office. They do some of this work. Everywhere else in the country, it's the sheriffs or people who work for the city doing it.

The Marshals Association, a trade group who represents the marshals, says, actually, it's saving the city money. Because if the city were to hire a large number of people at the sheriff's office to handle all of this work, they'd not only be paying their salaries, they'd be paying health insurance benefits for potentially 100 additional employees. That's the argument they make. They also say they are giving 4.5% of this gross revenue back to the city. They say, actually, the city's making money from it.

Brigid Bergin: Interesting. These marshals, are they actually interacting with the tenants or car owners or other people who they're trying to recover a debt from or is that something they try to avoid? Are there restrictions on when and where they can do this work?

David Brand: Yes, they are definitely interacting with people. That starts early in the process. They have to serve notices to people who are facing eviction. There's pretty strict paperwork requirements for the eviction process and also same thing for debt collection. Then, ultimately, they are the ones executing the eviction. If a judge orders an eviction, issues a warrant, the landlord hires a marshal to then go to the person's apartment and execute that eviction. They will often be interacting directly with the people if they're in the apartment. That has proved dangerous at times in the past. There was one marshal who was murdered about 25 years ago while doing an eviction.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Listeners, we know that these issues can be very personal. As these statistics demonstrate, if you've faced eviction, if you've had your car booted, you are certainly not alone. We want to hear from you. If you've faced an eviction, how did you deal with it? What led to it? Did you interact with a city marshal? How about a car booting? Were you able to get your car back? Did you realize you were behind on tickets before it happened?

Give us a call or text us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. For city marshals, if you're listening out there, how did you get into this work? What's your experience been like? When you're going into a home or, say, a street or parking lot, city marshals, we want to hear from you too. Again, the number, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text. David, for people who've been through these experiences, why would a person face a court-ordered eviction? How does it get to that point?

David Brand: Well, it's usually for nonpayment of rent. There's other reasons people can be evicted if they stay. If they're living in a non-rent-stabilized apartment, for example, and they stay past their lease and the landlord wants them out, the landlord can start an eviction process. If they're breaking the terms of their lease, maybe some type of illegal activity, they could eventually be evicted for that. For the most part, the vast majority of cases are for nonpayment of rent.

The landlord will file a nonpayment notice in court and that starts a court process that can take a relatively long time. If the tenant facing eviction continues to appear in court and answers and is actually taking steps to try to repay the debt or can go very quickly if they don't appear in court and there's what's called a default judgment against them where they don't appear, the judge orders their eviction. A couple of weeks later, a marshal could show up at their door.

Brigid Bergin: A listener texts, I think, a question that I'm also wondering about. "Do city marshals carry weapons?"

David Brand: That's a good question. I think they do, but I'm not sure.

Brigid Bergin: All right. Well, city marshals, if you are listening, give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Help us report this story. David, similarly to my question about what triggers that eviction, tell me what leads to a car booting. What happens after the boot's been slapped on that wheel?

David Brand: Well, I bet there are a lot of listeners who have been booted because you mentioned the numbers. It's kind of staggering like 185,000 cars booted last year. Colleague Liam Quigley and I did a follow-up to this story, looking more deeply at those stats. It's actually even more on the rise this year. It's on pace to exceed the number of bootings from last year.

I'm sure there's a lot of listeners could relate to this. It actually can happen pretty quickly. If you have $350 or more of unpaid parking tickets or unpaid speed-camera violation tickets, then you could get booted, and then you have about 48 hours to pay the debt. If you don't, the car can get towed. Within 10 days, if you don't pay, you don't respond to claim the car, it could get auctioned.

Brigid Bergin: David, in both of these cases, are we just dealing with the aftermath of moratoriums during the pandemic? Are people falling behind on the rent more now? Are they breaking traffic laws, getting more tickets, and not paying them more, or is this a backlog that's getting cleared?

David Brand: There was a hearing a few months ago that the city council had over the Department of Investigation, which oversees the marshals as a city agency. They asked some of these questions. Council member Gale Brewer, who chairs that committee, said, "Marshals tend to do their best business during times of economic crisis or economic uncertainty." I think when it comes to evictions, there was a huge backlog of nonpayment cases and eviction-related cases coming out of the pandemic. Those have really started to ramp up last year and into this year.

There's a lot of people still behind on rent who are facing nonpayment cases and are at risk of getting evicted. We are definitely seeing a spike in those cases. I think in terms of the debt collection, which is the real moneymaker for a lot of these marshals who are making $1.5 million more than that by garnishing wages, by seizing bank accounts, yes, I think a lot of people have just fallen behind and struggled to keep up after pandemic. The pandemic wiped out a lot of jobs. We see there's been a strong recovery for a lot of people, but there are a lot of people who are still struggling.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Roy in Brooklyn who wants to push back, I think, a little bit on the portrayal of marshals in this conversation. Roy, thanks so much for calling.

