- Met Council has prepared a detailed handout explaining how the
new law works and how to avoid its traps in some cases. If you
are currently in court with your landlord, or are thinking of
withholding rent, call or write us to get a copy of this
important information.
- Met Council is continuing the campaign we launched on October
20, the day the law went into effect, to get this outrageous
measure repealed if it is not struck down by the courts. Please
call us to get involved in this effort.
State Supreme Court Judge Emily Jane Goodman has issued a
temporary restraining order barring the state's new
mandatory-rent-deposit law from being enforced until Dec. 15. In
a dramatic night session conducted in the judge's living room on
Dec. 2 because of an eviction case scheduled for the next day,
Legal Aid Society attorneys argued successfully against the
state attorney general's office that irreparable harm would be
done if the law is allowed to go into effect.
The case before Judge Goodman, Lang v. Pataki, is a class-action
suit challenging the rent-deposit law as unconstitutional. It
was filed Dec 2 by Dainetta Lang (a Bronx mother whose Section 8
benefits were cut off by the city's Housing Authority because
her landlord kept her building in terrible condition) on behalf
of all others facing eviction under the law despite having valid
legal defenses.
Met Council, the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, the
Coalition for the Homeless, and the Harlem Tenants' Council are
also plaintiffs in the suit, which was brought against Governor
George Pataki, the Judges and clerks of the court, and Lang's
landlord, RHQ Associates.
Previously, Civil Court Judge Philip Straniere Staten Island has
ruled part of the new mandatory rent-deposit law
unconstitutional, saying that it violates "the inherent
authority of the Court" to prevent evictions in the interests of
justice, as well as infringing tenants' rights to due process
and equal protection under the law.
The November 10 decision in the case, Targee Management v.
Atanya Jones, declared that the new law is "overly broad"
because it would "result in the tenant being evicted from the
apartment and deprived of that property right without a
hearing." But because the decision was rendered by a trial
judge, not an appeals court, it will not necessarily be binding
on other judges.
In the Targee case, the landlord and tenant had agreed on a
schedule for paying the back rent owed. The tenant, Atanya
Jones, had already paid over $2,660 plus September and October
rent, but had been late in an installment of $388.30 due on
October 20, and the landlord obtained an eviction warrant the
next day.
When Jones went to court seeking an "order to show cause" to
stop the eviction, the Court was confronted with the problem
that the new law (Section 747-a of the state Real Property
Actions and Proceedings Law, the law which governs legal
proceedings involving housing) bars judges from signing such
orders unless the tenant has already paid the full amount of the
judgment, or deposited it into court. Nevertheless, Judge
Straniere signed the order halting the eviction based on the
court's "inherent authority" to "evaluate each application on
its merits" and fashion a remedy that will achieve justice.
Judge Straniere's holding largely followed the arguments
contained in a "friend of the court" (amicus curiae) brief
submitted to all Housing Court judges on behalf of Met Council
and the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, according to
Jeffrey Johnson, a housing attorney at the Legal Aid Society's
Staten Island office. Tenant advocates had pointed out that
Section 747-a was potentially unconstitutional when it was
signed into law by Governor Pataki last June.
The law, they contended, not only deprived poor tenants of due
process and equal protection under the law; it also struck at
the independence of the judiciary, by depriving judges of the
discretion they had under the prior law to order tenants to
deposit rent before they got a stay of eviction only when it was
appropriate given all of the facts of the case. The Targee
decision does not address section 745 (2), the other provision
of the Pataki-Bruno-Silver rent deal, which will result in
tenants being ordered evicted under default judgments without
getting a chance to be heard, if they are unable to deposit rent
into court when a case has either been adjourned twice or is
more than 30 days old.
Additionally, while a significant victory, Judge Straniere's
decision will not necessarily be followed by other judges. For
this reason, Met Council and other tenant advocates will
continue the legal challenge to this assault on tenants and
affordable housing, which it is estimated would result in the
eviction of up to 40,000 additional families each year. "These
changes in the eviction law were not debated by the legislature
or the public before they were enacted in June," pointed out Met
Council director Jenny Laurie. "Most people think "rent deposit"
refers to the security deposit of one month's rent that tenants
have to give their landlord. When the press talked about this
issue at all, they described the measure as one requiring that
when tenants withhold rents as a protest, they put the money in
a safe place, which sounds rather innocuous, and didn't mention
the tens of thousands of evictions this law would cause. We hope
the class action lawsuit will succeed in killing this terrible
law.
