Regular Session - December 28, 2020
3077
1 NEW YORK STATE SENATE
2
3
4 THE STENOGRAPHIC RECORD
5
6
7
8
9 ALBANY, NEW YORK
10 December 28, 2020
11 1:11 p.m.
12
13
14 REGULAR SESSION
15
16
17
18 SENATOR BRIAN A. BENJAMIN, Acting President
19 ALEJANDRA N. PAULINO, ESQ., Secretary
20
21
22
23
24
25
3078
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
3 Senate will come to order.
4 I ask everyone present to please
5 rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
6 (Whereupon, the assemblage recited
7 the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.)
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: In the
9 absence of clergy, let us bow our heads in a
10 moment of silent reflection or prayer.
11 (Whereupon, the assemblage respected
12 a moment of silence.)
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
14 reading of the Journal.
15 THE SECRETARY: In Senate, Sunday,
16 December 27, 2020, the Senate met pursuant to
17 adjournment. The Journal of Saturday,
18 December 26, 2020, was read and approved. On
19 motion, Senate adjourned.
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Without
21 objection, the Journal stands approved as read.
22 Presentation of petitions.
23 Messages from the Assembly.
24 Messages from the Governor.
25 Reports of standing committees.
3079
1 Reports of select committees.
2 Communications and reports from
3 state officers.
4 Motions and resolutions.
5 Senator Gianaris.
6 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President, I
7 move to adopt the Resolution Calendar.
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: All in
9 favor of adopting the Resolution Calendar please
10 signify by saying aye.
11 (Response of "Aye.")
12 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
13 Opposed, nay.
14 (No response.)
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
16 Resolution Calendar is adopted.
17 Senator Gianaris.
18 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President,
19 on behalf of Majority Leader Andrea
20 Stewart-Cousins, I hand up the following
21 conference membership for the Majority Conference
22 and ask that it be filed in the Journal.
23 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
24 hand-ups are received and filed.
25 SENATOR GIANARIS: There will be an
3080
1 immediate meeting of the Rules Committee in
2 Room 332.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: There
4 will be an immediate meeting of the Rules
5 Committee in Room 332.
6 SENATOR GIANARIS: The Senate will
7 stand at ease.
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
9 Senate will stand at ease.
10 (Whereupon, the Senate stood at ease
11 at 1:12 p.m.)
12 (Whereupon, the Senate reconvened at
13 1:20 p.m.)
14 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
15 Senate will return to order.
16 Senator Gianaris.
17 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President,
18 is there a report of the Rules Committee at the
19 desk?
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: There
21 is a report of the Rules Committee at the desk.
22 The Secretary will read.
23 THE SECRETARY: Senator
24 Stewart-Cousins, from the Committee on Rules,
25 reports the following bill:
3081
1 Senate Print 9114, by Senator
2 Kavanagh, an act establishing the "COVID-19
3 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act
4 of 2020."
5 The bill is reported direct to third
6 reading.
7 SENATOR GIANARIS: Move to accept
8 the report of the Rules Committee.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: All in
10 favor of accepting the Committee on Rules report
11 signify by saying aye.
12 (Response of "Aye.")
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
14 Opposed, nay.
15 (No response.)
16 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
17 report is accepted and before the house.
18 SENATOR GIANARIS: Please take up
19 the supplemental calendar.
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
21 Secretary will read.
22 THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
23 1034, Senate Print 9114, by Senator Kavanagh, an
24 act establishing the "COVID-19 Emergency Eviction
25 and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2020."
3082
1 SENATOR LANZA: Lay it aside.
2 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Lay it
3 aside.
4 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President,
5 can -- I'm sorry. I jumped the gun.
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
7 Gianaris, that completes the reading of today's
8 supplemental calendar.
9 SENATOR GIANARIS: Now,
10 Mr. President, can we take up the controversial
11 calendar.
12 THE SECRETARY: Calendar Number
13 1034, Senate Print 9114, by Senator Kavanagh, an
14 act establishing the "COVID-19 Emergency Eviction
15 and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2020."
16 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
17 Lanza, why do you rise?
18 SENATOR LANZA: Mr. President, I
19 believe there's an amendment at the desk. I
20 waive the reading of that amendment and ask that
21 Senator Helming be recognized and be heard.
22 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Thank
23 you, Senator Lanza.
24 Upon review of the amendment, in
25 accordance with Rule 6, Section 4B, I rule it
3083
1 nongermane and out of order at this time.
2 SENATOR LANZA: Mr. President,
3 accordingly, I appeal the chair's ruling and I
4 ask that Senator Helming be recognized.
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
6 appeal has been made and heard and recognized,
7 and Senator Helming may be heard.
8 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you,
9 Mr. President.
10 Mr. President, this amendment is
11 germane, as it strictly amends our bill-in-chief.
12 The bill-in-chief is more than a moratorium on
13 evictions and foreclosures; it is a complete
14 shutdown of all proceedings.
15 The provisions of the amendment I've
16 presented on behalf of the Minority Conference
17 provide commonsense fixes to the inevitable
18 eviction bubble that the bill-in-chief only
19 perpetuates.
20 Our amendment does a number of
21 things. It implements income caps similar to the
22 CDC moratorium, to ensure that our neediest
23 populations have protections. It provides a
24 mechanism for tenants to make significantly
25 reduced payments and receive eviction
3084
1 protections. This will lower their final debt
2 burden and provide cash flow to landlords. It
3 will allow eviction proceedings to occur, but not
4 be executed.
5 And, Mr. President, we all can agree
6 that everyone should feel safe in their home.
7 Our amendment provides for the enhanced security
8 and well-being of tenants and landlords by
9 removing the unfair protections for tenants that
10 may damage or disrupt their units for reasons
11 that have absolutely nothing to do with financial
12 hardship or the COVID pandemic.
13 For these reasons, Mr. President, I
14 strongly urge you to reconsider your ruling.
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Thank
16 you, Senator Helming.
17 I want to remind the house that the
18 vote is on the procedures of the house and the
19 ruling of the chair.
20 Those in favor of overruling the
21 chair signify by saying aye.
22 SENATOR LANZA: Mr. President, I
23 request a show of hands.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: A show
25 of hands has been requested and so ordered.
3085
1 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President,
2 we have agreed to waive the showing of the hands
3 given the pandemic rules and procedures we're
4 following, and we agreed to record each member of
5 the Minority in the affirmative on this vote.
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Without
7 objection, so ordered.
8 Announce the results.
9 THE SECRETARY: Ayes, 20.
10 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
11 ruling of the chair stands, and the bill-in-chief
12 is before the house.
13 Senator Helming, are you on the bill
14 or are you asking questions?
15 SENATOR HELMING: On the bill,
16 Mr. President.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
18 Senator Helming on the bill.
19 SENATOR HELMING: Mr. President,
20 people do need help. We can all agree to that.
21 There are hundreds of thousands of people who
22 have been impacted and are hurting through no
23 fault of their own. We need to be discussing a
24 comprehensive plan on safely reopening businesses
25 so people can get back to their jobs and paying
3086
1 their bills.
2 Mr. President, will the sponsor
3 yield for a question?
4 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
5 the sponsor yield?
6 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
7 Mr. President.
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
9 sponsor yields.
10 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
11 Mr. President.
12 Senator Kavanagh, in section PART A
13 of the bill there is reference to the definition
14 of a "'Tenant' includes a residential tenant, a
15 lawful occupant of a dwelling unit, or any other
16 person responsible for paying rent, use and
17 occupancy, or any other financial obligation
18 under a residential lease or tenancy agreement,
19 but does not include a residential tenant or
20 lawful occupant with a seasonal use lease where
21 such tenant has a primary residence to which to
22 return to."
23 Tourism is such a significant
24 industry in New York State, and I'm wondering how
25 this language here could impact seasonal-use
3087
1 leases. How does this apply, can you explain,
2 like to Airbnb, bed-and-breakfasts? Is there any
3 sort of impact on these businesses?
4 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you.
5 Through you, Mr. President, I thank my colleague
6 for the question.
7 The bill is intended and this
8 definition -- which is the definition of "Tenant"
9 in the section that is intended to prevent
10 evictions of people who are experiencing
11 hardship -- the definition is intended to be
12 broad. It includes people who have a formal
13 lease and a tenancy as well as people who might
14 be occupants on a month-to-month lease or
15 occupying their home in another circumstance.
16 However, as my colleague notes,
17 there is an exception where there is a seasonal
18 lease where the tenant has a primary -- another
19 primary residence to which to attend. That is
20 intended to protect against some circumstances
21 we've heard about where somebody is occupying
22 what is essentially a vacation home or a home in
23 a place where there's a big tourism industry, and
24 they have another home to go to and they choose
25 not to do that.
3088
1 In that case, they are not protected
2 by the specific provisions of this bill. And
3 that should be helpful to property owners in
4 those communities.
5 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
6 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
7 yield?
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
9 the sponsor yield?
10 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
11 Mr. President.
12 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
13 sponsor yields.
14 SENATOR HELMING: Senator Kavanagh,
15 in the past you and I have talked about the
16 challenges that mobile home owners have faced and
17 mobile home park owners face. In New York State
18 we both know that there are hundreds of thousands
19 of people who live in mobile homes. How does
20 this legislation impact mobile home owners who
21 currently have debt, since these dwellings are
22 often registered as a vehicle?
23 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you for
24 the question. Through you, Mr. President.
25 First of all, as my colleague knows,
3089
1 we passed some of the strongest protections in
2 America as part of the Housing Stability and
3 Tenant Protection Act for people who live in
4 mobile home parks.
5 There are about 170,000 households
6 in New York who live in mobile home parks.
7 Generally speaking, those folks are either
8 leasing a space and count as tenants for the
9 purpose of this legislation and others, or in
10 some cases they own the structure they're on and
11 they're leasing the land.
12 In either case, I believe that they
13 would be covered by the provisions -- either the
14 homeowner provisions of this bill or the tenant
15 provisions of this bill. And in either case, if
16 somebody were trying to foreclose on a loan
17 against their home, that that would be blocked by
18 this bill. And if somebody were trying to evict
19 them as a tenant, that would be blocked by this
20 bill.
21 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
22 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
23 yield?
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
25 the sponsor yield?
3090
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
2 Mr. President.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR HELMING: So along the same
6 lines, how will this legislation impact park
7 owners?
