The city’s eviction moratorium was extended post-Sandy, but tenants are left hoping they’ll have enough time

Last Thursday, Council Member Dan Garodnick, various legal groups and at least one New Yorker facing eviction convened on the steps of City Hall to push for an extension to the eviction moratorium that had been lifted the Monday before.

The New York Civil Court had initially issued a moratorium on evictions following Hurricane Sandy, but legal advocacy groups were calling for an extension, indicating that thousands of New Yorkers were still without a home after the storm.

“To resume evictions when we know many families will have nowhere to go is callous and irresponsible,” Garodnick said in a statement.

In spite of the rally’s minimal turnout among those directly impacted, the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) has since announced it will extend the moratorium, giving tenants facing eviction until the beginning of February to catch up on past-due rent before initiating eviction procedures.

While the extension may alleviate pressure for some, one such tenant, Maria Perez, who believes she was the only person in her position at Thursday’s rally, just hopes that will be enough time for her.

“I’m meeting with a lawyer … I have my fingers crossed,” Perez said.

Perez is one New Yorker and Lower East Side resident strongly affected by the moratorium, particularly as her situation has been exacerbated following Hurricane Sandy.

She said while there are many like her, there was little to no information disseminated about the City Hall rally beforehand, making it difficult for other displaced New Yorkers to trek out and show their support and meet with the legal groups present, like MFY Legal Services.

“I know I’m not the only one going through this,” Perez said.

Nonetheless, the rally was successful for Perez, who was approached by a lawyer willing to look into her situation.

Perez has been on the brink of eviction since her daughter moved out two years ago and NYCHA’s Section 8 branch never lowered her rent. The organization has also been completely uncommunicative, she said. She said her building suffered severe damage in the storm, damage that has become yet another obstacle.

“Section 8 has been asking for things like my Con Edison breakdown,” an exasperated Perez said.

“My landlord doesn’t care if I stay,” she said. “Section 8 is the problem.”

She doesn’t blame the program entirely for their oversights, however, pointing out they are clearly overburdened. Perez said while they used to assign one worker to a set number of tenants, their offices are now an endless array of windows and chairs for waiting, and “you never see the same person twice.”

“[Hurricane Sandy] slowed down the process,” she said, as she has been trying to fight the pending eviction.

Perez said she has been unable to get in contact with the necessary people at Section 8 to resolve her situation—one she claims is an illegitimate eviction. If this was difficult prior to the storm, it’s all but impossible now.

Wasim Lone of the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) tenants organization has been helping Perez with her case.

“She has serious medical problems,” explained Lone, who was rushing off to help Perez with her situation at the time, particularly ensuring she receives her Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
“I’m sending her information to the Marshall,” he said.

“GOLES is a rat hole with five or six people working,” explained Perez. “But they are some of the few people who care.”

GOLES, which aims to give power to low-income tenants on the Lower East Side and keep them in their homes, is funded by corporations, like some banks, and various government agencies.

The process Perez describes has reportedly been laborious from the start, but the extension gives her more time to resolve the situation.

“I’m going to a Section 8 office now,” she said, after speaking with Our Town Downtown. “I hope it’s not like the zoo up on Fordham Road.”

The headquarters of Nazareth Housing, at 206 E. Fourth St., narrowly avoided major damage. Michael Callaghan, executive director of the nonprofit group that works on housing rights and homelessness prevention, said that now they’re frenetically coordinating donated supplies and volunteers.

“I think the biggest problem is heat,” said Callaghan. “There is still public housing that doesn’t have electricity and heat. They’re not letting people go in and see how the residents are because they don’t want to be sued.”

He said that volunteers have been routing incoming supplies to some of the hardest-hit areas of the outer boroughs, like the Rockaways in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn, but they’re also still concerned about local downtown residents.

At the Hester Street offices of CAAAV, a pan-Asian community-based organization, executive director Helena Wong said that their role in helping has evolved day to day since Sandy struck.

“Every day has been a little bit different, we started off just providing a way for people to charge their phones and handing out what donations were coming in,” Wong said. “When FEMA came, the next day we started to go into buildings and prioritize the seniors and folks who have trouble getting around.”

Wong said that they’re now using their offices primarily as a donation drop-off center while trying to work with local residents who haven’t been able to get in touch with their landlords in order to get their boilers switched on.

Some organizations have had to overcome their own major hurdles in order to help. At GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), a neighborhood housing and preservation organization, their office at 171 Ave. B was in evacuation Zone A and is still without functioning phone lines or heat.

Damaris Reyes, the executive director, said that she and most of her staff also live in the flood zone, but that they still “managed to coordinate a massive relief effort with approximately 3,000 volunteers and thousands of donations.”

This week, staffers corralled volunteers to bring food, water, flashlights, batteries and information to seniors and disabled people who were trapped on high floors of buildings without power.

“About 50 percent of the residents don’t have heat and hot water, about 20 buildings still don’t have electricity, and most folks don’t have working phone lines,” Reyes said.

At the Bowery Mission, their shelter has been operating at over three times its normal capacity, housing over 150 people, and they kept hot meals coming all through the power outage with a donated generator and a mass of extension cords.

“We were the only lights on the Bowery for a few nights there,” said James Winans, the director of development.

They’ve received an outpouring of support and have been also operating a mobile kitchen on Avenue D between Fourth and Fifth streets, giving out hot meals. Winans said that while they’re focusing on how to help Sandy victims in the immediate future, he’s also concerned about facing the holiday season with depleted resources.

“This is a critical time of year for us any year, because we always do a significant weeklong outreach during the week of Thanksgiving and typically serve about 5,000 people,” Winans said.

He’s confident, though, that downtown residents will step up to fill in the gaps in resources. Helena Wong said that she saw firsthand how important it is to have local, tapped-in neighbors helping after a disaster, because they can often get straight to work, where larger organizations are more cumbersome.

“The Red Cross, the agency that is most known for disaster relief, was coming to us to know what to do,” Wong said. “Local organizations really know the community and should be supported to do the work that we do best.”