Exploring solutions to Harlem’s high eviction rates

As New York City continues to grapple with a housing crisis, Black and brown renters are hit the hardest. Adding to the sting, is the fact that Harlem’s eviction rates in 2024 are alarmingly higher than the rest of the city.  

Kat Meyers, a staff attorney at Legal Aid Society, who’s been doing tenant advocacy work for over a decade, said that most often she sees the problem concentrated in communities of color. Many of Legal Aid’s clients in Upper Manhattan come from Central Harlem, East Harlem, and Washington Heights, which accurately reflects the data, she said.

“The majority of our clients are female-led households and oftentimes are families with minor children. I would say the largest demographic are women of color, Latina and Black,” she added. “I think of this work as being racial justice work in large part because of the fact that we see these patterns.”

More for the housing courts 

New York City in particular has some of the strongest tenant protections and housing rights compared to the rest of the nation, said Myers. These protections began in the 1940s with affordable housing and back in the 1970s with the push for rent-stabilized buildings. Of course, there was an equally strong landlord push to brazenly deregulate these buildings and jack up rents for years, until the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA) of 2019 was passed. “The changes in 2019 to the law cut away a lot of those routes landlords were using to tack on additional rent increases or deregulate apartments in various ways,” said Myers.

But Black and brown tenants are still at greater risk of losing their homes. 

Myers feels that ending up in housing court to begin with is a symptom of racial inequities operating in the city, especially considering who ends up displaced without legal representation. The good news is that the city’s Right to Counsel law has indeed been successful in helping tenants when faced with evictions. According to the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the law changed landlord behavior and actually discouraged “frivolous filings” in housing courts right after it was passed in 2017. 

Unfortunately, the impact from the pandemic in 2020 took its toll on New Yorkers and the housing courts, causing a ripple effect years later. There was a backlog after the rent and eviction moratoriums were finally lifted. More “moderate-income households” were threatened with evictions because of a loss of income or stability. Black households were most likely to experience “eviction threats” and Latino households were most likely to owe rent arrears, reported CSS. 

Beyond the pandemic, legal service providers have consistently argued for more funding to deal with massive caseloads. The state version has less restrictions than the city right to counsel law.

“We have a right to counsel in the city but it is underfunded. The city has not been paying out as much as it costs to actually have a lawyer for everybody,” said Sam Stein, a housing policy analyst at CSS. “And so a lot of people who qualify for the right to counsel are not getting it.”

The case for and against Good Cause Eviction 

Centuries of structural racism within New York’s housing, lending, and job markets have shaped Black New Yorkers households, said CSS. Black New Yorkers tend to have far less in savings than their white counterparts while paying more in rent in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. CSS and Legal Aid are huge proponents of passing the Good Cause Eviction law, which is sponsored by Assemblymember Pam Hunter and Senator Julia Salazar, to stave off these unfair evictions. Good Cause doesn’t have the same universal appeal as the right to counsel law does. 

Some candidates for the upcoming state assembly race in district 70 are all for Good Cause, like Maria Ordonez and Joshua Clennon. Others, however, were hesitant.

“Eviction is a horrible thing for all parties involved,” said Jordan Wright, whose campaign slogan is about connecting the old and new Harlem. “It begets another problem of what happens next because we already have a short stock of housing as it is, now we have more people who are looking for housing.” 

Wright said if elected to office he would advocate for the Housing Access Voucher Program, which is aimed towards addressing homelessness; the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) that makes a path for tenants to buy their buildings from landlords if they can; and the right to counsel programs. “There are property owners and homeowners who own buildings of all shapes and sizes in varying terms of affordability and we need to be understanding that this would impact all of them in different ways,” said Wright about Good Cause.  

Stein said that smaller landlords with a one to four unit building that they live in their buildings are exempted from the Good Cause law. But in reality, big corporations are also buying up one- and two-family homes all over the state, he said. 

Activist Craig Schley said that Good Cause doesn’t resolve the immediate problems or a lack of jobs and income for tenants. Schley was against the rezoning of Harlem’s 125th Street back in 2007, and credits that shift in development, coupled with the expansion of Columbia university’s campus, for the rising tide of gentrification in Harlem. He said that if elected he’d fund income-targeted housing, create more jobs locally, create an intermediary city agency with social workers that mitigate distressed areas in housing courts. “We have a mediator to keep things in wraps and not clogging the courts,” said Schley. “It creates meaningful jobs and it encourages processes to be fair.”   

The state budget

The battle over the state budget is currently waging past its deadline of April 1, with each camp trying to get their piece of housing legislation or initiative funded. There’s reportedly a chance that the housing portion might include “rollbacks” to rent stabilization laws that will benefit landlords.

“The higher eviction rates in Harlem compared to the rest of the city reflect long-standing systemic inequalities in housing, employment, and education. This impacts the community by exacerbating housing instability, financial stress, and homelessness,” said Shana Harmongoff, who is running in NY State Assembly District 70. “Some of the causes include historical discrimination, lack of affordable housing options, and insufficient legal assistance for tenants facing eviction. It’s imperative that we address these issues by incorporating housing initiatives into the New York State budget, especially during budgeting season.” 

Clennon added that long-term solutions should include “building truly affordable, family-sized housing” that serves vulnerable seniors, young professionals, and working-class families. “Key to this is the development of community land trusts and the revitalization of cooperative homeownership programs to empower tenants genuinely,” he said. 

[updated Thurs, April 9]

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.