Andrea Stewart-Cousins (Getty)
UPDATED, Dec. 15 2020, 4:38 p.m.: The New York state legislature is a house divided when it comes to extending protections against eviction.
The state Senate is pushing a blanket moratorium on all residential evictions for an indefinite period, according to sources, but the state Assembly opposes the measure.
The move to block all residential evictions would be a departure from the legislature’s approach in recent months. Lawmakers have ceded control to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has preferred to extend existing legislation.
The law governing residential evictions, the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, allows property owners to seek money judgments, rather than evictions, for non-payment cases. The protections the law grants expire in two weeks. But the spike in coronavirus cases across the state has pushed the Senate, which secured a Democratic supermajority in November’s election, to consider taking things much further.