8 In my experience throughout my
9 district, when I meet with the park owners -- and
10 we have quite a few in upstate New York -- they
11 rely on every single penny that they collect from
12 the renters in their parks or Section 8 housing,
13 whatever it happens to be. But the loss of any
14 of that income is truly going to stifle their
15 ability to maintain their parks, things like
16 garbage pickup, sewer, water improvements,
17 electric improvements. I've seen horrendous
18 things happening in these parks, but I've seen an
19 improvement over the last couple of years.
20 But I want to know how this
21 legislation will impact these park owners.
22 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
23 Mr. President. You know, the pandemic has caused
24 tremendous financial hardship for people in
25 virtually every aspect of our society and our
3091
1 economy. We have restaurants that are unable to
2 fully function, we have all kinds of businesses
3 that are not allowed to bring their employees
4 back. And, yes, we have property owners who are
5 renting dwelling units either in mobile home and
6 manufactured home parks or landlords throughout
7 the state.
8 We understand that a situation where
9 tenants are unable to pay their rent is a
10 hardship for those folks. And we in the Majority
11 have been working on solutions for that. We
12 passed the Emergency Rent Relief Act earlier in
13 the session which put $100 million out there to
14 help cover the cost of rent. And many of us have
15 advocated for additional rent relief out of the
16 federal government -- and homeowner relief,
17 incidentally.
18 It is good news that the President
19 of the United States finally signed a federal
20 relief bill into law. Many of us had hoped that
21 that would happen in June or July and had
22 advocated for that. But at this point we do see
23 a substantial amount of financial assistance
24 coming to New York that is intended to cover rent
25 costs. We estimate that $1.3 billion of federal
3092
1 relief will be coming to New York. Our next
2 challenge is going to be to get that money out
3 into the hands to relieve the residents of this
4 state and people who are renting them property
5 who also have costs during this time.
6 In the meantime, though, we think it
7 is a critical public health measure to prevent
8 people from being displaced from their homes
9 against their will, whether they be tenants or
10 they be homeowners, because that is something
11 that is going to save lives during this pandemic.
12 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you.
13 Through you, Mr. President, if the sponsor will
14 continue to yield.
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
16 the sponsor yield?
17 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Happily,
18 Mr. President.
19 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
20 sponsor yields.
21 SENATOR HELMING: Senator Kavanagh,
22 you mentioned the many relief programs that are
23 available to tenants and to landlords, and I'm
24 curious what your thoughts are on the state
25 program. There was a state program -- we
3093
1 received funding from the federal government that
2 came to the state, tenants were supposed to be
3 able to fill out a form, is my understanding,
4 that they needed assistance with their rent, and
5 the state was then supposed to release money back
6 to the landlords.
7 How is that program working? And is
8 there anything in this legislation that supports
9 that program? Or, if you believe it needs to be
10 improved, anything in here that would improve
11 that so that we can move more of that money that
12 we're sitting on out to the people who need it?
13 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you for
14 the question. Through you, Mr. President.
15 That program was intended at the
16 time to be a very limited program, because we had
17 very limited financial resources to expend on it.
18 We, the Legislature in both houses,
19 came to an agreement to allocate $100 million of
20 CARES Act funding to that purpose at that time.
21 Since $100 million is only a tiny fraction of the
22 needs, we created some very restrictive criteria
23 to ensure that only the neediest of our tenants
24 were able to access that money and were
25 prioritized.
3094
1 Having said that, we understand that
2 there has been difficulty getting that money out
3 the door. Only about $40 million of the
4 $100 million has been spent, and only 15 million
5 households to date have received aid.
6 The Governor recently modified that
7 program through executive order and has reopened
8 the application period for that program through
9 February 1st at this point. We encourage tenants
10 who may be eligible for that -- who may be
11 low-income and may be rent-burdened -- now to
12 apply for that program.
13 But, Mr. President, the important
14 thing to note is that the amount of relief we are
15 going to need to get through this problem is
16 vastly larger than the $100 million, and the
17 amount of money that we expect to come from the
18 bill that was signed just yesterday is 13 times
19 that amount. The $1.3 billion will require a new
20 mechanism to get the money out the door
21 efficiently and effectively and will cover a lot
22 more tenants and a lot more of their landlords
23 who are struggling to pay their costs.
24 So this bill, because the Governor
25 very recently modified that program to make it
3095
1 easier to get that money out to people, this bill
2 does not address that. But it is a subject of
3 continuing concern for this house that we ensure
4 that we get relief into people's hands as quickly
5 as possible.
6 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
7 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
8 yield.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
10 the sponsor yield?
11 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
12 Mr. President.
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
14 sponsor yields.
15 SENATOR HELMING: Maybe on the
16 bill, quickly.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
18 Senator Helming on the bill.
19 SENATOR HELMING: It's an awful
20 shame that out of $100 million, when we have
21 people across the state struggling --
22 struggling -- to pay their rent, to pay their
23 heat bills, to put food on the table, that
24 $60 million remains in the account and we're
25 doing nothing about that today.
3096
1 Mr. President, if the sponsor will
2 yield.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
4 the sponsor yield?
5 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
6 Mr. President.
7 And I would just note that {mic off;
8 inaudible} many in the Minority had voted against
9 even this limited duration that we're offering in
10 this bill already today, and I think that's also
11 a terrible shame.
12 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
13 sponsor has yielded. Do you want to ask a
14 question?
15 SENATOR HELMING: Yes, please.
16 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Okay.
17 SENATOR HELMING: And in PART A,
18 under the "NOTICE TO TENANT," there's a section
19 that reads: "If you have lost income or had
20 increased costs during the COVID-19 pandemic."
21 My question to the sponsor is, what are we
22 talking about here, increased costs?
23 Numbers -- Items 1 through 4
24 identify a number of specific increased costs or
25 circumstances, but this particular statement is
3097
1 very generic and very broad. Does an increased
2 cost that would entitle someone to a hardship,
3 does it include things like if your cable bill
4 has increased, you've experienced an increased
5 cost?
6 Look, we just all went through the
7 holidays. If you've overextended, you shopped
8 too much during the holidays, you spent too much,
9 does that mean that you now have a financial
10 hardship? Can the sponsor please explain, in
11 specific detail, what is meant by "increased
12 costs," or is this defined somewhere in the law?
13 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you.
14 Mr. President, through you.
15 The language that the -- my
16 colleague is reading from is the general
17 introduction to this form. The form is
18 structured so that -- such that a tenant who
19 wanted to benefit from these provisions, and
20 indeed a landlord, a small landlord who wanted to
21 benefit from provisions of this bill, or a
22 homeowner who wanted to benefit from provisions
23 of this bill would have to check one of two
24 options if they're a tenant. And that is very
25 specifically enumerated.
3098
1 They would have to say -- again,
2 under penalty of law, they would have to say they
3 are experiencing financial hardship and unable to
4 pay their rent or other financial obligations
5 under the lease in full, or obtain alternative
6 suitable permanent housing because one or more of
7 the following. And there are five things that
8 are enumerated there.
9 I know that my colleague has them
10 before her, but just to try to summarize: A
11 significant loss of income would count;
12 increasing necessary out-of-pocket expenses
13 related to performing essential work or related
14 health impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic;
15 childcare responsibilities or responsibilities to
16 care for an elderly, disabled or sick family
17 member during the pandemic that have negatively
18 affected the tenant's ability or the ability of
19 somebody else in the household to obtain
20 meaningful employment or an income; moving
21 expenses and difficulty they'd have securing
22 alternative housing make it a hardship for them
23 to relocate at this time; or other circumstances
24 related to the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively
25 affected their ability to obtain meaningful
3099
1 employment or earn income or have significantly
2 reduced their household income or significantly
3 increased their expenses.
4 I would say -- and there's an
5 additional provision that they have to attest
6 that whatever loss of income or increased
7 expenses they've had have not been made up,
8 offset by -- have not been fully offset by any
9 public benefits they've received in the meantime.
10 I would suggest to my colleague that
11 spending a lot of money on Netflix probably does
12 not qualify one for any of these hardship
13 provisions, although obviously that would be --
14 you know, perhaps we differ on that.
15 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
16 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
17 yield.
18 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
19 the sponsor yield?
20 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
21 Mr. President.
22 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
23 sponsor yields.
24 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you,
25 Senator, for reading those five criteria. And
3100
1 I'm glad you did, because that's exactly where I
2 want to go to next.
3 Starting with number one, it talks
4 about significant loss of household income during
5 the COVID pandemic. And I would like to better
6 understand, how is "significant loss" defined?
7 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Significant loss
8 of income -- again, it must be that the person is
9 unable to pay their rent or their other financial
10 obligations under the lease or obtain suitable
11 permanent housing because of this condition. So
12 it would have to be a loss of income or -- it's a
13 combination of loss of income of these factors or
14 increased expenses. And somebody could have
15 either or both, but they are attesting that those
16 circumstances caused them to be unable to pay
17 their rent in full.
18 What is significant for some of my
19 colleague's constituents, given their cost of
20 living and their income may be different than
21 somebody else's constituents, depending on how
22 much income they were making before the pandemic,
23 what their rental costs are.
24 But the goal here is to have people
25 attest that because of the significant loss, they
3101
1 have been unable to pay their rent or maintain
2 their other financial obligations during
3 COVID-19.
4 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
5 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
6 yield.
7 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
8 the sponsor yield?
9 SENATOR HELMING: So I'm not sure
10 that that definition --
11 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
12 the sponsor yield?
13 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
14 Mr. President.
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
16 sponsor yields.
17 Go ahead, Senator Helming.
18 SENATOR HELMING: I think it would
19 be helpful if there were a clear definition, a
20 definition with some meat to it, so that we don't
21 have unintended consequences happening.
22 So, Senator Kavanagh, are you saying
23 if I'm a high earner, I'm raking in a million
24 bucks a year, and I experience a loss of income,
25 even 50 percent, I could come back and say that
3102
1 I've experienced a significant loss of household
2 income and I am no longer able to pay my rent,
3 and just stop paying my rent, fill out a form and
4 stop paying my rent?
5 SENATOR KAVANAGH: If I understand
6 your hypothetical, your hypothetical is someone
7 who is still making $10,000 a week during the
8 pandemic and they are unable to pay their rent?
