It’s no secret that New York is experiencing a housing crisis that is hitting renters in the state particularly hard. In fact, just last year in her State of the State address, Gov. Hochul noted the need to protect renters from an uptick in evictions and declared that housing is a human right.
For too many New Yorkers, however, that right is dependent on the whims of a landlord. Currently, most landlords don’t need a justification to evict a tenant; they can simply refuse to renew a tenant’s lease and evict them.
New analysis from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) shows that about 40,000 of the nearly 200,000 eviction petitions filed in 2022 — roughly 20% — were “holdover” evictions, meaning they were not cases in which tenants failed to pay rent. And, consistent with national data, TMI’s analysis further shows that these evictions are disproportionately affecting Black New Yorkers.
Holdover evictions, focused on retaking possession of property versus financial recovery, are complex proceedings. Tenants often do not have the resources to continue to fight these types of proceedings, and currently have few legal protections from them. As a result, many tenants are at risk of losing their home simply because their landlord does not wish to renew their lease.
Eviction filings are traumatic events for families, the effects of which are “particularly pronounced for female and Black tenants.” An eviction filing significantly increases the chances that a family will spend time in a shelter, and that risk persists up to two years after the filing of an eviction. Eviction filings also cause underemployment, wage loss, and adverse impacts on mental and physical health, especially for children.
The state Legislature has a moral obligation to help all who are paying their rent avoid such traumatic outcomes. It should start by passing the Good Cause Eviction bills, Assembly Bill A4454 and Senate Bill S305, currently pending in both the Assembly and the Senate. Doing so would increase protections for approximately 1.6 million renters — about half of the state’s renting population.
The Good Cause Eviction measures would prohibit most landlords, excluding small-time landlords who own fewer than four units, from initiating eviction proceedings against a tenant absent one of seven specific reasons. The bills expressly preserve landlords’ ability to evict tenants when justified by nonpayment of rent, violations of the lease, or damage to the unit itself. They also allow landlords to evict tenants if the landlord wishes to move into the unit themselves.
Because the bills only cover pre-existing housing, they allow landlords to set the initial rent of any new construction. And landlords can still justify rent increases based on rising costs, as measured by the Consumer Price Index.
In other words, the bills strike an appropriate balance between ensuring that landlords’ interests are protected and protecting tenants who are paying rent and complying with the terms of their lease from evictions.
The Good Cause Eviction measures thus provide important stability and security in the rental market. But they also represent a significant step towards advancing racial justice in the housing market throughout the state.
Black New Yorkers are more likely to be renters: two out of every three Black New Yorkers rent as compared to one out of every three white New Yorkers. Moreover, TMI’s analysis of recent New York State eviction filings shows that New York neighborhoods with a higher percentage of Black renters had higher rates of eviction filings.
Specifically, a 10 percentage point increase in Black renters in a county was associated with a 55% increase in the rate of total residential eviction filings and a 33% increase in the rate of residential holdover eviction filings. The same pattern exists at the ZIP code level, and for the rate of completed evictions. A 10 percentage point increase in Black renters in a given ZIP code was associated with a 17% increase in the rate of residential evictions.
As TMI’s analysis makes clear, there is no doubt that Black renters are facing a devastating eviction crisis in New York State. Passing a Good Cause Eviction bill will help mitigate this crisis by allowing more Black renters — who disproportionately face a risk of holdover evictions — to stay in their homes. These common-sense measures can help reverse the trend of Black population loss in places like New York City, and allow Black communities across New York to thrive.
The Good Cause Eviction legislation is not a panacea and cannot address each issue New York renters encounter. But as the governor acknowledged last year, “doing nothing is an abdication of our responsibility to act in times of crisis.”
Chandran is an assistant counsel and Fajana is a senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.
