Judge Claudia Baio heard both sides of that argument this past week in housing court.
The landlord, Rosalina Padilla, sued a family of tenants on a month-to-month lease in a Greenwich Avenue apartment — Javier Delrio, Jennifer Rios, and Aida Negron — for nonpayment of rent for 14 months, totaling almost $12,000 in missed payments.
According to Padilla, the missing payments started in March 2020 when the pandemic first hit. “I spoke to [the tenant] to see if she could contribute to rent. I never saw not even a dollar.”
“I need to fix my home, pay people for the mortgage. I owe a lot of money, it’s really hard,” Padilla added.
Rios disputed her landlord’s allegation of 14 months of nonpayment.
She tried, she said, to give the landlord’s brother a partial payment in March 2020, but he refused to accept. After that, she said, she paid in full for the months of April, May, June, and July. From August on, they did not have enough money to pay the rent.
Judge Baio asked for receipts. The tenants said they paid in cash and did not receive receipts in exchange.
In court documents, they also alleged that the home was in dangerous condition due to water damage, a broken roof, and broken railings. They claimed they tried to reach out to public agencies to address those conditions in February of this year. In court, they did not offer any proof of that outreach, nor could they recall the name of the department they contacted.
Delrio in court added that, during the pandemic, everyone in the home got sick from Covid-19 and lost their jobs.
“It doesn’t mean we didn’t try,” he said. “Right now it’s not about living, it’s about surviving every day. Every day is like a new fight for ourselves.”
He also noted that they don’t have another place to go, should they be evicted.
After the hearing, the tenants filed a request to be covered under the federal Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium. Judge Baio ordered the parties to try mediation again on May 17.
I understand why the state didn't want mass evictions but their manner of carrying this out was to arbitrarily put the burden completely on individual landlords. The state should have simply covered the cost for applicants with loans to cover rent and then argued it out later with those parties. It's a total screw job for landlords (especially poor owner occupants like this).