Rudy Wants Power to Pick Housing Court Judges

By Kenny Schaeffer

In a move backed by the city's leading landlord group, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wants the power to pick judges for Housing Court, where several recent developments are good news for tenants.

The move would require amending the state constitution to change the procedure for selecting the city's 35 Housing Court judges, who are now appointed by Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman. The Mayor names city judges in Criminal Court and Family Court in the city and makes interim appointments in Civil Court.

The state Office of Court Administration (OCA) has endorsed the proposed amendment, the New York Law Journal reported Nov. 20. Judge Bruce Gould, president of the Housing Court Judges Association, told the Law Journal that he supports it as long as "it does not detrimentally affect many of the fine jurists now sitting on the Housing Court."

Not surprisingly, the Rent Stabilization Association, city landlords' leading lobbyist, also supports it. RSA president Joseph Strasburg told the Law Journal that giving Giuliani power to select judges would increase "accountability."

The RSA and the real-estate industry have been campaigning for years to "reform" Housing Court by speeding up evictions and further limiting tenants' ability to have their voices heard. In 1989, they filed a federal lawsuit, Miller v. Silberman, against the OCA, claiming that landlords are being deprived of due process -- a claim that advocates for low-income tenants find audaciously absurd. (Ninety percent of tenants appearing in Housing Court do not have lawyers representing them, and 25,000 households are evicted every year.)

Yet despite indications that the judge would have dismissed the suit as frivolous, OCA entered into an agreement (or "stipulation") in 1991 consenting to several of the landlords' demands, including requiring courts to issue a written order justifying their decision in cases where they deny an owner's request that rent-striking tenants deposit their rent into court -- even though under existing law landlords are rarely entitled to rent deposits. (Vastly broadening landlords' power to force rent deposits remains one of the real-estate industry's top legislative priorities.)

Owners took OCA back to federal court in 1992, saying it had not complied with the 1991 consent order by speeding evictions up enough. Met Council, joined by the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, the Legal Aid Society, Legal Services of New York, and other advocates, has been involved in the case since 1993, intervening to ensure that the court gets a true picture.

1996 has also marked a year of departures and new arrivals in Housing Court. Two judges who were seen as particularly unfair to unrepresented tenants, Emanuel Haber and Jack Dubinsky, were not reappointed at the expiration of their five-year terms. And on Nov. 21, Douglas Hoffman, who had worked at Legal Aid's Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn offices, was sworn in as a new housing judge by Civil Court Judge Fern Fisher-Brandveen.

Judge Brandveen, formerly a director of Harlem Legal Services, was recently appointed administrator of the New York City Civil Court, which includes jurisdiction over the Housing Courts in all five boroughs. She succeeds Jacqueline Silberman, who many advocates considered well-intentioned but ineffective in resisting the landlords' aggressive "reform" campaign.

The final significant change was the appointment of State Supreme Court Judge Joan Carey as deputy chief administrative judge for all state and local courts in the city. One of her first acts was to appoint a committee to suggest changes in the Housing Court Advisory Council, which has not been fulfilling its legal mandate to report on and make recommendations for improvements in Housing Court. Seats on the council are supposed to be filled by "civic groups, bar associations, and the public," but most are occupied by landlords' lawyers! Judge Carey's committee intends to rectify this corrupt practice.

Meanwhile, the existing Advisory Council is screening the 44 applicants who made the first cut for several Housing Court judgeships that will become vacant on Jan. 1, including one created by the retirement of Judge Margaret Taylor, a Civil Court judge for 20 years, who this year has been sitting in one of the nominally less prestigious housing parts, where most eviction cases are heard.

Judge Taylor's willingness to stand up for unrepresented tenants, the dispossessed and almost dispossessed, earned her the love and appreciation of thousands of tenants and advocates, and the scorn and vilification of landlords and their attorneys. The atmosphere of contempt against her reached a remarkable climax in 1994 with a "mutiny" by dozens of armed court officers who occupied and disrupted her courtroom while it was in session, resulting in disciplinary action against their leader and a clear directive from OCA that the presiding judge in each court has command of any court officers serving there.

Housing Court is a public institution. Only by bringing the truth to the light of day can we make constructive suggestions for improving it, and resist the real estate industry's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing campaign to shift the balance even further their way.

Met Council and Tenant are committed to publicizing conditions in Housing Court and fighting to make it less of a rent-collection agency and eviction mill, and a more balanced forum for tenants' claims for repairs and legal rents. We are particularly interested in the experience of tenants who have to appear in Housing Court without legal representation, which happens in 90% of all cases. We invite readers to send in comments about actual cases, including the index number and the name of the judge. From time to time, we will publish summaries of your comments.