Formerly homeless Bronx family faces eviction in case advocates say highlights need for ‘Good Cause’ tenant protections

A Bronx landlord is trying to evict a formerly homeless family after allegedly leaving their apartment in a state of disrepair and refusing for months to supply it with basic utilities like heat and water, the Daily News has learned.

Housing advocates say the taxing eviction case playing out in Bronx Civil Court highlights the need for state lawmakers in Albany to this year pass “Good Cause,” a piece of legislation that would beef up eviction protections for millions of New York renters.

On the other side, landlords and their supporters argue the “Good Cause” bill would effectively force property owners to offer new leases to any tenants who don’t want to move out.

The beef over the bill comes as the city’s eviction rate is ticking up in the wake of pandemic-related measures like the eviction moratorium and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program expiring last year. Data show more than 4,400 households in the city were evicted between January 2022, when the moratorium lapsed, and last month.

Meanwhile, homelessness is increasing, with the city shelter population is at an all-time high. Rents are skyrocketing, too, with the median monthly rent in Manhattan hitting $4,097 in January, another all-time high, while affordable housing production is slowing down, according to data from Mayor Adams’ administration.

Caught in the middle are tenants like Thomas Ellis, his wife Cindy Reyes and his eight children.

They moved into their ground-floor apartment in the Bronx’s Van Nest section in August 2020 after living in city homeless shelters. Their landlord, Jagjit Hora, who owns the Van Nest Ave. building via an LLC, received $15,219 upfront from the city Human Resources Administration’s low-income CityFHEPS program to cover their rent for nearly a year, records from the agency show.

Nonetheless, the landlord has failed to provide steady access to hot water, cooking gas and functioning radiators since Reyes, Ellis and his kids moved in, according to court papers filed by Legal Aid Society attorneys representing the family.

Speaking to The News last week, Ellis, a 64-year-old retired carpenter, said his family still doesn’t have proper access to utilities. He said they’re relying on a single hot plate for cooking and space heaters for warmth, and that the apartment is infested with rats.

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Recently, Ellis said he’s nailed plywood to the walls to cover up holes rats and mice crawl through. The landlord, he said, has refused to help.

“It’s been horrible, and it’s been hard. My kids keep getting sick,” he said, noting that both his wife and one of his children suffer from asthma.

According to records from the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Hora’s building has 41 open violations, including one from May 2022 for “rats in the entire apartment” occupied by Ellis’ family.

Hora did not return multiple requests for comment via his attorney this month. The landlord has not responded in court to the allegations of substandard conditions in his Van Nest building.

Ellis’ family resides in the apartment without a lease, and he said the anxiety of his living situation has been exacerbated by the fact that Hora is pursuing a so-called “holdover” eviction case against his family that was first filed in May 2022, court records show.

Hora is able to pursue the eviction case because under current laws, landlords who own buildings that aren’t covered by rent regulations can deny tenants renewal leases without a specific reason.

As a result, if a tenant refuses to vacate an unregulated apartment after not being offered a renewal lease — as is the case for Ellis’ family — a landlord can evict them via a holdover proceeding that does not need to be predicated on a failure to pay rent or some other transgression. The only reason for eviction listed by Hora in his court petition is that Ellis’ family resides in the apartment “without permission” since their lease expired April 30, 2022.

Margarita Gomez, a Legal Aid lawyer representing Ellis’ family, said she’s arguing in court that Hora’s alleged failure to supply utilities — especially given that he’s accepted CityFHEPS payments — should warrant her clients being granted a new lease for their apartment.

“But even if they got a new one-year lease, the landlord could come back after a year and do the same thing again,” Gomez said.

That’s where Good Cause comes in.

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Since 2019, progressive Democratic lawmakers in Albany have pushed for passing a bill that would amend state law in such a way that evictions in all buildings — regardless of rent regulation status — could only be based on nonpayment of rent or nuisance reasons, like destruction of property and harassment of other tenants.

“If they don’t pass ‘Good Cause’ this year, we are going to see more and more cases like this,” Michael McKee, a veteran housing activist who leads TenantsPAC, said of Ellis’ family.

The legislation would not prevent property owners from making rent increases, a fact McKee said disputes arguments from landlords that the bill would strip them of autonomy over their own buildings.

Still, the bill would allow tenants to contest nonpayment evictions that involve rent increases deemed unreasonable.

Lourdes Zapata, president of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp., said such rent-increase restrictions could backfire.

Zapata said the COVID-19 pandemic has put a severe financial squeeze on nonprofit affordable housing developers, and that the imposition of rent-hike caps in unregulated buildings could drive such companies out of business, resulting in a depletion of the city’s affordable-housing stock.

“By capping rent increases, good-cause eviction would drive these nonprofit organizations further into debt and force many to shut down or sell their properties to for-profit landlords, leaving the tenants who rely on us without affordable homes,” Zapata wrote in an op-ed for The News last month.

[ NY advocates, lawmakers renew push for ‘good cause’ eviction and other tenant-friendly bills as Hochul, Adams prioritize housing ]

Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, agreed and claimed evictions would become nearly impossible under Good Cause.

“It would strip landlords of their ownership rights and provide permanent tenancy at controlled, minimal rent increases to tenants of unregulated apartments for as long as they want to live there,” said Strasburg, whose group represents more than 25,000 landlords in New York.

Brooklyn state Sen. Julia Salazar, a democratic socialist who introduced the current iteration of the “Good Cause” bill, said Strasburg’s claim that landlords would be restrained to “minimal” rent hikes is false since they wouldn’t have to justify any increase that falls within 150% of the Consumer Price Index. Rent hikes that go above that would also be permissible if they’re based on major market changes or renovations, she noted.

Salazar acknowledged that “holdover evictions wouldn’t really exist anymore” if “Good Cause” became law, and argued that’s for the better.

“It would dissuade landlords from engaging in this type of behavior in the first place,” Salazar said, referring to Hora’s alleged failure to maintain Ellis’ apartment.

Given the city’s housing and homeless crises, Gomez, the Legal Aid lawyer, said keeping tenants in their homes should be a top priority, and argued “Good Cause” will help do just that.

Like Salazar, Gomez also said situations like the one impacting Ellis’ family are enabled by the “Good Cause”-free status quo.

Ellis’ landlord owns six other nonregulated buildings in the Bronx, according to public records. In one of those buildings, the landlord has brought another holdover eviction case against a tenant who has complained of spotty utility access, court records show.

“With ‘Good Cause,’ cases like this would probably never have been in court,” Gomez said.

Gov. Hochul would ultimately have to sign any “Good Cause” bill passed by the Legislature for it to become law.

The governor has kept mum on whether she supports the concept and notably did not include “Good Cause” protections in her executive budget proposal unveiled last month. Asked about “Good Cause,” Hochul spokesman Justin Henry said last week that the governor’s “working with the Legislature on a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers.”

Ellis, who said he hopes “Good Cause” passes this year, told The News he has been looking for a new apartment while battling his eviction case. But he said he’s struggling to find a landlord willing to accommodate his large family and a unit he can afford on his fixed income.

“If I have to go back to shelter I will, because I can handle that, but the problem is that I have eight kids,” he said. “That’s not fair to them. They didn’t do nothing to deserve this.”