The Legal Aid Society called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and other Albany lawmakers, on Monday, to extend New York’s eviction moratorium which is set to expire in just a few weeks on Tuesday, August 31, 2021, and protect New Yorkers against the highly contagious Delta variant.

This past December, Albany lawmakers enacted legislation that froze all eviction proceedings until March 1, 2021, and through April 30, 2021 for those tenants who submitted a hardship form with the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA), as reported. Additional legislation was passed this spring with the same safeguards until the end of August, as reported.

Meanwhile, the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues amid vaccination rates in the Bronx that are the lowest in the City, as reported. The law firm cited a recent New York Times report that stated that the City had experienced “50 new infections per 100,000 residents over the previous week.” Law firm officials said that per these figures, all of New York City now falls under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendation to resume mask-wearing in public indoor spaces.

The law firm also cited newly published research in the American Journal of Epidemiology, which strongly supports the public-health rationale that eviction prevention can help stop COVID-19 cases and deaths. Law firm officials said the analysis found that mortality increased five-fold in states after moratoriums expired. They said based on the data available, the authors concluded over 10,000 lives could have been saved.

“Without action, thousands of families from across the state will face inevitable eviction come September, losing their homes just as we experience a surge in Delta variant COVID-19 cases,” said Judith Goldiner, attorney-in-charge of the civil law reform unit at The Legal Aid Society. “New York State’s Emergency Rent Relief Program has not acted quickly enough to get money into the hands of tenants and landlords who need it. Fewer than 5,000 applications out of 160,000 have been processed in the past two months.”

Goldiner added, “Less than half of 1 percent of over $2 billion dollars in available aid has been paid. The moratorium must be extended to allow time for those funds to be distributed. We call on Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature to act at once. Until the Delta and other variants subside throughout New York City and the rest of the state, we call on Gov. Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie to renew the moratorium through the end of the pandemic.”