9 I'm not sure, you know, where that
10 person is renting, but it seems quite likely that
11 somebody making $10,000 a week is able to pay
12 their rent or find alternative permanent housing
13 somewhere in the State of New York. And that
14 does not -- again, I don't want to prejudge how
15 others might view this, but that does not appear
16 to me to be a hardship that is preventing that
17 person from paying their rent.
18 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
19 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
20 yield.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
22 the sponsor yield?
23 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
24 Mr. President.
25 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
3103
1 sponsor yields.
2 SENATOR HELMING: So, Senator
3 Kavanagh, you raised a very interesting point
4 when you say this -- in that example I gave, that
5 it probably wouldn't fly.
6 My question is, who is going to be
7 reviewing these forms, and how are they going to
8 determine if somebody meets the criteria?
9 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President,
10 as we had an opportunity to discuss in a lively
11 conversation during the Housing Committee
12 meeting, the goal of this bill is to create a
13 mechanism for people to present the fact that
14 they are experiencing a hardship and unable to
15 pay their rent, either because of increased
16 expenses or because of a loss of income. And if
17 they do that, they are gaining a temporary
18 protection from eviction.
19 The purpose is to avoid a situation
20 where we believe there are at least 1 million --
21 about 1 million households in New York State who
22 are behind on their rent. Any process that tried
23 to systematically adjudicate whether all
24 million -- which portion of those million people
25 are experiencing a hardship, would itself cause a
3104
1 very significant public health problem.
2 We want to allow people -- we want
3 to take seriously the fact that you have to have
4 a hardship. It would be a Class A misdemeanor to
5 sign a form like this and have it relied upon in
6 a court proceeding at some point. But in the
7 meantime, we are trying to deal with an emergency
8 situation.
9 We don't want -- we already have
10 lines out the door and down the block at some of
11 our courthouses because eviction proceedings have
12 started up again after the blanket moratorium
13 that was in place through September 30th expired
14 and was modified by a -- you know, a lesser
15 moratorium.
16 So our goal here is to get tenants
17 and homeowners -- and I would note,
18 Mr. President, that the hostile amendment
19 presented on this floor earlier weakened the
20 protections for tenants but chose to leave all of
21 the language we're discussing today that we're
22 hearing skepticism about, chose to leave all of
23 that language in place for landlords and
24 homeowners.
25 I find that interesting that, you
3105
1 know, the attempt to modify this bill only
2 intended to weaken it for tenants and not for
3 homeowners. But this -- so had that amendment
4 been accepted, this language would have stayed in
5 place in two-thirds of the -- of this bill.
6 But in any case, our goal here is to
7 create a system where people have to attest,
8 under penalty of law, that they have experienced
9 a hardship and that that hardship is causing them
10 to be unable to meet their rental obligations.
11 And in that circumstance, we want to protect them
12 from eviction as an emergency public health
13 measure.
14 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
15 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
16 yield.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
18 the sponsor yield?
19 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Happily,
20 Mr. President.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
22 sponsor yields.
23 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you for
24 that explanation, Senator Kavanagh. I think it
25 was a long way of saying that nobody will be
3106
1 reviewing those tenant hardship declaration
2 forms.
3 But moving on, I wanted to ask you a
4 question. In the TENANT'S DECLARATION OF
5 HARDSHIP, A-3, it talks about childcare
6 responsibilities or responsibilities to care for
7 elderly, disabled, et cetera, or a sick family
8 member. Can you tell me how "family member" is
9 defined?
10 SENATOR KAVANAGH: It is not
11 defined in the bill. However, somebody who is
12 expending money to care for a family member, and
13 if that -- during this horrible pandemic where
14 we've seen hundreds of thousands of Americans
15 die, if they are choosing to spend their money
16 taking care of a family member and that is
17 causing them a hardship and that is preventing
18 them from paying their rent, this bill stands for
19 the principle that that person should not be
20 subject to eviction during this pandemic.
21 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
22 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
23 yield.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
25 the sponsor yield?
3107
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
2 Mr. President.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR HELMING: So I had a call
6 from a person who is caring for a loved one.
7 It's not a family member, but they're caring for
8 a loved one. They have out-of-pocket
9 expenditures, et cetera. Where -- do they fit
10 into that No. 3?
11 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President,
12 I'd note, first of all, that the position that my
13 colleague has taken would be that that person and
14 every other person who might be facing eviction
15 should not get any of the protections in this
16 bill.
17 I would suggest that that may
18 qualify as another circumstance related to the
19 COVID-19 pandemic that has negatively and
20 significantly reduced their income or
21 significantly increased their expenses.
22 But again, there is some
23 subjectivity to this, and that does seem to me to
24 be directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic. If
25 they're spending a lot of money keeping somebody
3108
1 else alive and well, I would think that we should
2 be extending sympathy to that person and
3 certainly not allowing them to be evicted in the
4 midst of that hardship.
5 SENATOR HELMING: Exactly.
6 Through you, Mr. President, if the
7 sponsor will continue to yield.
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
9 the sponsor yield?
10 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Happily,
11 Mr. President.
12 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
13 sponsor yields.
14 SENATOR HELMING: Tenant's
15 Declaration Item No. 5, it talks about "Other
16 circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic
17 that have negatively affected my ability to
18 obtain meaningful employment or earned income."
19 Can you provide some examples of the
20 other circumstances that are not already
21 identified in Items 1 through 4? And also, in
22 that same Item 5, how is "meaningful employment"
23 defined?
24 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
25 Mr. President. Again, we just had one
3109
1 circumstance that I offered as an example of this
2 very provision that is intended -- that sort of
3 demonstrates the fact that this language is
4 intended to be broad enough to cover the many
5 hardships and the many difficulties that
6 New Yorkers are facing during the COVID-19
7 pandemic, many of which were not predicted in
8 advance and perhaps cannot be predicted as we go
9 forward into the next round of our fight against
10 this disease.
11 But, you know, one example the
12 sponsor {sic} gave, and I assume from the
13 thrust -- sorry, the -- my colleague gave, and I
14 assume from the thrust of her question that she
15 believes that somebody who's taking care of a
16 loved one should be getting some protection --
17 that is the kind of circumstance that might allow
18 somebody to truthfully check off that they are
19 having a hardship, because No. 5 is about other
20 circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
21 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
22 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
23 yield.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
25 the sponsor yield?
3110
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
2 Mr. President.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR HELMING: I'm curious,
6 Senator Kavanagh. There is a clause in this bill
7 that says that the Office of Court Administration
8 shall promptly -- shall supply the respondent a
9 copy of the hardship declaration in English and,
10 to the extent practicable, the tenant's primary
11 language. And I believe it was during our
12 committee meeting you mentioned that there are
13 numerous, almost 10 languages, I think, that this
14 is going to be printed in.
15 But my question is, how will the
16 court have any knowledge of the tenant's primary
17 language? And also, what about providing a copy
18 in the landlord's primary language?
19 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
20 Mr. President. The language provisions of the
21 bill require that the Office of Court
22 Administration translate this form into seven
23 languages in addition to English, and make those
24 forms available to all parties through their
25 public website, and that includes tenants as well
3111
1 as homeowners and other property owners.
2 The forms for homeowners and
3 property owners are slightly different from the
4 tenant forms, but they have the same thrust of --
5 that the tenant form that we've been discussing
6 today.
7 And again, I would note that all of
8 these provisions seem to be acceptable to the
9 Minority when applied to landlords or homeowners,
10 but somehow are under question when they're
11 applied to tenants, to protect tenants.
12 But in any case, the provisions
13 where the court is providing the form are only in
14 the circumstance where a case is already pending
15 before the tenant {sic}. Often the court may
16 have information as to the language of the tenant
17 because they are already a party to a case that
18 is before that court.
19 But -- and similarly, landlords
20 often, because they have to make demands of their
21 tenants, they have to ask for rent, they have to
22 discuss repairs -- landlords may also have
23 information about the primary language of the
24 tenant. If they are aware of such primary
25 language that is not English, they are supposed
3112
1 to provide this form to the tenant in the primary
2 language of the tenant.
3 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
4 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
5 yield.
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
7 the sponsor yield?
8 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes --
9 SENATOR HELMING: I'm not sure --
10 SENATOR KAVANAGH: -- I'm happy to
11 follow up if I didn't -- if I missed a part of
12 the question.
13 SENATOR HELMING: Supplying the
14 same information to the landlord in their primary
15 language? But it's okay.
16 SENATOR KAVANAGH: {Mic off;
17 inaudible.} So the cases that are brought
18 before -- the cases that are brought before the
19 court -- sorry, the particular thing that the --
20 that my colleague asked about, is the court
21 supplying this form to the -- to a party to the
22 case, the thrust of the language is that it has
23 to be in the language of the party who has to
24 sign it.
25 So if they were providing it to a
3113
1 property owner in a circumstance where the
2 property owner is the person who's supposed to
3 benefit from the protections, they would be
4 providing it to that person in their primary
5 language to the extent practicable. If they're
6 in a case where they're providing it to a tenant
7 who's supposed to benefit from these protections,
8 they'd be providing it to the tenant in the
9 language that -- to the extent practicable, in
10 the language that is the primary language of that
11 tenant.
12 But in each case -- again, the
13 language is parallel, and in each case the form
14 is supposed to be provided to the party who is
15 expected to read it and sign it and benefit from
16 it in a language that they can understand.
17 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
18 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
19 yield.
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
21 the sponsor yield?
22 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
23 Mr. President.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
25 sponsor yields.
3114
1 SENATOR HELMING: Is that in this
2 bill? I see it for the tenant, but is it in this
3 bill for landlord and property owners?
4 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes. And if
5 you'll give me a moment, I will find it.
6 SENATOR HELMING: Okay.
7 SENATOR KAVANAGH: If I may just --
8 rather than finding the language, the -- the
9 structure of this bill is a set of protections
10 for tenants and then a very parallel and very
11 similarly worded set of protections for
12 homeowners and property owners.
13 And the language I just cited is in
14 each of those, more or less verbatim. There are
15 slight differences in those provisions because
16 court processes to evict a tenant are somewhat
17 different from court processes to foreclose on
18 taxes or foreclose on a mortgage.
19 But that provision is, I believe,
20 verbatim for anybody who is expected to benefit
21 from the protections of this form.
22 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
23 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
24 yield.
