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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Tomorrow is also the day that New York State's pandemic eviction ban expires unless the state legislature extends it. Expiration is even a more threatening prospect now to many low-income New Yorkers than it was last week before the US Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the federal eviction moratorium. Earlier this month, the high court had thrown out New York's.

Now New Jersey's eviction protection seems stronger for now. Good till the end of the year from the reporting I've seen. We'll focus primarily on New York. With me for this is Cea Weaver coordinator for the activist group, Housing Justice for All. Cea, thanks for joining us on WNYC today.

Cea Weaver: Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: For those not following this closely, let's do some basics. What exactly expires tomorrow?

Cea Weaver: Tomorrow, the New York State eviction moratorium technically expires. The thing is is that that law has not been in place since August 12th when the Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction against the renter protections included in that law. The only thing that's going to expire tomorrow are the tenant foreclosure prevention, protections, and as well as protection against small business owners who also can't pay the rent right now.

Brian Lehrer: If it expires, what can a landlord do on Wednesday that they can't do today? It's not throw someone out on the street Wednesday morning, right?

Cea Weaver: Yes, so landlords have been able to and will continue to be able to file an eviction cases against their renters who have been unable to pay rent during the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect about 830,000 households across the state, overwhelmingly low-income households, overwhelmingly people of color. About 77% of them are people of color.

Brian Lehrer: Talk more about that. The people you see as most vulnerable to eviction and how quickly if the moratorium expires and who the eviction vulnerable New Yorkers tend to be. If you can break it down for us by neighborhood or any kinds of demographics even further.

Cea Weaver: Yes, totally. They are renters who are behind on rent are overwhelmingly low income, they're overwhelmingly people of color. They are often located in neighborhoods that have also seen a high incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the highest eviction rates in the state are in the Bronx, are in Queens, are in Eastern Brooklyn. Parts of the city that have seen some of the highest infection rates and also have some of the lowest vaccination rates as well.

In New York State, we are lucky. We have some of the strongest tenant protections in the country, and in New York City, we're even more lucky because tenants benefit from right to counsel. An eviction still takes time. There is still due process that tenants are awarded, but pandemic eviction protections, as of right now, are fully lifted, and in order to get assistance, tenants need to apply for Rental Assistance.

Brian Lehrer: Here's the clip of Governor Hochul from, let's see, I think this was Friday trying to reassure tenants who qualify for rental assistance that they're not going to get kicked out of their homes even if the moratorium expires tomorrow. Here she is.

Governor Hochul: Anyone who's applied and qualifies for the rental assistance should have no fear of being removed from their home for a solid year, so the eviction moratorium that's expiring shortly will have no bearing on these individuals.

Brian Lehrer: Since that was in a noisy setting, I'm going to read the text of that quote again. "Anyone who has applied and qualifies for the rental assistance should have no fear of being removed from their home for a solid year, so the eviction moratorium that is expiring shortly will have no bearing on these individuals." Can you put that quote into context for us?

Cea Weaver: Sure. What our new governor is referring to is the fact that if you qualify for and receive emergency rental assistance, the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERAP, your landlord is not allowed to evict you without cause for up to a year following receipt of that money. The goal here is to protect tenants from retaliatory evictions that landlords could file against them, retaliation against the tenant for a year of being unable to pay.

The problem is though that unemployment is still 7.5% in New York State. That's up from 3.7% in February of 2020 before the pandemic. This means that people are overwhelmingly unable to pay their rent moving forward and that even if we were able to clear all of the back rent that was accumulated between March 2020, and now, we still have a crisis moving forward.

Of course, there's not enough money in our state's rental assistance program to pay for all the people who are currently behind on rent, so there's still a real problem here that ERAP, as it currently is set up, cannot solve.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open on New York State eviction moratorium. Are you fearing eviction, yourself? Call and describe your situation and how you would like the state to protect you by tomorrow's expiration date of the current moratorium, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. We welcome you to tell your story if you feel vulnerable to eviction yourself right now.

Landlords, you're welcome too, how much are you protected by the moratorium combined with the Rent Relief Program which is supposed to put that makeup cash in your pocket so you can pay your mortgages? What would you like to see from the state? 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer for Cea Weaver coordinator for the activist group Housing Justice for All. 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Governor Hochul wants a special session of the legislature for the purpose of extending the moratorium, but I gather she does not believe she has the legal authority to call the special session herself, and we're up on this deadline, which is tomorrow. What's your understanding of how that would happen and if it will happen?

Cea Weaver: I think that there was some reporting at the end of last week that the three houses, so the assembly and the governor were in three-way negotiations about when to call a special session, to go back to Albany, and to deal with this pandemic eviction crisis that's upon us. I'm hopeful that the legislature is going to get it together, call a session for this week, and address this.

