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By JOHN WHITTAKER
A Chautauqua County landlord has approximately 50 tenants eligible for Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds through New York State.
This landlord can count on two hands the number of tenants who are considering applying.
The lack of incentive for tenants to apply for the funding is one of the reasons MP Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, voted against extending the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures approved by the Legislature on Wednesday. State.
“I received an SMS from one of my owners” said Goodell. “He pointed out that we have contacted 50 tenants who could benefit from this program. Only nine or ten were ready to apply. Why? As I noted, because it costs them money if they apply now, they will save money if they apply later.
A.4001 was approved by 81 to 60 votes in the State Assembly on Wednesday. In addition to Goodell, Assembly Member Joe Giglio R-Gowanda also voted against extending the moratoria. The Senate vote was 38-19, with Senator George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, voting against extending the moratorium. Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, had called on the Legislature to return for a “Extraordinary session” to pass the law, which will suspend evictions until January 15. She is expected to sign it once lawmakers send it to her.
“The damage inflicted on our state’s small landowners, distressed tenants and the housing market during the pandemic is one of the state’s biggest failures in the past 18 months. Unconstitutional moratoriums on evictions followed by incompetent rollout of the $ 2.7 billion Rent Emergency Assistance Program (ERAP) pushed small landlords to the brink of financial collapse and left tenants with mounting debts and confusion as to why the promised relief did not materialize ”, Borrello said after the vote.
The law requires landlords to challenge a hardship statement submitted by tenants and for banks and mortgage lenders to challenge a hardship statement submitted by landlords trying to avoid foreclosure. Judges would require tenants to apply for assistance programs if their hardship claim is found to be valid. The bills also extend the Safe Harbor for Tenants Act until January 15, 2022 and added a nuisance standard to eviction protections to provide landlords with a means to initiate eviction proceedings against a covered tenant if a tenant is a nuisance or has inflicted substantial damage. to a property.
According to the Associated Press, the head of the Rent Stabilization Association, New York’s largest homeowners organization, on Wednesday promised to sue to block the moratorium in federal court. Strasberg said the new moratorium would be too similar to the old one. He criticized her for the lack of an income limit and said it shouldn’t be up to the landlords to prove that tenants don’t have hardship.
“It is a blatant disregard for the order of SCOTUS”, Group chairman Joseph Strasbourg, whose organization, along with five individual owners, challenged the state’s ban on eviction, said.
The legislation also increased funding for the emergency rent assistance program, provides $ 25 million to pay lawyers for tenants facing eviction, and increases the hardship fund from $ 100 million to $ 250 million. . New York set $ 2.4 billion aside for emergency rent assistance, but spent just $ 230 million on more than 15,000 households on Wednesday.
“While I cannot support an extension of the moratorium, I have supported changes to the program appropriations which will establish a fund to assist both tenants and landlords in special circumstances who cannot apply for funds from the program. PIU, including tenants who exceed income limits and landlords with uncooperative tenants who refuse to ask for funds to pay off their debt ”, said Borrello. “It is disheartening that our fellow Democrats have bowed to pressure from rent-cancellation activists. There is a sinister undercurrent of this push to punish more landowners that is less about compassion than promoting a radical agenda. There are some on the left who fundamentally do not believe in private property rights. They think we need a major expansion of government controlled housing and they are using this pandemic as their opportunity to move this agenda forward. “
Hochul pledged to withdraw the money faster. The law also increases the fund to $ 2.6 billion. Meanwhile, she urges tenants to apply for rent assistance. Those who are entitled to months of rent arrears can receive up to a year of eviction protection for not paying that rent.
One of Goodell’s criticisms is that landlords participating in emergency rent assistance programs are automatically at a disadvantage because they forgo any rent increases for at least a year, have to waive late fees, and cannot not recover all of their lost rent because the program covers a period of 12 months while evictions have been prohibited for 17 months already, with the moratorium on evictions now being extended beyond that.
“The data proves it. You can watch it ”, said Goodell. “The owners are withdrawing from this market. In my neighborhood, owners have told me that they have been forced to sell some of their homes to pay for other people’s expenses. And they sold to owner-occupied residents. And these units are off the market. Other owners are unable to cover the maintenance costs because they do not have enough cash and have let their apartments disappear to the point that they are no longer tenable by anyone. So we have put in place a system in which landlords, if they can survive, will be forced to raise the rent to recoup their losses, and this rent increase is going to hit the people who can least afford it – the workers. poor. “
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