25 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
3115
1 the sponsor yield?
2 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
3 Mr. President.
4 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
5 sponsor yields.
6 SENATOR HELMING: This bill
7 includes language that requires that a list of
8 all not-for-profit legal service providers
9 actively handling housing matters in the county
10 where the subject premises are located, that such
11 lists are to be prepared and regularly updated,
12 to the extent practicable, for such purpose and
13 published on the website of the Office of Court
14 Administration.
15 So I understand, reading this, that
16 the Office of Court Administration is responsible
17 for publishing on their website this information.
18 But who is responsible -- is there language
19 somewhere that requires the Office of Court
20 Administration or someone else to prepare and
21 regularly update this information? Or is it just
22 assumed that that's going to happen?
23 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yeah, I think
24 that the bill -- the bill creates -- through you,
25 Mr. President, the bill creates an ongoing
3116
1 obligation of the Office of Court Administration
2 to have that information available. I think it
3 would be reasonable to read that obligation as
4 information that is current, as opposed to
5 information that was true last year but is no
6 longer true.
7 And I also think the Office of
8 Court Administration -- we had a hearing in this
9 house of the Judiciary and the Housing and the
10 Codes Committees about the capacity of the court
11 to respond to the many problems that people are
12 having during COVID-19, and the courts have
13 expressed quite a bit of willingness to provide
14 all parties -- landlords, tenants, property
15 owners -- with the information they need.
16 What they have suggested at that
17 hearing is that they would like some direction
18 from the Legislature or Governor or both as to
19 what the standards ought to be, and that is one
20 of the things we're doing today.
21 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
22 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
23 yield.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
25 the sponsor yield?
3117
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
2 Mr. President.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR HELMING: Senator Kavanagh,
6 the Declaration of Hardship form, will that be
7 released at the same time as the required
8 resources are ready to be released? Or do you
9 anticipate the hardship form will be released
10 prior to resources?
11 SENATOR KAVANAGH: I believe --
12 (pause). So I just wanted to check, since we
13 went through a number of drafts of this.
14 The bill requires that the Office of
15 Court Administration make that form available
16 consistent with this law within 15 days of the
17 date of enactment. So that form would be
18 available on the Office of Court Administration's
19 website.
20 In addition, the bill provides for a
21 60-day stay against -- of proceedings against
22 those homeowners and renters and property owners
23 that we are -- and small landlords that we're
24 intending to protect by this bill. And during
25 that 60 days, presumably all parties will have an
3118
1 opportunity to familiarize themselves with the
2 law and their new rights and obligations under
3 this bill.
4 If the case is pending as of the
5 effective date of this bill, the court is
6 required, as we discussed a moment ago, to
7 provide notice of this new declaration process to
8 the litigants who are intended to benefit from
9 it.
10 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
11 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
12 yield.
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
14 the sponsor yield?
15 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
16 Mr. President.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
18 sponsor yields.
19 SENATOR HELMING: When discussing
20 service of the Notice of Petition, there is a
21 requirement that the Notice of Petition must have
22 attached to it the Hardship Declaration and that
23 the Notice of Petition, with the attached
24 Hardship Declaration, shall be made by personal
25 delivery to the respondent unless such service
3119
1 cannot be made with due diligence.
2 Is "due diligence" defined somewhere
3 in the law or in this bill?
4 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
5 Mr. President, there is a great deal of court
6 experience and case law -- this is a provision
7 that would be required and reviewed at the point
8 where there is a case filed because a tenant has
9 not returned the declaration form.
10 I think that a judge and
11 participants in the litigation process have a lot
12 of familiarity with what is required to properly
13 serve somebody with a document that they are
14 required to receive to proceed with litigation.
15 I will confess that as the Housing
16 chair, I am not an expert on that process, but I
17 am told that serving documents in court
18 proceedings and doing it with adequate diligence,
19 with the diligence that is due, is something that
20 courts will be able to handle whether that has
21 occurred.
22 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
23 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
24 yield.
25 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
3120
1 the sponsor yield?
2 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR HELMING: This legislation
6 includes a rebuttal presumption. And my question
7 is, if there is a safety hazard, if a home is
8 deemed to be unsafe for occupants by local or
9 state code enforcement officers, does this
10 section -- does this rebuttal presumption prevent
11 removing inhabitants from an unsafe living
12 provision?
13 And why I bring this up is it seems,
14 especially during the winter months, there are so
15 many horrible fires that result, we have roof
16 collapses, you know, roofs that are compromised
17 because of snow loads. There's just a lot that's
18 going on.
19 So again if you can just answer
20 whether or not this would prevent someone being
21 asked to leave a home that is no longer safe.
22 There could be a gas leak ...
23 SENATOR KAVANAGH: I wanted to make
24 sure my colleague finished the question.
25 SENATOR HELMING: Yeah.
3121
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: So there are a
2 few different provisions that the -- my colleague
3 is referring to.
4 The rebuttable presumption
5 provisions are not relevant to this particular
6 question. The rebuttable presumption is about
7 circumstances in which somebody is claiming a
8 hardship in some subsequent proceeding, and it
9 says that having signed this form creates a
10 presumption that there was a hardship.
11 But at a point where the litigant --
12 litigants might have an opportunity to rebut
13 that. That is not about the question of whether
14 somebody could be removed from their home now
15 under those provisions.
16 There are situations that are
17 relevant to that question. The first is if the
18 tenants themselves are causing a danger to
19 property, to the safety or health of their
20 neighbors, or they're engaging in persistent
21 behavior that threatens the ability of other
22 residents of the building to enjoy their
23 property, that is a circumstance in which this
24 bill would allow an eviction proceeding to go
25 forward. And there would be a special hearing to
3122
1 determine whether those circumstances are present
2 in a given case.
3 Some of the examples that my
4 colleague mentioned I think it would be dealt
5 with in different provisions of law. If there's
6 a fire in a building or some other serious threat
7 to health and safety, typically that is dealt
8 with by local authorities issuing a full vacate
9 order or a partial vacate order that specifies
10 who's entitled to be in the building.
11 And that is not -- it is not
12 necessary at that stage to engage in an eviction
13 proceeding. It is the authority of local
14 government, under its ability to protect the
15 public safety and public health, that causes
16 people to be not permitted to go into those
17 buildings. It's not an eviction. Often the
18 residents of those buildings retain the rights of
19 tenants, they're just not allowed to enter the
20 building because of safety concerns. Often the
21 landlord is also not allowed to enter the
22 building in those conditions because there is a
23 physical danger present, until engineers get in
24 and determine what is safe and what is not safe.
25 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
3123
1 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
2 yield.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
4 the sponsor yield?
5 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
6 Mr. President.
7 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
8 sponsor yields.
9 SENATOR HELMING: Senator Kavanagh,
10 under the legislation it's my understanding that
11 the individual submitting the Hardship
12 Declaration only has to submit it once, and
13 they'll be covered from participating in a
14 proceeding through at least May 1st.
15 What happens if the individual's
16 financial circumstances improve before May 1st?
17 For example, they may get their jobs back.
18 Hopefully, right, with the vaccine and the
19 positive steps that we're taking, they may become
20 employed. Or maybe they'll secure additional
21 government assistance. Theoretically, they would
22 no longer be experiencing financial hardship and
23 they are able to pay either their full obligation
24 or a partial obligation.
25 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
3124
1 Mr. President. First of all, there is nothing in
2 this bill that alters the obligation of people to
3 pay. This is an eviction moratorium; it is not a
4 rent holiday. And so people who have the ability
5 to pay ought to pay their rent.
6 The bill reflects the idea that we
7 believe that a stay of these proceedings is
8 appropriate for four months while we continue to
9 take steps to recover from the pandemic, while we
10 attempt to get the resources into the hands of
11 people that they need to cover these expenses. A
12 process where somebody had to recertify
13 frequently during that four-month process would
14 be certainly difficult to administer.
15 And again, we believe that it has to
16 be -- to issue a stay, it has to be stayed for
17 some period. And it is the sense of the sponsors
18 of this bill and the many members of our -- of
19 both houses that are supporting it that a
20 four-month stay of these proceedings is
21 reasonable for somebody who has a hardship. Now
22 that we are entering the tenth month of this
23 pandemic, in many cases even if somebody got
24 their job back tomorrow, it would be a while
25 before they fully overcome the hardships that
3125
1 have been built up since March 7th, when the
2 first emergency order was issued.
3 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
4 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
5 yield.
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
7 the sponsor yield?
8 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
9 Mr. President.
10 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
11 sponsor yields.
12 SENATOR HELMING: So we've touched
13 on this a little bit, but does the legislation
14 preclude any individuals from submitting a
15 hardship declaration if they have a certain
16 income level? And we discussed that a little bit
17 so far. But for example, if a person had a
18 significant loss of income but they have
19 substantial amounts of savings, under this bill
20 is there anything that actually requires the
21 individual to draw down at least some of those
22 assets?
23 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
24 Mr. President. We did discuss this a bit
25 previously. But again, to reiterate, the person
3126
1 would be signing a form that says they're
2 experiencing financial hardship and unable to pay
3 their rent or other financial obligations under
4 the lease in full, or obtain alternative suitable
5 permanent housing because of these conditions.
6 If they have a very large bank
7 account or a trust fund or some other thing that
8 they can draw upon, presumably they would not be
9 unable to pay their obligations and to pay their
10 rent or find suitable housing. Similarly, they
11 might be able to pay their mortgage in that
12 circumstance, and as a homeowner in that
13 circumstance, they wouldn't be protected either.
14 But if they -- the whole thrust of
15 the declaration people are making is that they
16 are unable to meet their financial obligations
17 or, in the case of tenants, that vacating the
18 premises would pose a significant health risk
19 because they or a member of their family have
20 increased risk of severe illness because of their
21 age or because of a medical condition or because
22 of a disability.
23 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you.
24 Through you, Mr. President, if the sponsor will
25 continue to yield.
3127
1 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
2 the sponsor yield?
3 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
4 Mr. President.
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
6 sponsor yields.
7 SENATOR HELMING: Interesting. If
8 they are unable to meet their financial
9 obligations, but they're -- it's not really
10 defined what that is. So they could come up with
11 a whole litany of things.