Not just address an extension of the eviction moratorium, but also make changes to the rental assistance program so that money can more easily flow into the pockets of media, landlords, and renters. I think that so far so good with Governor Kathy Hochul. It seems like there's a willingness to address this problem, and it seems like there's a willingness to address it collaboratively with Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Carl Heastie as well.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Darryl in Midtown who I think applied for rent relief under this program. Darryl, you're on WNYC, thanks for calling in.

Darryl: Hi. I was actually approved for a pretty decent amount for my back rent, but they apparently didn't want to pay for two months last year where I was receiving unemployment, and they even went forward. On paper, they're paying through September, but it still leaves me about $6,000 in arrears after the payment is made to my landlord. I just want to know what rights do I have while I try to make that happen while I try to scale those funds up.

Brian Lehrer: Cea, do you know?

Cea Weaver: Yes, I do. All tenants in New York City right now have-- First of all, congratulations on being one of the few New Yorkers who's got an ERAP.

Darryl: Thank you.

Cea Weaver: I'm sorry that you're still a bit in the hole here. All tenants in New York City have the right to counsel in housing court. You also have defenses included in something called the Tenant Safe Harbor Act that you can raise to say, "Hey, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I suffered hardship and I don't want to possess prejudgment to be evicted from my home over this rent." You could be protected from eviction over that back rent still.

The problem here is that under the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, you will still owe the money and your landlord can still issue a monetary judgment against the back rent. The good news is that because you have right to counsel, should your landlord take you to court for that rent, you will be able to get access to legal counsel who can help you find out what your best options are.

Brian Lehrer: Darryl, I think that doesn't put you out of the woods, but at least it's somewhat helpful, I think. Thank you very much. I obviously hope it works out for you. One of the things that Darrel mentioned, which is a detail in this Rent Relief and eviction moratorium program that I'm a little confused about, but he mentioned that he didn't qualify for some of the months that he was receiving unemployment. I think I've seen this before, but try to clear this up. Does receiving unemployment disqualify you from being protected by the eviction moratorium?

Cea Weaver: It does not. The eviction moratorium that was in place and that we are fighting to get reinstated covers households who are suffering from financial hardship as well as from a public health risk. It depends on your unique situation, but if you have suffered a loss of income because of COVID-19 in your household, or you are at a heightened risk of getting or contracting or spreading COVID-19, or your costs have increased, maybe your medical costs increased, you have the right to defend yourself against eviction by filling out a hardship declaration form, and then your eviction case would be paused.

That was the law that we had in place. There's a current injunction against it, but we're hopeful and we're urging the legislature and the new governor to reinstate this law.

Brian Lehrer: There was nothing like if you're receiving unemployment insurance checks, then you have an income and you should be deemed able to pay your rent?

Cea Weaver: No.

Brian Lehrer: Glad we cleared that up. This is WNYC FM HT and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey public radio as we talk about the pending expiration of New York State's eviction moratorium tomorrow with Cea Weaver, coordinator for the activist group Housing Justice for All.

I want to play another clip of Governor Hochul. This was just after she was sworn in the other day. In this, she talks about the Rent Relief Program and the difficulty that they've had in actually getting the money out the door, which would, of course, make it easier for both the tenants and the landlord to avoid eviction proceedings. Here is Governor Hochul.

Governor Hochul: We'll continue a multifaceted approach, deploying more people to the crisis, realizing that there's many people who have not been even aware that they have these resources available to them, and connecting them with the landlords. I'll be assembling a team of individuals beginning today to assess this but to wait not one second longer in terms of how we get this relief out to people.

It's there, it needs to be in their hands so they can start getting their lives back in order and reducing some of the incredible stress that these families and individuals are under. It's absolutely unnecessary.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul back last Tuesday. Cea, I think this part of the issue confuses a lot of people too, especially if they're not directly

personally affected. The Rent Relief Program that the state has to get rent money to the landlords, but it's been very slow getting distributed. What's your best understanding now of the delays? Has Governor Hochul been able to speed it up in the mere six days that she's been in office?

Cea Weaver: It's difficult for the state to stand up a $2.7 billion rental assistance program, but the reality is that delays in this program have been really unacceptable from constantly crashing websites, glitches, a very confusing site to navigate. It takes up to two hours for a renter to apply. It's just been pretty unacceptable, and outreach has been a huge, huge challenge.

Of the 830,000 people who are behind on rent, only about 175,000 have successfully been able to apply. We think that this is true on both the tenant and the landlord side. Just to throw out some more numbers, there are about 30,000 tenant side households who have been preliminarily approved, but the landlord has not completed their side of the application. That means that money is just sitting there, it's not going anywhere.

