“It’s a complicated question,” said Rosalind Black, citywide housing director at Legal Services NY, which aids tenants under the landmark city initiative to provide free representation to low-income New Yorkers facing eviction in housing court. Though the results have been overwhelmingly positive, the program has never been funded to cover every eligible tenant.
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The exasperated Rockaway landlord and unnerved neighbors can’t get help from anywhere not from the cops, the fire department or from a housing court crippled by the pandemic.
The Legal Aid Society will tell court administrators on Monday that it can’t take 130 cases in Manhattan and 100 in Brooklyn this month. Another group, Legal Services NYC, can’t take any more cases in Brooklyn.
More than 6,000 eviction lawsuits were filed in the city in February and 7,000 in March, according to the state Office of Court Administration. That’s in addition to more than 200,000 eviction lawsuits filed during the pandemic, most of which were on pause until the eviction moratorium was lifted.