12 Under the bill, a tenant may still
13 be evicted if they are persistently and
14 unreasonably engaging in behavior that
15 substantially infringes on the use and enjoyment
16 of other tenants or occupants or causes a
17 substantial safety hazard to others. If the
18 tenant violates their lease by committing
19 property damage but it doesn't bother anyone
20 else, and they filed a financial hardship, even
21 though the hardship has nothing to do with the
22 property damage, can they be evicted under the
23 bill?
24 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President,
25 I'm not sure what sort of circumstances the --
3128
1 what kind of property damage wouldn't be causing
2 a threat to the safety of -- or the health or
3 safety of others. Perhaps my colleague could,
4 you know, provide an example so I can better
5 understand her question.
6 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
7 Mr. President. So it could be a tenant is maybe
8 knocking holes in a wall, maybe even breaking out
9 windows, things that don't necessarily -- I've
10 heard of tenants plugging up toilets and letting
11 the stuff flood out their apartment, but it
12 doesn't necessarily impact anyone else in the
13 building. In those circumstances, how does
14 this --
15 SENATOR KAVANAGH: It would be a
16 fact-based determination by a court under a
17 special hearing required by this bill as to
18 whether those conditions are causing threats to
19 the peaceful enjoyment of the other residents of
20 the building or a safety or health hazard.
21 I would suggest that plugging up
22 your toilet and letting the water flow where it
23 may probably would qualify.
24 But again, the goal of this is to
25 prevent people from being evicted during a
3129
1 pandemic in a way that will cause a threat to
2 their health and a threat to the public health of
3 everyone in their community. Because, of course,
4 the thrust of this is to prevent the spread of a
5 highly communicable deadly disease.
6 But again, it would have to be a
7 fact-based determination. And again, I would
8 suggest that some of the circumstances my
9 colleague mentioned would qualify as threats to
10 the safety and the well-being of their neighbors.
11 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
12 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
13 yield.
14 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
15 the sponsor yield?
16 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
17 Mr. President.
18 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: the
19 sponsor yields.
20 SENATOR HELMING: Subpart C of the
21 bill prevents negative marks on the credit
22 reports of tenants or homeowners in arrears.
23 But, Senator Kavanagh, what about the negative
24 reporting for property owners who cannot pay
25 their bills? For example, rents may come with
3130
1 free heat, hot water, electric, cable, Wifi for
2 tenants, so the landlord's still responsible for
3 these costs even though there's no rent being
4 paid. The landlord can't just shut off these
5 services.
6 But why are the unpaid bills for the
7 landlord's expenses not protected from adverse
8 credit reports?
9 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
10 Mr. President. We took a number of actions
11 previously in the session that are related to
12 some of the issues my colleague is raising.
13 For example, we did pass a bill that
14 prohibits turning off services for various
15 utilities in residential settings. That includes
16 heat and gas and electricity and phone service,
17 and that would include residential buildings
18 in -- generally, in addition to individual
19 apartments. So we have taken steps to ensure
20 that people are protected.
21 In addition, the provisions
22 that the -- I'm looking -- you know, it's -- I'm
23 looking for the specific provision so I can cite
24 the language. But I believe that this -- the
25 provisions regarding credit would protect people
3131
1 who are taking advantage of this -- of the
2 provisions of this bill. (Pause.)
3 I just -- I would note two things.
4 Although my colleague has very much wanted to
5 focus on the tenant benefits of this, again, I
6 would note that this bill protects homeowners and
7 it also protects small landlords, defined as
8 people who have 10 or fewer dwelling units that
9 they control. And they would also be benefiting
10 from many of the protections of this bill.
11 I would note that in the provisions
12 that -- we've talked about the five provisions
13 that apply to tenants claiming hardship. I would
14 note that the property owner provisions have a
15 sixth provision which constitutes a hardship
16 which says that "one or more of my tenants have
17 defaulted on a significant amount of their rent
18 payments since March 1, 2020."
19 So we are addressing a situation
20 where tenants are not paying the rent to a small
21 landlord; we are allowing the landlord to claim a
22 hardship -- again, simply by signing the form
23 attesting to such hardship without further
24 inquiry as to the accuracy of that form.
25 We are trusting landlords, just like
3132
1 we are trusting tenants to make an attestation
2 under penalty of perjury that they are
3 experiencing a hardship. That hardship could
4 include the tenant's not paying rent. And that
5 landlord, who is benefiting from the protection
6 of this bill, would also benefit from the
7 protection that their credit cannot be adversely
8 affected by taking advantage of the provisions of
9 this bill.
10 SENATOR HELMING: Through you,
11 Mr. President, if the sponsor will continue to
12 yield.
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
14 the sponsor yield?
15 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Happily,
16 Mr. President.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
18 sponsor yields.
19 SENATOR HELMING: Senator Kavanagh,
20 what do you envision for the payback of rents or
21 mortgage payments? What does that look like?
22 Over what time is that going to be paid back?
23 And do you feel like the backlog is going to be
24 enormous and that payment delays are going to
25 prevent or stand in the way of New York State's
3133
1 recovery, economic recovery?
2 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President, I
3 do have some of those concerns. And again, I
4 have been advocating for much quicker and more
5 decisive and more generous action from the
6 federal government. And I believe in a situation
7 where we're facing a $15 billion budget gap in
8 this year's budget and a $15 billion budget gap
9 in next year's state budget, we are going to need
10 federal assistance.
11 I would note that at my urging and
12 the urging of many other people, the U.S. House
13 of Representatives adopted a package last spring
14 that would have provided $100 billion nationally,
15 of which New York might have seen many billions
16 of dollars, to address this situation. Had that
17 action been taken up by the U.S. Senate and
18 signed to law by the White House, we would not be
19 where we are today. We would have been able to
20 have a generous rent subsidy program and also a
21 generous program to help landlords with the costs
22 that they have not been able to cover.
23 I mentioned that bill carried
24 $100 billion for renters; it also carried
25 $70 billion nationally to help homeowners.
3134
1 Unfortunately, that bill was blocked in
2 Washington.
3 But the good news is that we have
4 finally seen action in the Senate and the
5 Assembly -- I'm sorry, the U.S. Senate and the
6 U.S. House of Representatives got together and
7 passed a generous package -- it is not all that
8 we need, but it will allow $1.3 billion to be
9 spent to address the fact that tenants have not
10 been paying their rent because they are having
11 hardships and because they don't have the
12 resources to do so. And that money will, under
13 the terms of that bill, get into the hands of
14 landlords, who are then able to pay their
15 expenses. I think that is a major step forward.
16 And today what we are doing is a
17 stopgap to ensure that in the meantime,
18 homeowners are not foreclosed on by their banks
19 or by local taxing authorities, small landlords
20 are not foreclosed in that way, and tenants are
21 not evicted in the middle of a pandemic.
22 But I share the concern that it is
23 going to take a while to dig out of this, and
24 that's why I've spent the last 10 months
25 advocating for quicker action and more relief so
3135
1 that we could have addressed this problem as we
2 went along.
3 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you.
4 Mr. President, on the bill.
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
6 Senator Helming on the bill.
7 SENATOR HELMING: Thank you,
8 Mr. President. And Senator Kavanagh, thank you
9 for your patience in answering all of my
10 questions.
11 I have seen things during the last
12 several months that I have never seen. People
13 are coming out and looking for help and support
14 who never envisioned ever having to reach out to
15 the government for help and assistance.
16 And one of the areas where I feel
17 like we should have helped them is we should have
18 incorporated something into this legislation that
19 made it a requirement for someone, whether it's
20 Office of Court Administration or someone else,
21 to provide information regarding all the
22 assistance programs that are available. Whether,
23 as I said earlier, it's HEAP, EBT, whatever it
24 is -- but I think that is one area that we've
25 missed here.
3136
1 Tenants and small landlords are
2 among the thousands of New Yorkers experiencing
3 economic hardship as a result of the pandemic.
4 They deserve our help. But today, instead of
5 taking action to begin our economic recovery,
6 we're voting on a bill that does little to
7 provide any meaningful or real long-term relief
8 to tenants or property owners. In fact, it's my
9 feeling that this bill is so flawed that it's
10 going to allow millionaires to avoid paying their
11 rent.
12 We must protect both tenants and
13 property owners. I've offered an amendment --
14 along with my colleagues in the Minority -- to
15 this bill that would treat people more equally --
16 equitably, treat both the tenants and the
17 property owners more equitably.
18 Tenants who are struggling to pay
19 their rent as a result of the pandemic deserve
20 relief. No one is arguing with that. But the
21 legislation before us today, however well
22 intentioned, will not help people get back to
23 work or meet their rent obligations. It will not
24 enable landlords to maintain and keep their
25 property safe or meet their mortgage obligation.
3137
1 It is not going to preserve affordable housing in
2 our communities or help our local economies.
3 What this bill does is simply kicks
4 the problems down the road and creates a bigger
5 financial hole for tenants and landlords. Come
6 1 May, when the end of this exemption comes, so
7 too will all those back-rent payments, the
8 mortgage payments, the interest and penalties and
9 other fees. We're no doubt going to see
10 increased liens and foreclosures. This is only
11 going to delay New York's economic recovery.
12 This bill misses an opportunity to
13 help real people and does a disservice to those
14 most in need. It fails to ensure tenants have
15 access to information on federal and state
16 programs already in place, programs that could
17 help them keep their heat on, feed their families
18 and even pay their rent.
19 New York has tens of millions of
20 dollars in rent relief funding. Where is it?
21 This funding, and the additional money that we
22 can expect from the federal government, must be
23 distributed. It's got to be moved out to the
24 people who need it. Our focus should be on
25 getting this money in the hands of New Yorkers
3138
1 who need it most, not taking redundant action
2 that will only add more bureaucracy.
3 There are tenants and landlords
4 experiencing real economic hardship.
5 Unfortunately, this bill falls short. It's not a
6 solution to the problems either of them face. We
7 must bring everyone to the table and work
8 together to develop solutions that allow people
9 to stay in their homes and ensure that landlords
10 can maintain their property. Let's not make a
11 bad situation worse or further delay New York
12 State's economic recovery.
13 I will be voting no on this bill.
14 Thank you, Mr. President.
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
16 Amedore.
17 SENATOR AMEDORE: Thank you,
18 Mr. President. Will the sponsor yield for a few
19 questions?
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
21 the sponsor yield?
22 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Absolutely,
23 Mr. President.
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
25 sponsor yields.
