The New York State Legislature has passed legislation extending the state”™s moratorium on evictions until Jan. 15.
The legislature returned on Wednesday after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a proclamation requiring a special session. Hochul signed the moratorium into law on Thursday.
In addition to keeping in place the protections for residential tenants, the extension adds new restrictions on commercial evictions.
The legislation’s moratorium on commercial evictions and commercial foreclosure proceedings apply to small businesses with 100 or fewer employees that demonstrate a financial hardship.
Tenants must submit a hardship declaration, or a document explaining the source of the hardship, to prevent an eviction proceeding from moving forward. Landlords who believe that their tenant has not suffered a financial hardship will now be permitted to request a hearing in court.
Landlords can also evict tenants that are creating safety or health hazards for other tenants, intentionally damaging property, and where a tenant did not submit a hardship declaration.
Hochul urged New Yorkers who are struggling to pay their rent to apply for assistance through the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). Applicants to that program are automatically protected from eviction while their application is pending and will receive a year of eviction protections if they qualify for assistance.
ERAP has been harshly criticized for only having distributed a small portion of the $2.6 billion funding received from the federal government. Hochul”™s office aid that as of Aug. 31, more than $1.2 billion in funding has either been obligated or distributed through ERAP, including more than $300 million in direct payments to more than 23,000 landlords.
The new law will permit anyone who lives in a municipality that has opted out of the state’s program so it could set up its own rental assistance program to apply to the state program when the local program no longer provides money.
The new law creates a $25 million fund to provide legal services to tenants facing eviction proceedings in areas of the state where access to free legal assistance for such services is not available.
The law also establishes a new $250 million Supplemental Emergency Rental Assistance program to serve additional households and to better support landlords. Half of that amount will be made available for assistance to landlords whose tenants refuse to participate in the state”™s ERAP or have skipped while owing back rent.