Roy: Good morning. I'd like to say that I'm an attorney. I represent both sides. Landlords and tenants. I think that the marshals, when it comes to evictions, they're being unfairly portrayed in this broadcast because, first, the marshals are not making a lot of money on evictions and it's a dangerous job. They often receive very little for performing evictions. Debt collections is a different thing. I am sympathetic to people that have suffered because of the pandemic, but they've had many opportunities to protect themselves.

There was a program called the Emergency Rent Assistance Program. I represented a landlord where a tenant was living and still is living in an apartment at $8,500. After we commenced our nonpayment, it took 15 months before the ERAP, that's what the Emergency Rent Assistance Program is called, made a decision. My landlord was losing that $8,500-a-month income all during that time and the tenant received $127,500 award for 15 months' rent. That, of course, went to the landlord.

That was in November 22. This tenant remains in possession and hasn't paid any rent since. She now owes over $150,000. The problem is that the housing courts will find any excuse to keep the tenant in possession. This is a person that makes money. She never should have gotten $127,500. Still, although I have a holdover proceeding against her to evict her, it takes months. All during that time, she doesn't pay rent. When a landlord finally gets a warrant for eviction--

Brigid Bergin: Sorry to cut you off there, Roy, but I really appreciate your perspective and offering us a different side of this dispute. David, I wonder if you want to react a little bit. One of the key points was that he's saying that tenants have a long process that they can go through to be able to respond to these things.

David Brand: Yes, Roy brings up a lot of points that you hear from a lot of property owners in the city, a lot of landlords, a lot of landlord attorneys and trade groups that the housing court process takes too long for landlords. They want to get their money or they want to get the tenant out so they can get somebody in who can pay. I hear that from Roy. I think what he was saying was a little less about the marshals, but he did bring up some good points about that. He's right. I don't think evictions are the moneymaker for marshals, though they do earn a set fee for every time they serve a notice to a tenant or every time they mail some paperwork or every time they appear at an apartment.

In addition to that, there's a mileage fee. If they're driving around the city going to a bunch of apartments, a bunch of places, they get paid for that. It's a volume game. If there's hundreds of thousands of people who are in housing court facing eviction, that's hundreds of thousands of people who marshals are serving notices on, mailing things out to. That money really adds up. He is right. I think the debt collection stuff is where marshals tend to make the most money.

Brigid Bergin: I'm going to bring down Olivia from the Lower East Side. Olivia, sounds like you had an issue with not paying a ticket.

Olivia Silvester: Hi. Yes, I did. My name is Olivia Silvester. I live on the Lower East Side. I came home. Am I telling my story yet?

Brigid Bergin: You're telling your story now to all the listeners.

Olivia Silvester: Oh, awesome. I came home and I was parallel parking. I dealt with someone sideswiping me. The other vehicle wanted a police report, which wasn't really acceptable for the police. They said to download a police report online. It ended up being that I couldn't leave the scene because the other party wanted the police report. We waited probably over four hours for the cops to come.

I was right in front of my building. The cops finally show up and they analyze the scene. They write out the police report for the other vehicle. I turn around. The other vehicle drives off and I see a cop at my window. He says, "Could you please step out of your vehicle?" I said, "Sure." By now, it's probably 1:00 AM. He says, "Do you have proof of payment from this parking ticket?" I said, "No, because I had paid it over the phone."

He's going back and forth with me and then he says, "Well, if you don't have proof of payment, we're going to have to arrest you." At that point, it was pretty chaotic in my head. I said, "Well, I could call." I didn't know what to do. It was 1:00 AM. I was exhausted. He put me in handcuffs. He put me in the back of the cop car to drive the street over to the precinct, which I'm very familiar with because it's right in my neighborhood. I sat in the waiting cell until about 5:00 AM with my boyfriend waiting for me outside.

It was a whole arrest. And then come to find out a couple of days later, the ticket was paid. It was a paid-off ticket that they arrested me for. Because I didn't have proof of payment, they put me in handcuffs. The thing I learned is that if you have a pending ticket out of state, you yourself have to call and notify the DMV or whoever it is that you paid the ticket in order for then it to be in the system as paid.

Brigid Bergin: Olivia, thank you so much for that call. It sounded like that was an interaction with the police, maybe not a city marshal, but thank you for that call. David, any reaction to either of those callers? I want to get to some of the questions that I'm getting from listeners on text about what happens when you get booted and how to get that boot off.

David Brand: Yes, I guess just real quick for Olivia. That sounds infuriating and scary and kind of Kafkaesque, I guess. Maybe there's some information we could use there about the out-of-state ticket and just making sure you have some type of receipts or contact the DMV to make sure that they're aware that you paid it off. Yes, I'm sorry that happened, Olivia.