3139
1 SENATOR AMEDORE: Senator Kavanagh,
2 nice to see you. Thank you so much for working
3 with me throughout the years.
4 And to you, Mr. President, and to
5 all of the colleagues in the chamber and members
6 of the Senate, it's been a great honor for me to
7 serve. I will miss you all, and I wish everyone
8 a very blessed New Year.
9 But I have a few questions for
10 Mr. -- for Senator Kavanagh on this -- on the
11 bill that's before the house. And that is the
12 first question, Senator, is does the COVID-19
13 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act
14 of 2020, will this extend after the emergency
15 declaration is removed or ends?
16 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
17 Mr. President, the provisions of this bill apply
18 immediately upon the bill being signed, it is
19 effective immediately. And it creates various
20 stays and a moratorium through May 1, 2021. It
21 is not tied -- I don't think any part of the bill
22 that I'm aware of is tied to any other provision
23 of law or any other emergency declaration.
24 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
25 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
3140
1 yield?
2 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Will
3 the sponsor yield?
4 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
5 Mr. President.
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
7 sponsor yields.
8 SENATOR AMEDORE: So, Senator
9 Kavanagh, what I believe I hear you say, if I may
10 interpret it properly in my own way, is there's
11 nothing in this bill that will be made permanent
12 in the laws of the State of New York within this
13 time frame of this pandemic. After the pandemic
14 is over, the declaration of emergency is removed,
15 we hopefully get back to normal, then the
16 landlords, tenants, homeowners, business owners,
17 banks will go through the courts, will go back to
18 its normal way of life following the laws that we
19 already have on the books, and statutes?
20 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yeah. Through
21 you, Mr. President, that would be the
22 expectation.
23 As I discussed with our other
24 colleague, it may take time before things are
25 back to normal on the ground before we get the
3141
1 rent arrears paid, before we get, you know,
2 people's mortgage arrears cleared out, before we
3 get taxes paid. But this bill does not, on its
4 own terms, create any changes past May 1st.
5 There may, of course, be
6 implications of court proceedings that are begun
7 under this process. The provisions about the
8 rebuttable presumption about the form that is
9 submitted under this do last beyond May 1st; I
10 think that's provided for in the effective-date
11 clause.
12 But other than that, there is an
13 expectation -- a hope, I would say -- that
14 through this bill, which provides immediate
15 relief to people who might be facing tax
16 foreclosure or mortgage foreclosure or eviction,
17 it provides that immediate relief, and then in
18 the meantime I think we're all going to need to
19 work on figuring out how to address the very
20 serious financial obligations of all of this, and
21 the many other human implications of all that
22 we've gone through in the last 10 months.
23 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
24 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
25 yield?
3142
1 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
2 the sponsor yield?
3 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
4 Mr. President.
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
6 sponsor yields.
7 SENATOR AMEDORE: Senator Kavanagh,
8 you've probably explained this before, and you
9 may have even said it during the
10 Housing Committee meeting, but how does this
11 legislation differ from the executive order that
12 Governor Cuomo has put in place and has extended?
13 SENATOR KAVANAGH: The executive
14 order -- so there have been a number of executive
15 orders in this area, and they have been modified
16 a few times. And in addition, they are
17 overlapping with a piece of legislation that we
18 passed previously called the Tenant Safe Harbor
19 Act. So it is a little hard to summarize the
20 current state of affairs absent this bill.
21 I would notice that there are
22 reports that the Governor intends to sign this
23 bill, and it will presumably supersede what we've
24 had in place so far.
25 But that -- the current state of
3143
1 affairs is such that -- I'm trying to summarize
2 the differences. I think the single biggest
3 difference is this bill contemplates somebody --
4 it is a requirement that we check whether the
5 homeowner or the small landlord or the tenant is
6 experiencing a hardship before a case is filed.
7 And if they are experiencing such a hardship,
8 then a case to get a possessory judgment to
9 remove them from the property cannot be
10 initiated.
11 There's a concern now that what
12 we've seen since in -- as of June 20th, one could
13 file residential eviction cases; as of the end of
14 September, they could proceed with evictions.
15 What we've seen is many, many cases, tens of
16 thousands of cases were filed against tenants and
17 against homeowners, and those people then had to
18 proceed through a process of trying to defend
19 themselves in court, to answer a complaint, to
20 file papers.
21 That process for tenants and
22 homeowners and small landlords who are
23 experiencing a hardship is problematic in itself
24 because the courts are not capable of
25 adjudicating those things effectively.
3144
1 So what we're doing is taking the
2 question and putting it earlier in the process.
3 Before a landlord can file a case against a
4 tenant, before a bank can file a foreclosure
5 proceeding against a homeowner, before your local
6 tax authority can try to sell a tax lien relevant
7 to your property or foreclose based on your
8 unpaid taxes, they must first get you an
9 opportunity to declare that you have a hardship.
10 And if you do have a hardship, the
11 case is stayed until May 1st, you are not --
12 actually, I'm sorry, I misspoke. The case cannot
13 be filed until May 1st. If there's an existing
14 case, it will be stayed until May 1st.
15 Under current law in New York,
16 evictions and foreclosures can proceed to the
17 point where somebody is being removed from their
18 home, and we've already seen that. We've seen
19 quite a bit of it in Rochester. We believe the
20 first case in New York City was in the third week
21 of November, where an eviction was actually
22 carried out effectively. They're happening in
23 the Capital Region. They're happening around the
24 state.
25 And we believe without this
3145
1 legislation, that will accelerate and we'll see
2 more and more New Yorkers involuntarily displaced
3 from their homes even though they're experiencing
4 a hardship. This bill, we believe, is more
5 effective at protecting against that than the
6 current executive order in place.
7 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
8 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
9 yield?
10 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
11 the sponsor yield?
12 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
13 Mr. President.
14 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
15 sponsor yields.
16 SENATOR AMEDORE: So, Senator
17 Kavanagh, has the courts or the financial
18 institutions or the industry itself and the
19 experts that work it, or legal counsels or
20 advocates -- other than maybe, you know,
21 political advocates --
22 SENATOR KAVANAGH: (Inaudible
23 interjection.)
24 SENATOR AMEDORE: -- have they
25 reached out to you or members of the Legislature
3146
1 to improve the system that we currently have,
2 going through a proceeding, to maybe expedite the
3 process from determining an eviction or
4 foreclosure, a tax -- a sale of taxed property?
5 Have any of the recommendations that they face
6 that is very frustrating because, maybe, of the
7 bureaucracy or the red tape or the years of
8 overlegislating in this chamber -- have any
9 recommendations been made to come up with this
10 piece of legislation that will streamline the
11 process?
12 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
13 Mr. President. I respect that, you know, court
14 processes can often be very complicated and
15 there's lots of bureaucracy out there in the
16 world, and those are conditions that perhaps we
17 should be addressing.
18 I would submit, though, that in this
19 case the primary obstacle to the courts and other
20 bodies adjudicating these cases properly now is
21 twofold: It is the massive amount of -- the
22 massive volume of cases that have been created by
23 the massive hardship that everybody is
24 experiencing throughout this state, and it is the
25 difficulty of running effective court processes
3147
1 during a pandemic.
2 So again, there are four -- just to
3 talk about tenants for a moment, since we've
4 talked mostly about tenants at the -- in response
5 to the questions of my colleagues today -- there
6 are 4.1 million tenant households in this state.
7 There is an estimate from the
8 National Association of State Housing Agencies
9 that somewhere between 800,000 and 1.2 million of
10 those households are behind in rent, creating
11 a -- the housing courts, we know, don't work
12 particularly well or particularly quickly in
13 normal circumstances -- but a circumstance where
14 trying to adjudicate the hardship of a million
15 households is going to be very, very difficult to
16 create even under the best of circumstances.
17 In addition, the courts have
18 suffered losses of personnel because of COVID.
19 They are also trying to function in a way that is
20 restricting their activity, restricting mobility
21 within the buildings, restricting the ability of
22 people to come in in person in general.
23 And I would note that there's a huge
24 backlog of every other kind of case that needs to
25 be adjudicated as well in our state, including
3148
1 criminal matters and other things that present
2 great urgency.
3 So it seems to many of us that it is
4 an insoluble problem if what you're expecting is
5 that the courts are going to efficiently
6 adjudicate this, and we've already seen that.
7 After -- in New York City, for example, there are
8 at least 20,000 cases, eviction cases that have
9 been filed where the respondent has not been able
10 to file an answer. We don't know why that is,
11 but we do know that there are lines down the
12 block and around the corner at our courthouses of
13 people trying to physically get in to file an
14 answer.
15 We know that if you call the phone
16 numbers that the courts make available to reach
17 the clerk's office, you do not get anybody
18 answering the phone because those folks are
19 overwhelmed, understandably.
20 So this is not a matter of clearing
21 the bureaucracy or the normal problems of courts,
22 this is a matter of an emergency situation where
23 we are unable to adjudicate the question of
24 whether -- of which of those million tenants are
25 experiencing hardship, but we know that many,
3149
1 many tenants are, and we're trying to prevent
2 them from being evicted.
3 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
4 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
5 yield?
6 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
7 the sponsor yield?
8 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Happily,
9 Mr. President.
10 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
11 sponsor yields.
12 SENATOR AMEDORE: Senator Kavanagh,
13 you mentioned some of the statistics, 4.1 million
14 tenants throughout the State of New York, about
15 800,000 to 1.2 million are in arrears or have not
16 paid their -- their lease, made their lease
17 payments.
18 Do we know or do you know how many
19 of the 800,000 to 1.2 million are -- were prior
20 to the COVID pandemic or are now involved based
21 on the COVID pandemic? Because, you know, I know
22 the housing market -- tenants, landlords, the
23 expansion of housing throughout the State of
24 New York, throughout the City -- matter of fact,
25 New York City was one of the top markets
3150
1 throughout the entire nation in the multifamily
2 market.
3 So how many of the 800,000 to
4 1.2 million were prior to the pandemic that were
5 in arrears? And how many now do we face of the
6 1.2, possibly, that are caused by the COVID? Do
7 we know that number?
8 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
9 Mr. President, it's a very important point.
10 There are at any time, not just during a
11 pandemic, tenants who are having trouble paying
12 their rent and, you know, are falling behind.
