All Forum Posts by: Ruth C.

This is definitely an encouraging sign. I was so angry/stressed out last year over so much talk of extending the moratorium indefinitely. 

Just to give everyone an update, my parents' tenants left last month after being threatened with the ejectment action. They owe 11 months back rent, but at least we have them out now.

@Anja Wright

In case you or anyone is interested, here is an update on my ejectment action, since I promised to keep everyone updated.

As soon as the tenants received a court summons in November 2020, they apparently panicked and started looking for a new place to leave immediately. So, it didn't even get to the point where we had to go to court.

We are still owed 10 months of back rent, but we have their address, so can nail them in small claims later. 

@Adam Melon

None of what you said the OP did happened. She(?) said she had bought the house before COVID and that there was an eviction notice filed for the tenants. All that was left was for the marshals to come in and evict them. Then COVID hit and they shut down the marshal's office. 

Everyone, an update on my situation--which might give @Anja Wright some comfort. The Supreme Court accepted my complaint and issued the tenants a summons. I guess we're waiting on the court date or some other action from the court. Not sure yet.

Anyway, it appears that if tenants are unlawfully occupying property, you can file an ejectment action. In this case, the court is no longer regarding your situation as a tenant-landlord case but that of someone illegally possessing your property. Things are looking pretty hopeful on my end, but in any case, OP, you might want to consider this. The best part about this, from what I hear, is that it's the sheriff that handles the eviction, not the marshall. So, you don't have to worry about eviction if the marshall's offices are closed. With an eviction action, the sheriff handles things, not the marshall.

In case anyone is interested, my lawyer is in the process of taking my case to the Supreme Court. If this all works out, then there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the OP and other NY landlords in this current bind. I will keep everyone posted.

King Cuomo, King de Blasio and all of these other NYC pols are not liberals. They are neoliberals--aka cronies of Big Business/oligarchs--using populism (in this case, liberalism) to crash the housing market so that small landlords are forced out of business and the biggest developers and speculators own it all. 

I know that because all of this cancel rent/eviction moratorium stuff is straight out of the Robert Moses handbook. On top of that, they're all heavily backed by developers, who've been harassing or intimidating small landlords into cashing out. de Blasio himself 

Another thing is that they're all either antisemites or pandering to their antisemitic voter base. Over the past 2-3 years, I saw a huge, major uptick in antisemitism blaming Jews for all of its housing and rental issues. It was all "their" fault that rents are high, all "their" fault that NYC is being gentrified. This antisemitism, more than anything, is what's driving these lies that all landlords are super fat, greedy misers flush with cash and therefore, it's okay to strip landlords of their rights. I saw this sentiment expressed across multiple forums in the wake of cancel rent, too, of how it would be sticking it to the greedy "lox eaters" and etc. and etc. 

Antisemitism and racism are wrong, but let's say for the sake of argument that the antisemites are right about Jewish landlords. The fact of the matter is, not all landlords are Jews. And yet, for the sake of the antisemitic bogeyman, all of these evil legislators and their base seemed to have come to this unspoken agreement that it's okay to throw EVERY SINGLE LANDLORD under the bus, for the sake of attacking this antisemitic bogeyman. In other words, in their minds, if they own 99% of all real estate, then it's okay to screw over the 1% who aren't Jewish. 

The point is: this is where the lack of compassion is coming from. It's from the unspoken agreement between politicians, their base and cancel rent supporters that every landlord is a Jew, so is just getting what they deserve for being greedy if property rights are stripped and they're kept from having their day in court. 

@Michael Deering and @John Erlanger You give sound legal advice that no one in their right mind would dispute. The problem is that this is NY, and here the laws and options that we have here only mean as much as the officials willing to enforce them. That is what is so frustrating about this whole eviction ban situation. We have the laws. We have the rights. We have the options. We have the lawyers working overtime. Whether a NYS/NYC judge or official will carry out those laws and rights and options in good faith (and in due time) is another story.

In any event, I would urge the OP to follow your advice. However, it remains to be seen if this option will be carried out in good faith. So, be optimistic, but cautiously so--and keep your fingers crossed. 

There is absolutely nothing you can do except get a lawyer to file, and then twiddle your thumbs and wait...and wait...and wait...

I feel your pain--believe me. I live in NYC and I am in the exact same boat, except it's a pair of grifters engaged in marriage fraud who are close friends with neighbors next door, who are also giving me trouble. They damaged two doors to the entrance to the building, as well as started inviting previous tenants--who left in 2019--to come back again to start tampering with the mailbox. They were served in February, were supposed to be out by April and stayed.

The worst part is that this is not my property. Its my parents', who right now have one foot in the grave. I contacted everyone I could--even newspaper outlets--to explain my situation, that a couple are squatting in my parents' house. I was met with silence, indifference, fake sympathy, humoring, etc. I called the police twice when the second door's lock was broken. They did nothing and told me to wait until the moratorium expires in August. 

Like I said, all you can do is file and wait. That's it. Or maybe try to "psyche" the tenants out into leaving by getting them served again and sending a tersely-worded letter from a lawyer that makes them think that a court hearing/eviction is imminent. (This is what my lawyer tried to do.)  But that's it. No one cares. We're all million dollar fat cats juggling 100 apartment buildings in a portfolio, don't'cha'know, and living off our yachts on the Riviera. So we can sit and stew. We have loads of money to spare. So what if we lose thousands in damages and lost rental income? We can just go into our vault like Scrooge McDuck and get some more. 

All this tells me is that a lobby decided to let a third party commercial entity handle its correspondence between it and government officials, when they already have a direct link to those officials themselves on the officials' own websites. So, to say that NARPM uses it means as much to me as saying the NRA, MAD or NAACP uses it. 

I repeat, Fiscal Note, which runs VoterVoice.net. is a unicorn aka tech startup by three guys who are no more than 30. Like most GenZ/millennial-run unicorns, it's trying to monetize political expression and activism by pretending to offer a service, in the same way Facebook and Twitter monetized "free speech". Reviews of FN at places like Glassdoor show that it's trying to acquire other companies and an IPO; does this sound like a company that has a vested interest in giving people a "voice"? No.

We have enough trouble with people throwing their free speech away on Big Tech platforms; we don't another one acting as a middle man to talk directly to our representatives. Keep in mind that I'm not against the spirit of your post but that, IMO, it's better for people to contact their reps than to go through Big Tech GenZ/millennial unicorn.