The landlord hasn't gone to pick it up, and so that back rent is still out. That's creating a huge problem, and we don't actually know exactly why landlords are not going to get the checks, but there's a problem there.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a landlord's call. Here's John in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi, good morning, Brian, thank you for having me. I'm a landlord and I think there's a misperception amongst many people in the public, particularly these activists that we all drive Rolls Royces and eat caviar. I'm just a small mom-and-pop guy, I'm a divorced dad. I would say 99% of my tenants, God bless them, have been paying me even though they could take advantage of these programs.

They've all been paying me, but I look at my relatives who are also immigrants who came here from another country and just got into real estate, there's people that owe them 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. There's people ready to jump off a bridge and we're not getting any attention. We ought to be able to evict people, not because we're bad people, not because we're mean.

Our mortgages don't go away, our insurance doesn't go away we have repairs to make. Please, have an activist explain the math to me on how one person doesn't pay me, but I have to pay everybody else. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Cea, you want to explain to John? John, I want to ask you a follow-up question in a second if you want to stay there.

John: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Cea, you want to answer his question first?

Cea Weaver: Yes. I completely sympathize with the problem.

John: Thank you.

Cea Weaver: On the whole, mom-and-pop landlords are doing definitely worse than some of these big corporate companies that are sitting on billions and dry powder, but the first reality is that there is a foreclosure moratorium in place that runs concurrent with the eviction moratorium. That's something that I think is really important to raise. Yes, the payment isn't going away, but the rent payment isn't going away either.

What is happening for both the mortgage payment and the rent payment if they are being deferred under the eviction moratorium and foreclosure moratorium program. The second thing here is that I think we could all agree, we need more rental assistance. The ERAP program, which is too burdensome to apply for, bogged down with required paperwork and onerous testing requirements is making it too hard to get money into the hands of people who really need it.

To be honest, John, I wish that the money was going to folks like you more than it was going to folks like Blackstone or some of these other bigger corporate players. If there is a way to prioritize-

John: Thank you.

Cea Weaver: - the mom-and-pop landlords here, I'd love to make it happen.

Brian Lehrer: My follow-up question was going to be to that point. Sorry to break in, Cea.

Cea Weaver: No, no worries.

Brian Lehrer: Just to continue that thread right there, does the foreclosure moratorium aspect of this protect you, John?

John: It protects me, as the speaker said, from being foreclosed on, but that's pretty bad of a threshold if that's what it has to come down to for me to get foreclosed on. There's so many other day-to-day expenses. There's insurance, there's property taxes, and we have a property tax moratorium. It's got to be even-handed. I don't dispute the fact the tenants are being hurt.

You'd have to have your head in the sand not to realize that tenants are being hurt. I'm not disputing that, but the course of action needs to be even-handed. Why can't there be a moratorium on property taxes, for example, or at least defer it or something like that? In lieu of something more to help "mom-and-pop landlords", we have to be able to have the right to evict people and get someone in that could pay.

I had somebody that moved out in Bed-Stuy, he owed me $17,000. I'm never going to see that again. How many people more like me are out there that aren't getting on NPR to air their side of the story? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you very much and good luck to you. He certainly got a point that the rent that he's not receiving doesn't only go to pay the mortgage, it goes to all these other expenses like property taxes. Is there anything in the legislation that you support at Housing Justice for All that would give somebody like him more relief in the interim while an eviction moratorium continues?

Cea Weaver: The main piece of legislation here is the Emergency Rental Assistance Program which goes to pay people's rent. The thing about rental assistance, and these are federal guidelines, is that if the tenant is not in place, you're not going to be able to get that background back. Evicting people and the threat of eviction is actually not the best in the landlord self-interest for them to get their back rent paid.

Brian Lehrer: Just as the story that he told, and this is part of the vicious cycle, a tenant is afraid of being charged all that back rent so might move out, might become homeless by moving out, but gets out of that $17,000 in back rent if John's story was accurate.

Cea Weaver: Yes, so I think the real message here is that even though the eviction moratorium is expiring, tenants in New York state have rights to defend themselves against eviction even if you're behind on rent. Do not self-evict, stay in your home and apply for Rental Assistance. That's the best path out of this scenario that we're in right now.

Brian Lehrer: That's where we have to leave it for today. Our first segment was about the Afghanistan airlift deadline being tomorrow. Our second

segment has been about the New York State eviction moratorium expiring tomorrow. We will follow up on both on the actual expiration dates tomorrow on this show, both matter to so many people. We thank Cea Weaver, coordinator for the group Housing Justice for All. Thank you very much.

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