13 I do not have those statistics
14 available to me here. I'm happy to, you know,
15 review those studies and discuss them with my
16 colleague, you know, after session. But I will
17 note that if somebody is experiencing a hardship
18 now and is unable to pay their rent, the public
19 health implications of permitting that person to
20 be evicted are about the same whether they
21 started having a hardship before March of 2020 or
22 whether that hardship began after COVID.
23 We are trying to prevent evictions
24 and also foreclosures in homeowners and also
25 foreclosures against small landlords at a time
3151
1 when those activities are particularly dangerous
2 to people. And yes, some fraction of the arrears
3 that exist now might have occurred anyway even
4 absent COVID, but in any case our goal is to
5 reduce the extent to which people are evicted and
6 the extent to which homeowners and small
7 landlords are foreclosed upon.
8 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
9 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
10 yield?
11 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
12 the sponsor yield?
13 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
14 Mr. President.
15 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
16 sponsor yields.
17 SENATOR AMEDORE: Well, thank you,
18 Senator Kavanagh, for your continuation.
19 And you mentioned about the
20 hardships. It's something that may be a little
21 different I think now, going through this new
22 process that's in your -- in the bill here, the
23 declaration of hardships. I know Senator Helming
24 did a great job asking you some questions and
25 getting some explanations. Some of the
3152
1 explanations were a little, oh, vague, I believe,
2 and not so direct to some of her answers -- or
3 her questions.
4 SENATOR KAVANAGH: I'm trying my
5 best, Mr. President.
6 SENATOR AMEDORE: But, you know, I
7 think that there's a list that you have here in
8 the legislation, there's five criterias, I
9 believe. Some of them seem to be very broad,
10 very broad, that can capture a lot of different I
11 think definitions that someone could easily write
12 down and just say, oh, I'm experiencing a
13 hardship.
14 And regardless of signing an
15 affidavit or, you know, some statement today that
16 they may -- they don't even know -- I don't
17 believe -- and that's another question that I
18 have for you, of what the penalty is if they
19 falsify the hardship declaration. But when you
20 list these hardships out, you have one -- I know
21 Senator Helming went over childcare and she went
22 over increased out-of-pocket expenses related to
23 performing essential work. Which still, to me, I
24 can't -- I haven't figured that one out. I think
25 you tried to explain that, but I still can't
3153
1 figure that one out.
2 But you also have on here increased
3 income -- or increased by necessary out-of-pocket
4 expenses. And moving expenses and difficulty of
5 moving or securing another housing unit or
6 dwelling. So if I can't find -- if I find it
7 difficult or stressful that I'm going to move
8 from one place to another, that I -- that's a
9 hardship and I'm not going to move out of my
10 apartment or I -- I just feel like I should just
11 live in this new apartment, I can't make the
12 payments but I'm just going to live here anyways
13 for this period of time?
14 What does moving expenses, what does
15 that have to do with a hardship when you're
16 dealing with housing?
17 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you,
18 Mr. President. For -- through you, just to read
19 the language that we're referring to, there are
20 five circumstances that one would have to attest
21 to if one were claiming a financial hardship.
22 They have to be experiencing a financial hardship
23 and unable to pay their rent or other financial
24 obligations under the lease in full or obtain
25 alternative suitable permanent housing because of
3154
1 one or more of the following conditions.
2 And my colleague is referring to the
3 fourth of those conditions, which says that
4 "Moving expenses and difficulty I have securing
5 alternative housing make it a hardship for me to
6 relocate to another residence during the COVID-19
7 pandemic."
8 And yes, to answer the implicit
9 question of that, it is the goal of this bill to
10 prevent people from being removed from their
11 homes, whether they are renters or homeowners, if
12 they would be -- have difficulty finding another
13 place to live in the middle of a pandemic. That
14 is the goal of this. And again, they would have
15 to have a financial hardship.
16 The example my colleague gave
17 earlier of somebody who has tremendous wealth
18 might not -- it might not be a hardship. But for
19 somebody who is struggling, for somebody who has
20 lost their job, for somebody is going to have
21 difficulty moving their family in the middle of a
22 pandemic, we are intending to provide a limited
23 protection for a short period, for four months,
24 while we dig our way out of this pandemic.
25 And there was a -- there was a
3155
1 ques -- there was something that my colleague
2 described as a question earlier which was about
3 the penalty for signing this. And again, each of
4 the forms, whether they be landlords signing them
5 or tenants signing them or homeowners signing
6 them, they say "NOTICE: You are signing and
7 submitting this form under penalty of law. That
8 means it is against the law to make a statement
9 on this form that you know is false."
10 And my understanding is that making
11 a statement -- a false statement under the
12 circumstances nonetheless would be a Class A
13 misdemeanor.
14 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
15 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
16 yield?
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
18 the sponsor yield?
19 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
20 Mr. President.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
22 sponsor yields.
23 SENATOR AMEDORE: So there's no
24 language in the bill that identifies, defines
25 what the penalty is in the law. Your
3156
1 understanding is it could be a Class A
2 misdemeanor, did I hear you say?
3 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes. Again, the
4 language specifies that it is against the law to
5 sign the form. Legally, and in my experience,
6 most people are reluctant to sign forms where
7 they are lying on a written document if they are
8 notified that it is against the law to do so.
9 SENATOR AMEDORE: Yeah. But what's
10 a Class A misdemeanor? What -- is there -- is
11 there jail time, is there a fine, a penalty? Is
12 there something that they -- is it on your
13 record? Is it like any -- is it -- it's not like
14 a felony.
15 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
16 Mr. President. Again, I wish we had our
17 Codes Committee chair or some others here with
18 greater experience in this area, but generally
19 speaking, a Class A misdemeanor is not as serious
20 as a felony. It is the most serious kind of
21 misdemeanor. It is more serious than a mere
22 violation. And it can typically carry jail time.
23 I believe we have, you know,
24 Senator Lanza, who knows more about this than I
25 do also, but I believe that a misdemeanor
3157
1 typically would not carry more than a year of
2 jail time but could carry jail time, and
3 certainly it could carry fines and other
4 significant penalties.
5 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
6 Mr. President, will the sponsor continue to
7 yield?
8 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
9 the sponsor yield?
10 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
11 Mr. President.
12 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
13 sponsor yields.
14 SENATOR AMEDORE: Thank you for
15 your answer. Maybe you can amend the bill and
16 list it exactly more specific, because anyone can
17 falsify. It may not feel like it's any big deal
18 to say, well, I -- I'm sure that they do it even
19 on credit reports at times.
20 But my question to you,
21 Senator Kavanagh, is how -- how will the
22 declaration of hardships be verified? So a
23 statement is made that I'm facing -- I fit one of
24 these criterias that are very broad, indef --
25 could be meaning anything -- out-of-pocket
3158
1 expense increase, whatever. But how is it
2 verified? That I'm telling the truth.
3 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Through you,
4 Mr. President, I'm reluc -- I want to keep the
5 conversation going, but I want -- I'm reluctant
6 to let comments like "out-of-pocket expenses,
7 whatever" -- the phrases in this bill are
8 specific -- it specifies specific kinds of
9 out-of-pocket expenses. They have to be
10 out-of-pocket expenses that result from childcare
11 responsibilities or responsibilities to care for
12 an elderly, disabled, or sick family member
13 during the pandemic and that have negatively
14 affected their income or the income of somebody
15 in their household or increased their
16 out-of-pocket expenses.
17 This is not a bill, for example,
18 about something my colleague mentioned earlier
19 about, you know, your Netflix or your -- you
20 know, your cable bill during the pandemic. It is
21 about out-of-pocket expenses that result from
22 these very significant obligations we all have
23 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
24 In terms of verification, this bill
25 is a bill that permits landlords and homeowners
3159
1 and tenants to attest that they have a hardship.
2 There is no process contemplated during the four
3 months that this bill provides to contest that
4 attestation, because we do not believe that there
5 is a reasonable, rational, safe way during a
6 pandemic to put millions of people through a
7 process of testing the truth of their
8 attestation.
9 And we want to protect people from
10 eviction and we want to protect people from
11 foreclosure and we want to protect tax
12 authorities from taking people's homes, and that
13 involves allowing each of those parties to attest
14 that they are experiencing a hardship under
15 penalty of law and gaining some temporary
16 protection. That is the scheme that's intended
17 here.
18 This is no process in this bill to
19 second-guess, to force the attesting party --
20 whether they be a landlord or a homeowner or a
21 tenant -- to prove their circumstances, because
22 we don't believe that that's a reasonable thing
23 to do in the midst of this pandemic.
24 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
25 Mr. President, will the sponsor yield?
3160
1 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
2 the sponsor yield?
3 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
4 Mr. President.
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
6 sponsor yields.
7 SENATOR AMEDORE: So if there's no
8 verification that I'm going to fill out this
9 declaration, if I was the person, declaration of
10 hardship, and I listed out whether it is the
11 hardship relating to essential work,
12 out-of-pocket expenses, because it increased my
13 out-of-pocket expenses maybe to find another job
14 or something -- I don't know what that really
15 specific thing is. But if there's no
16 verification of my statement, then what's to stop
17 me other than, well, the law says we -- it's
18 against the law?
19 People break the law every day.
20 Every day. Matter of fact, in this -- in this
21 house and in the State of New York, we did bail
22 reform, you don't even have to go to jail
23 anymore, or go to bail, or face the judge -- for
24 anything, just about. Certain things.
25 But I don't think that -- without
3161
1 any type of language in here talking about the
2 penalty that they will face, and now you just
3 said that you're not going to -- that there's no
4 way to verify the statement, I just think that
5 that is extremely dangerous that we're setting
6 this precedent that someone may wake up today
7 during this pandemic period of time -- hopefully
8 it will be over very shortly -- that says, you
9 know what, I got this excuse, I got that excuse
10 that I can't make my rent, and I'm not paying it.
11 And I think of that homeowner, even
12 as you've mentioned before even in the committee
13 meeting, Senator Kavanagh, that, you know,
14 there's something -- and I know I brought this up
15 a few months ago, talking about -- remember I
16 brought up my grandma who had that one little --
17 SENATOR KAVANAGH: I do.
18 SENATOR AMEDORE: -- single-family,
19 right?
