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While evictions for rent nonpayment might be on hold amid the coronavirus pandemic, some tenants in New York City are dealing with displacements of another sort.
When a multifamily building poses a threat to its occupants, the city issues an order to vacate. Decreed by either the fire department, building department, health department or the department of housing preservation and development (HPD), orders to vacate pertain to inhabitable situations – think illegal gas lines that could ignite a fire or an actual blaze or an unsteady roof that could come crashing.
Often typed in all uppercase letters, orders to vacate instruct tenants of whole buildings or certain units to leave the premises until their landlords mend the hazardous conditions.
“It’s not safe for tenants to live in that place,” a spokesperson for HPD says. “They need to be vacated, because if they stay in there, they’re in immediate danger.”
The Red Cross of Greater New York, which helps displaced renters find emergency shelter, says it has assisted during more than 30 vacate orders since the start of March, when the coronavirus began to spread across the country.
Because of their essential, urgent nature, orders to vacate usually grant residents only a couple of days, if not less, to move out – in a city with a limited rental stock at any time.
“In an ordinary case where there’s an eviction proceeding, the tenant has at least weeks to deal with the situation,” says Edward Josephson, director of litigation at Legal Services NYC. “Here, that order goes on the door and if the tenant tries to remain there, the landlord or the city could call the police and have them taken out.”
Regardless of which city department issues the order, HPD helps displaced residents secure long-term housing. That is because some landlords may procrastinate making repairs.
Josephson advises tenants to “start a case in housing court to get an order directing the landlord to fix whatever needs to be fixed. Because otherwise the landlord can just let the building sit indefinitely. The city may or may not take any action to actually get the underlying condition fixed. The attendant may never get their apartment back.”
The effects of the coronavirus
While orders to vacate must be heeded, in a time when NYC has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., residents with no other housing options may find themselves living in Red Cross’ emergency shelters for an indefinite period.
Before the coronavirus crisis, the Red Cross used to provide accommodations for only 2-4 nights. Then, HPD could work on long-term solutions for those who needed them. Today, however, HPD is unable to do so until it reopens its office, which is currently shuttered with staff working remotely due to the virus. (Required building inspections continue, though.)
“Whenever the Red Cross steps in in the first couple of days and places people in temporary housing, we are just prolonging that until our offices are back open again,” the HPD spokesperson says. “But people can still reach out to ask any questions they have.”
Josephson says, “Every once in a while a landlord, especially a large landlord with multiple buildings, might be nice and put tenants in temporary apartments that are vacant. But I can’t think of an example offhand. I mean, I believe it’s happened over the years but mostly they take advantage of these situations, and hope that tenants will just never come back.”