Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing and development.

Still, we, here at Miletti Law®, feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy & distinctive content, which looks to not only educate, but also deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

Following our commitment to continue introducing new series and topics, this blog introduces you to our video titled “How To Evict A Deadbeat Tenant In NYC (Post COVID).” By way of backdrop, we found it necessary to make this video as a way of responding to a situation facing property owners (landlords) in this post-COVID-19 period. So, what is this situation all about? For some time now, the never-ending public crises and the never-ending executive orders issued in effect to the scamndemic have limited the power landlords had with regards to evicting deadbeat tenants. Fortunately, landlords had a flicker of hope through a Supreme Court case a few months ago, which barred the governor from issuing more directives and effecting the endless moratoriums on evictions anymore. Unfortunately, the governor devised an alternative plan, and now landlords have to fight the moratoriums all over again. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the law does not provide a way through which a landlord can evict a tenant.

Assume that, as a landlord, you have this tenant who has been living on your property since 2017 before COVID-19 hit. However, a few months after COVID-19, this tenant stopped paying rent and, following the extensions of the moratoriums on evictions, regulations, and directives, never to pay again for two straight years. Still, you could not evict this tenant who claims to work off the books, has no money, has alleged to have COVID, and that all their efforts to look for a place to relocate have been futile. Luckily, after these endless regulations and moratoriums on evictions are halted in the post-COVID-19 period, you are so fed up and all you want to do is evict such a deadbeat tenant.

At a bare minimum, the landlord has the right to evict this tenant but has to adhere to a set of legal guidelines on how to go about it. Most importantly, you have to understand what you are dealing with, particularly if you are in New York. Since September 2, 2021, New York has had what is known as the Tenant Safe Harbor Act. If you are a lawful occupant or residential tenant and have suffered financial hardship during the COVID-19 covered period, then courts are prohibited from issuing a judgment of possession or a warrant of eviction against you by this Act. This means that, basically, all tenants are allowed to file a “tenant hardship declaration” up until mid-January 2022. Essentially, such tenants are eligible for COVID-19 hardship relief until this time. However, it is critical to keep in mind that landlords could still accrue back rent and any other monies owed to them.

In light of the new tenancy program, the following steps should be taken when evicting a deadbeat tenant:

1. Notice to quit for non-payment of rent.

In line with Section 7(1)(1) of the real property law. While this can be considered to be a 14-day notice to pay, the landlord must also serve the tenant with:

  • A blank form of tenant hardship declaration.
  • List of non-profit legal services to assist and defend the tenant.

Let us assume that the tenant does not care to fill the tenant hardship declaration form and send it to you or responds by saying that they have suffered this hardship and, as a result, they need extra time or would like to apply for the moratorium through January. However, you believe that this tenant is full of crap and is merely manipulating the COVID-19 situation to their advantage. In such a case, you can take an alternative course of action as follows:

2. File a petition for non-payment of rent – as the next step, you could take the matter to court, file a petition that the tenant has defaulted in paying rent, and request a hearing. However, you must also file the following:

  • A copy of the notice to quit for non-payment (the 14-day notice to pay) and proof that this was given to the tenant.
  • Copies of proof of service of the notice to quit, tenant hardship declaration, and list of non-profit legal services (these can be found on the state website).
  • An Affidavit that the landlord did not receive the tenant’s hardship declaration from the tenant.

Essentially, those are the legal guidelines for evicting a deadbeat tenant. Due to the COVID-19 situation, court proceedings are now mostly virtual, relatively inefficient, and, thus, tend to take ages. Therefore, if you are a landlord and have a deadbeat tenant giving you sleepless nights, you should be patient since it might take a while even after you follow these steps. Nonetheless, the Emergency Rental Assistance program is an alternative that landlords can seek out in the spirit of assisting their tenants. Developed as two separate programs (ERA1 created under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 and enacted on December 27, 2020 & ERA2 established under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and enacted on March 11, 2021), the Emergency Rental Assistance program is funded to provide relief and aid to households that are unable to pay rent or utilities.

Please, feel free to view our video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQSzizH8Eh4.

In the meantime, stay tuned for the next instalment and always strive to be #UnusuallyMotivated. In the interim, reach out to us with questions and/or comments on our website at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.