Challenges continue for renters, landlords after moratorium ends

Almost a year ago, Tompkins Weekly covered state and local efforts to address the many challenges renters and landlords were facing due to the pandemic and other factors (see tinyurl.com/ybzr4zbl). Much has changed in the months since, including new efforts surrounding common concerns among county renters, so we’re diving back in to give the latest updates.

Recent trends, challenges

One of the largest challenges sources interviewed for this story referenced for both renters and landlords is increasing costs. For example, numerous renters who responded to a recent renter check-in survey by the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County (HSC) spoke to the high rent costs in Ithaca and beyond.

“Local rent is incredibly expensive,” one respondent wrote. “In addition, the rental market is extremely competitive. In order to live in an apartment that actually met my recommended budget, I would have to increase my household size, further narrowing available options.”

Simone Gatson, a housing specialist at HSC, said that data from past years shows that this isn’t a recent problem. According to Gatson, most residents can and have kept up with their rent since the pandemic hit, but they often neglect other bills to do so.

“Thirty-nine percent of the people who paid all of their months of rent in 2021 are struggling to pay their bills,” she said. “And 86% of people who didn’t pay rent in 2021 are struggling to pay other bills. So, what we’re seeing in terms of a trend is that a lot of people are prioritizing their rent and foregoing other bills to pay their rent.”

The volatile housing market, which Tompkins Weekly has covered before (tinyurl.com/yapy2v36), combined with increasing costs for things like goods, services and fuel, has also had a significant effect on landlords. Kayla Lane, licensed real estate agent and member of the Landlords Association of Tompkins County, said she’s seen “extreme supply and demand” impacting landlords’ practices throughout the county.

“We have extreme inflation,” she said. “The rate [at] which goods and services are costing us as consumers is just exponentially high. So, everybody can relate to the cost of gas or the cost of your bread or your milk, so that’s relatable. And it does trickle down to real estate taxes. It trickles down to utility costs. It trickles down to us paying a contractor to put a new roof on. So, all of that plays into the rent that is applied to certain units. So, I think we’re going to see rent prices probably continue to go up.”

Another common concern among area renters has to do with the quality of the properties they’re staying in. Over 200 people have responded to HSC’s survey since its launch in March, and several respondents referenced a great lack of responsiveness from landlords.

“Landlords in Ithaca are unresponsive and truly do not care about their tenants,” one survey responder wrote. “While I have been fortunate to afford and have stable housing during my time here, I am always amazed by how little the landlords do and how there is no incentive for them to do more. Even though my partner and I pay $2,350 a month in rent, we have a long list of issues with the apartment that the landlord has been aware of for nearly a year.”

Keith McCafferty, managing attorney at Legal Assistance of Western New York (LawNY), said that he’s also seen these concerns among the tenants he works with, particularly low-income renters.

“A number of landlords, particularly who rent to lower-income folks, seem to not be complying with [the] requirement of getting a certificate of compliance or getting it updated,” he said. “We find a lot of tenants are living in places where certificates have expired but the landlord is still collecting the rent and not making repairs. So, for lower-income people living in the city, they’re either living in a substandard place, which is not in compliance, or they have Section 8 to be able to afford the place that they’re living.”

While this is a common problem, sources interviewed pointed to the fact that this experience is not universal. Lane, for example, said that she hasn’t heard any complaints in regard to landlord responsiveness and attentiveness among the landlords and renters she works with. And some HSC survey respondents also spoke to a positive tenant-landlord relationship.

“I love renting here,” one wrote. “It’s clean, quiet, well-kept, and secure, and the homeowners have been terrific landlords, with great communication, responsiveness, and overall a sense that they trust, respect, and appreciate me. It feels wonderful.”

In response to these and other challenges, many county organizations and groups have worked to do what they can to help, whether by providing legal assistance, as is the case with programs like LawNY, or by providing financial assistance, as Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS) has done.

INHS recently exhausted all of its funding in its Rental Assistance Program, which provided 143 households with $461,186 in rental assistance by August of last year (see ithacanhs.org/rentalassistance). Once those funds were exhausted, INHS hired new staff to help connect residents with other rental assistance programs from the state and federal level.

INHS also recently launched another program to help its own tenants, as Justina Fetterly, INHS strategic communications manager, explained.

“We also put together … the INHS Rental Forgiveness Program for tenants that are in arrears,” she said. “So, how that program works is for every on-time, full rent payment up to five months that a resident makes, INHS will forgive up to 20% of their arrears, so their back payment, their back rent. So, essentially, you can have 100% of your back rent forgiven if you make five full payments.”

ERAP and the eviction moratorium

Much of our coverage last year centered around the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program, better known as ERAP. Since then, ERAP applications have closed due to the funds being exhausted and then opened again after a recent court order. And while applications are open for ERAP now, there is “currently no federal funding available to provide assistance for new applicants in most areas of the state,” according to state administration (see tinyurl.com/y7bg46bn).

This reopening has had a significant impact on the effects of another piece of legislation that has been top of mind for many renters and landlords alike — the eviction moratorium. The state’s eviction moratorium ended Jan. 15 (see tinyurl.com/ydxkfxp5), and though many expected a rush of evictions in the weeks that followed, the actual results were underwhelming.

Bill Niebel, an adjunct law professor at Cornell Law School and director of the school’s Tenants Advocacy Practicum, said that even though there hasn’t been a “tsunami” of evictions brought to Ithaca City Court like some were expecting, there has still been an increase.

“Even in December, some landlords were starting to file in preparation for the end of the moratorium,” he said. “So, there’s definitely been more eviction cases [going] on each week than there were in November, for example, while … not as exponential, probably because ERAP applications are being accepted again. And so, that’s prevented some of the explosion of evictions that we were expecting.”

