New York instituted the eviction moratorium in March 2020 by then-governor Andrew Cuomo and has been regularly extended since, but current Gov. Kathy Hochul has refused to do so.
The critical economic support program was put in place at the onset of the pandemic. Its ending sets the stage for a possible rush by landlords to attempt to oust low-income renters.
State and city officials expressed concern about the impact of ending the moratorium, estimating that 500,000 New Yorkers required housing aid at a time when the fast-spreading Omicron variant continued to upend social and economic life.
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Protesters took to the streets of the Big Apple on Friday demanding the extension of a moratorium on rental evictions.
'It's unacceptable to start eviction proceedings against 250,000 people in the state of New York, when it's winter. And there's a pandemic still going on. It's just unacceptable,' protest organizer Sarah Lazuy stated.
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'You cannot allow a moratorium to lapse in the middle of winter, during a COVID surge,' insisted Jumaane Williams, a former Brooklyn council member and himself a candidate for the post of governor.
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When it was first instituted, New York was the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Extensions occurred even as other states' federal eviction bans and moratoriums lapsed.
The city of nine million has suffered at least 34,000 deaths throughout the pandemic.
As in previous days, demonstrators waved banners and chanted slogans in front of the New York Public Library.
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'Housing is a human right' read one banner, while another brandished a picture of Hochul with the words, 'Governor of evictions.'
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'It's going to be profound in New York,' said Ellen Davidson, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. 'expect to see case filings explode and housing courts struggling to operate the way they did, pre-COVID.'
'Tens of thousands of women and children of color in New York City are going to get evicted by their landlords, are going to wind up on the streets, are going to wind up in our shelter system. And that just is not possible right,' demanded New York City comptroller Brad Lander.
While multiple landlords may move immediately to evict tenants, Governor Hochul asserted that renters could effectively avoid eviction by applying for a rental relief program, even though the program has been depleted.
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Rental and property prices in Manhattan and Brooklyn, in particular, are astronomical, one of the downsides of daily life in the economic and cultural capital of the United States.
New mayor Eric Adams has made the fight against New York's enormous socio-economic inequalities one of his top priorities.
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