Brigid Bergin: David, we've got several listeners who are asking, what happens if you get booted? If you pay the tickets, who comes and takes the boot off? How do you restore your car to full working order?

David Brand: Yes, so that's a great question. There is some information on the city website about this. There's a frequently-asked-questions section for people who have been booted. You can pay by phone. You can pay online or in person with the Department of Finance. They will notify the booting company or the marshal to come remove the boot. It's supposed to be done, I think, within six hours. If it's not, you can call again.

I would say one thing that we found in our reporting was that there was about 9,000 instances where people just took the boots off themselves. I'm not endorsing that. It was called runaways, but, yes, people did do that. I'm not quite sure what happens. If there's anyone out there who took the boot off and threw it away, if they want to give us a call and tell us how they did that and why.

Brigid Bergin: Exactly. David, I want to shift gears back to some of your reporting on evictions because one of the other fascinating things that you found was a huge concentration of these evictions in one part of the city in one specific housing complex. Talk about that. Where was that? What's going on there now?

David Brand: Sure, so the city tracks eviction data on the locations of where evictions are based on where marshals have to submit information saying that they completed an eviction. Then I found that the highest concentration evictions in the city were at the LeFrak City housing complex in Queens in Corona. Since the start of 2023, there were 120 households that were evicted, more than any other location in the city.

The owners of LeFrak City, the LeFrak Organization, filed 1,800 separate nonpayment cases since the start of 2023 in a complex of about 4,600 units. It's a big complex, but a lot of people owed back rent there. They told me that at any one time, there's about 500 tenants who are behind on their rent. That's a huge number. The eviction cases start when people owe-- I looked at the data here, looking at these 1,800 court cases. They owe about $4,000 when the landlord goes to court to start this nonpayment process. A couple of reasons why they do it early like that.

It also shows that it's not that much money that people owe that can start this eviction process. One of the reasons I was looking into this was because it's so hard for people to get rental assistance, and especially ongoing rental assistance. When you drill down on these numbers, families are facing eviction and displacement and homelessness over relatively small amounts of money that a city, state, or federal program could address and make sure people stay housed and landlords get their money and people don't become homeless.

Brigid Bergin: David, isn't the city also supposed to be providing some legal assistance for tenants who are facing these kinds of housing court cases?

David Brand: Yes, that was another part of the reporting. I looked at these 121 completed evictions, talked to a number of the tenants involved, and the vast majority didn't have an attorney during their court proceedings. You're right. The city does have the right-to-counsel program, which is supposed to guarantee a free attorney from a nonprofit group like Legal Aid or New York legal services to provide an attorney during the housing court process. There's a lot of studies that show when tenants have an attorney, they're able to stay housed, and often because they're able to get the assistance they need, whether that's through the city or working out some type of payment plan with the landlord.

Tenants who don't have an attorney are overmatched or often don't know that they have to appear in court. A lot of the people who are evicted probably qualified for that right-to-counsel program because of their income level. Others may have made just above the qualifying amount. A bigger, more systemic problem here is that there's so many people facing eviction that this right-to-counsel program is not able to provide an attorney to every single person who needs one.

Brigid Bergin: David, before we wrap up, I want to get one more caller in with, I think, some news we can all use. Jess in Brooklyn, thanks for calling The Brian Lehrer Show.

Jess: Hey, how are you? Yes, I just wanted to correct something. My car was booted. I believe it was last summer. I went online, paid all of the tickets that I hadn't paid. I was given a code. It was almost like you unlock a lock that's on a locker. I put in the code and then I took the boot off myself, so that is actually an option. There's a legal option. Once you pay the tickets and you're up to date, they give you that code. You can take the boot off and then you have to return it to a location that they give you options of location.

Brigid Bergin: Jess, thanks so much for that call. David, I think part of what you were talking about was the people who maybe haven't paid those tickets and gotten that code who go a little rogue in the removal of the boot. Anything you want to add to what Jess was sharing with us?

David Brand: No, that was great. That was really helpful. That's part of that frequently-asked-questions section on the website too. If you do it by phone or online, they're supposed to send you that code so you can enter that PIN. I also want to say one thing. Somebody texted asking if marshals carry guns and I said I wasn't sure. They do. We've looked that up in the last few minutes and, yes, they do.

Brigid Bergin: That's great. I also want to add. We had a listener who texted after Olivia's story that the exact same thing happened to them on the Lower East Side 10 years ago. Maybe another interesting story there. We always appreciate our listeners helping us with tips and ways to report more stories. That's all the time we have for today, David. I want to thank my colleague, David Brand, from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom for joining us today. David, as always, keep up the great work.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brigid, and thanks to those callers too.

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