Though there is no funding for ERAP right now, tenants can still avoid eviction if they have a pending ERAP application, according to New York state. Sources who work with tenants referenced this as a mostly positive resource to help tenants in need. The landlord side, though, is a bit more mixed, as Lane relayed.

“ERAP, in a sense, is almost another moratorium,” she said. “We weren’t waiting for the moratorium end to act on anything, necessarily. If anything, we were kind of hoping ERAP was better administrated and better handled so that the tenants that did apply and were in need of those funds got them quicker, more efficiently. So, I think at this point, now, we’re just wondering what’s next. The courts are open. They’re hearing cases. … We’re kind of at a standstill.”

McCafferty added that one of the main reasons why ERAP applications are still open is because the state is hoping and currently advocating for more funding.

“Some of the states around the country didn’t spend all their money, and New York state has asked the feds to repurpose or reprogram some of that money from other states to New York, which has the need and has demonstrated the ability to spend the money,” he said. “I think there is also, in the current state budget negotiations, the possibility of more money flowing into the ERAP program.”

Local legislation

Locally, there are a couple legislative efforts in the works that sources mentioned as crucial to addressing some of the issues referenced thus far. These include Right to Renew legislation (also known as Good Cause legislation) and Right to Counsel legislation.

On the state level, there is Right to Renew legislation in the works, but on the local level, efforts have largely hit a standstill. The state’s proposed legislation would set rent increase limits and allow for automatic lease renewals under most circumstances. Most importantly, landlords could still evict a tenant, but they would have to prove “good cause,” with acceptable reasons for eviction including failure to pay rent or causing a nuisance.

“Usually, there’s some reason that the landlord doesn’t want to renew or doesn’t want to continue the tenancy,” Niebel said. “But it’s kind of shrouded. It’s hidden. It’s veiled. They don’t have to prove it. They don’t even have to allege it. They don’t have to tell anyone. So, it’s a real cover for illegal reasons or discriminatory reasons. So, to me, I’ve always said as a legal aid attorney, it makes so much sense that the reason should be out there. [The] landlord should have to allege it. They should have to prove it, the reason, and a judge should be able to review it.”

Lane expressed frustration on the lack of movement on the Right to Renew conversation locally.

“I have a letter that we sent on behalf of the entire Landlords Association begging [Common Council] to respond to us, and there’s been no response,” she said. “We’re going to continue to advocate for our rights as property owners, but I would really like to see Common Council reciprocate and at least give us the professional response that we’re looking for. Their current proposed legislation is drastically going to change the way in which we operate, and they owe it to us and to themselves and to the renters at large to listen to us.”

About five months ago, a Right to Counsel fund was established in the city of Ithaca, which grants legal support for people facing eviction within the city, though those funds have yet to be distributed. This measure received universal support among the sources interviewed for this story, with many citing the value of having representation for both landlords and tenants in eviction court.

“I’m really excited for Right to Counsel to start,” Gatson said. “Even though tenants have rights, if you don’t have someone who’s there in court with the tenant to be able to advocate for those rights or present them to the judge, it’s almost as if the tenant doesn’t have those rights. So, [I’m] really excited for every tenant, up to the income threshold, … who goes into court to have that opportunity to have a lawyer.”

Looking ahead

Several sources interviewed said that while the efforts taken so far have helped many renters and landlords, there’s still much work to be done. Lane, for example, voiced her desire for an improved relationship between landlords and tenants.

“If everybody can have a good working relationship, I think in general, we can just find that the way in which housing is provided locally can continue to be, hopefully, successful for both ends, both parties,” she said. “Overall, I’m really grateful for all the residents that we have, and I really enjoy providing housing for our community. So, I just hope the dynamic doesn’t change so much that it changes the way in which we continue to enjoy what we do.”

Gatson also spoke to that relationship, saying that she’d like to see more understanding surrounding rent affordability for tenants.

“I think, a lot of the times, we focus on tenants that don’t pay rent, or how high the rents are, but that … a fresh take on it was even just the habitability for the price is not what it needs to be,” she said. “So, seeing more programs focused towards that or even just landlords trying to genuinely connect with their tenants and have a positive relationship or relationship at all, from some of these responses, it seems, would be a cool cultural shift.”

Fetterly also spoke to the need for more education and advocacy and added that more financial aid would go a long way.

“I do think that education about tenants’ rights is really important, so giving our residents the ability to learn more about what their rights are, because it can be taken so out of context,” she said. “And of course, extra funding, any type of funding to help anyone who’s low to moderate income find that safe and stable housing is critical to especially Ithaca with the housing crisis and housing stock. Any type of emergency funding, anything like that, we’re always excited to see and rooting for.”

McCafferty added that Ithaca and Tompkins County have great need for more affordable housing, a problem many have referenced in past Tompkins Weekly articles.

“We have a responsibility towards our low-income neighbors, residents, community members, to find places where they can afford to live that are decent, to not just push them out of the area because things are too expensive here,” he said. “That just moves the problem, like we see in the surrounding areas [that] rent’s increasing in the towns like Groton, Trumansburg, Dryden, all over the area.”

To learn more about the organizations included in this article, visit LawNY’s website at lawny.org, the Tenants Advocacy Practicum’s website at tinyurl.com/yb2oagpm, the Landlords Association’s website at landlordsassociation.com, HSC’s website at hsctc.org and INHS’s website at ithacanhs.org. Residents are also encouraged to call 2-1-1 for help navigating these and other resources.

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@vizellamedia.com.