Now that the city is spending money to provide many residential tenants with an attorney at eviction hearings, the number of evictions is roughly the same as other years during a good economy.
But something is fishy: Different city sources are touting different numbers for the same time periods.
Earlier this month, Mayor de Blasio crowed that the increased use of legal services kept 3,000 people in their apartments as evictions dropped to low of 18,000 in 2018 — a 37 percent reduction, since 29,000 were evicted in 2013.
But was that number correct? On the very same day, Council Speaker Corey Johnson revealed his own report. It proclaimed 19,970 evictions in 2018.
Yet the speaker’s unique interactive map showed just 18,997 evictions — about 1,000 fewer, but still a lot closer to 19,000 than the 18,000 the mayor used.
Adding to the confusion, the NYC Open Data Web site lists 21,811 evictions for 2018 — 3,811 more than the mayor touted.
So what are the real numbers?
Who knows?
The City Council has already asked for clarification from the Department of Investigations, which provided the numbers used by the mayor. It has not yet responded.
Nevertheless, Dan Margulies executive director of Associated of Builders and Owners (ABO), said the current eviction numbers are consistent with similar good economic times in the past, when legal services were not so readily available.
According to the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), in 1985, the last low point for evictions, there were 20,283. At that time, 335,000 cases were filed, and 82,000 were on the court calendar.
By 2013, a high of 28,849 evictions took place.
In 2013, just 1 percent of evicted tenants had an attorney, so the mayor kicked off the legal assistance pilot program with $6 million.
But now the Johnson report found spending is nearly 13 times greater for just the 15 ZIP codes that are currently served. The cost was $77 million in fiscal year 2018 and went up to $104 million in fiscal year 2019, the mayor says.
The report also notes that during its first year, “free legal services were provided to more than 87,000 New Yorkers, and 21,955 New Yorkers threatened by eviction were able to stay in their homes.”
That would mean 65,045 were evicted, unless all the family members and others in the apartment were counted as being “helped,” rather than counting per apartment.
“Out of the 230,071 eviction petitions filed by building owners at New York City Housing Court in 2017, only 9 percent, or 20,804 evictions were executed by the City Marshal,” the report says. “This large gap in the evictions filed and executed evictions highlights the importance of access to attorneys in Housing Court.”
Yet the RGB figures for 2017 cite 201,441 filings, with 21,074 evicted — i.e., fewer filings and more evicted.
In comparison, in 1984, the RGB shows 343,000 cases were filed, with 23,058 evicted — and no city lawyers in sight.
The mayor’s office says the number of tenants now represented by an attorney has grown to 30 percent, with funding expected to reach $155 million by 2022.
Margulies of ABO says, “There is no question more assistance is going to tenants, but the primary result is that it is slowing the process.”
That’s because the tenant’s attorneys are filing more motions, Margulies says, so the court cases are costing building owners more in attorney fees while “roughly the same numbers are being evicted.”
To add another layer to taxpayer costs, the city started handing out back rent to those facing eviction — spending $107 million on 40,300 cases in 2011, for an average of $2,666.
Naturally, that number is rising. According to a city report dubbed OneNYC Progress, back rent for 41,500 households cost taxpayers $121 million in fiscal year 2014, which is an average of just under $3,000 per household.
But in the same OneNYC report, a switch to calendar years counts $211 million on 53,200 cases, for an average of $3,966 in back rent — more money for fewer cases.
Still, the administration will justify the spending to keep people in their apartments as it costs even more to pay for homeless shelters that no one wants in their neighborhood. There were 63,495 people being served each night by the end of 2017.
“Paying off tenants’ arrears or connecting them to a voucher and thereby preventing them from becoming homeless is a fiscally sound investment and often costs a fraction of the $61,262 it costs a year to provide emergency shelter for a family,” a Coalition for the Homeless report states.
Yes, every New Yorker wants to see the homeless off the streets and kept from sitting on sidewalks, lying on park benches and subway seats, and sleeping under scaffolds. And certainly that comes with a cost.
But the fact remains that none of the statistics reveal how many on the path to eviction are repeat non-payers who have learned to game the system — with the city as the ultimate mark.