20 So I appreciate the intent of trying
21 to capture small business owners or homeowners
22 who are renting their second floor or first floor
23 flat because they're trying to make ends meet in
24 their mortgage payment or their taxes. Which I
25 still don't see any language in this bill that
3162
1 offers any relief whatsoever to them.
2 But if there's no verification, then
3 we are saying to the 1.2 million people, if
4 that's the correct number --
5 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
6 Amedore, are you on the bill?
7 SENATOR AMEDORE: -- who are not
8 paying the bill -- this is my question to him.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: This is
10 a question, okay.
11 SENATOR AMEDORE: The 1.2 million
12 people that are not paying the rent in the State
13 of New York: You can fill this out, this is the
14 new process, there's no verification of what
15 you're saying, it's your hardship. How, Senator
16 Kavanagh, are we going to have the integrity in
17 the court proceedings and the processes --
18 because we're dealing with people's lives. Yes,
19 the tenant's life, because they live in a
20 dwelling unit and it's their abode, but also the
21 person who owns the real property. So where is
22 there fairness and the integrity in the process
23 and in this -- and in -- in this legislation?
24 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President, I
25 think it's important to note something I noted
3163
1 earlier, which is that the Minority of this
2 house, in their critique of this bill as captured
3 in their attempt to alter the bill through a
4 hostile amendment, seems to have expressed a
5 concern only that tenants might take advantage of
6 this attestation that doesn't get verified. They
7 amended the portions that apply to what tenants
8 have to attest so that they could tighten it up,
9 so they could say if you make more than $99,000,
10 you can't possibly have a hardship, even if, you
11 know, many people in your family might be
12 suffering COVID -- they made a variety of changes
13 that are premised on the notion that tenants
14 don't need protection, that tenants might be
15 inclined to be deceitful.
16 And yet they left the provisions in
17 place -- those very same provisions are in place,
18 they left them in place -- for homeowners who
19 might be trying to protect themselves from being
20 foreclosed upon by tax authorities or by mortgage
21 holders, and they left those provisions in place
22 for small landlords. Under their amendment to
23 this bill, small landlords could attest to their
24 hardship and nobody would be able to question
25 that hardship until May 1st. But somehow there
3164
1 is a strong concern for ensuring that tenants are
2 telling the truth, but not that landlords are
3 telling the truth and not that homeowners are
4 telling the truth.
5 I submit, to answer my colleague's
6 question, that the fairness of this bill comes in
7 treating similarly situated people similarly. If
8 you are somebody that is going to benefit from
9 this bill because you have a hardship and you are
10 attesting to that hardship under penalty of law,
11 whether you are a landlord or a homeowner or a
12 tenant, that attestation cannot be challenged
13 during the course of this period where you're
14 getting relief.
15 I think that is fair. Treating
16 tenants in a manner that is far more suspicious
17 than homeowners or landlords would not be my
18 definition of fairness.
19 SENATOR AMEDORE: Through you,
20 Mr. President, on the bill.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
22 Amedore on the bill.
23 SENATOR AMEDORE: I appreciate what
24 Senator Kavanagh just said, and thank you for
25 that statement, but I don't think it's
3165
1 necessarily true. Because whether it's the
2 Minority Conference -- and every member of it --
3 or others, we're talking about the integrity and
4 well-being of all New Yorkers, not just the
5 fairness of one side of the housing equation,
6 whether it's a landlord or homeowner, and
7 singling out and thinking that it's, oh, poor
8 tenant.
9 No, we look at it as all New Yorkers
10 having protection and rights. And in this great
11 state and in this great country, we have our
12 Constitution. And what we have that's different
13 than other countries throughout the world is we
14 have property rights.
15 And so I know, because I was in the
16 Legislature prior to 2008, the great bubble, the
17 housing bubble that we all faced and we saw come
18 rise up and grow. And then all of a sudden it
19 exploded, and we faced a housing crisis,
20 foreclosure rates that were exponential.
21 And we had all kinds of ideas and
22 gimmicks and legislation that the Assembly and
23 this house put forth -- laid out funding streams,
24 counseling mechanisms, and advice for those
25 struggling homeowners.
3166
1 I believe -- and the reason why I
2 bring that up is because I believe my statement
3 and my question to Senator Kavanagh about the
4 integrity and the verification of the hardship --
5 declaration of hardship, if we don't have a way
6 to verify the authenticity and the truth behind
7 statements, whether it's a homeowner, a business
8 owner, whether it's a landlord, a tenant, anyone
9 who's going to try to get a loan, who's got to
10 pay their property taxes, who wants to go and get
11 an application to -- and be creditworthy to get a
12 loan or to rent an apartment or to rent a home.
13 The last thing we need in this State
14 of New York is another one of the 2008 housing
15 crises to face. We're facing unprecedented times
16 now with COVID-19. And it's cost us our
17 municipalities, it's cost our school districts,
18 it's cost so many agencies and public authorities
19 as well as the local governments in this state a
20 great deal. But not only that, it's cost us, as
21 the citizens of this state, a great deal -- our
22 jobs, our livelihoods, a quality of life, and
23 affordability.
24 If we can't have integrity and
25 verification that someone's going to say because
3167
1 they may face a hardship -- some who are facing
2 hardships because of the COVID pandemic, but
3 others who may just say, I just feel like I'm not
4 paying my rent, I just feel like I want to go and
5 mortgage to get more units in my little
6 portfolio, up to 10, I don't have even have the
7 means and the creditworthiness, but yet falsified
8 the application and some lender gave them the
9 money -- we are setting up a ticking time bomb
10 here. That's not what we need.
11 And I appreciate the -- the effort
12 that Senator Kavanagh and his colleagues --
13 Senator Myrie -- made on this legislation. But
14 we have the federal government, we have the state
15 executive orders from our governor, and this
16 house has already been through, already,
17 legislation that brings about some relief to the
18 homeowners and to the tenants of this state.
19 Now we face this new piece of
20 legislation that's going to kick the can down the
21 road without really true relief for those who
22 struggle. All's you're saying is nah, you don't
23 have to -- you're going to pay your rent. I
24 heard one colleague on the committee, a member of
25 the Committee of Housing, today, no, everyone is
3168
1 still going to pay their rent but we're just
2 going to kick it down the road. You're going to
3 have to pay it maybe after May 1st.
4 Come May 1st, what's going to
5 happen? Is this house going to sit here and say,
6 oh, we need to do another extender of this bill,
7 without the verifications, without really getting
8 to the core root of the cause? Or are we just
9 using the pandemic as an excuse that this is what
10 we're going to do for new housing rules and laws?
11 This doesn't bring affordability to
12 the problem that we face in the State of
13 New York. This doesn't bring on new units to the
14 State of New York for housing. This doesn't help
15 the homeless. This doesn't help, but kicks the
16 can down the road.
17 I think we could have done better.
18 And I think the people who need housing
19 assistance should be fighting and screaming and
20 asking for more help because this bill lacks
21 quite a bit. And it sets up that ticking time
22 bomb for possibly another housing crisis that the
23 State of New York can't afford.
24 Our municipalities need revenue.
25 Our school districts need revenue. And they need
3169
1 homeownership, they need property rights to be
2 intact. By private property ownership, not
3 government entities.
4 So, Mr. President, it's sad that
5 today, probably the last day that I'll enter into
6 these chambers as a elected State Senator, has to
7 deal with housing -- when I know the housing
8 market and industry and worked it for over
9 30 years in my career and understand what it is
10 to be a landlord. I understand what it is to be
11 a tenant. And I understand what it is to be a
12 business owner in the State of New York.
13 This is pretty sad today that we're
14 disguising what we think is tenant protection
15 rights under the COVID bill, the disguise of the
16 terrible disease and virus that is killing tens
17 of thousands of people. We need to get New York
18 on a solid footing and a foundation to get it
19 back so that the quality of life in New York is
20 for everyone, not a select few that the Majority
21 thinks this will cover. It's unfortunate.
22 I'll be voting in the negative.
23 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
24 Jordan on the bill.
25 SENATOR JORDAN: Thank you,
3170
1 Mr. President.
2 And greetings to the limited number
3 of colleagues and staff allowed in the chamber
4 and to all those on Zoom.
5 On the bill. I believe that every
6 legislator recognizes and supports the notion
7 that people who are truly suffering financially
8 or medically due to the pandemic should not be
9 required to find another place to live because
10 they cannot pay their full rent.
11 However, in the Senate Majority's
12 words, passing -- and I quote -- the strongest
13 eviction moratorium in the nation, end quote,
14 does not mean it is the best solution.
15 The legislative intent of this bill
16 states, and I quote, that stabilizing the housing
17 situation for tenants, landlords and homeowners
18 is to the mutual benefit of all New Yorkers and
19 will help the state address the pandemic, protect
20 public health and set the stage for recovery, end
21 quote.
22 This indeed is a strong eviction
23 moratorium -- so strong that its strength is
24 flawed. This bill allows a tenant to simply fill
25 out a declaration of hardship stating that they
3171
1 are experiencing financial hardship and unable to
2 pay their full rent and check off suggested
3 reasons as to why they are unable to make their
4 payment.
5 The individual is never required to
6 show documentation that they have financial
7 difficulty. In fact, there's no definition as to
8 an amount of income available to pay rent. Or in
9 other words, there's no hardship income
10 threshold. This could lead to a high income
11 individual, someone not in need, to take
12 advantage of the eviction prohibition. It could
13 also lead to someone who decides to do a lot of
14 shopping or unwise spending to state they are
15 having financial hardship during the pandemic.
16 I also want to emphasize that the
17 words "during the pandemic" are used throughout
18 the bill, rather than financial hardship due to
19 the pandemic.
20 Furthermore, in filling out a
21 declaration of hardship, there's a rebuttable
22 presumption that the individual is stating the
23 truth unless proven otherwise. Yet there's no
24 mechanism to challenge the tenant's declaration
25 of hardship.
3172
1 This is all so very strong for the
2 tenant, with no recourse for the landlord. This
3 is chipping away at individual property rights.
4 Even at the end of the eviction moratorium,
5 there's no true recourse for the landlord. True
6 recourse would be rent payment. This bill
7 doesn't even require a minimum rent payment to
8 maintain the moratorium, where you pay a portion
9 of income to rent, like California does.
10 This bill does not solve a problem
11 for all that are suffering. It is not for the
12 benefit of all New Yorkers. It does not set the
13 stage for recovery.
14 You have to remember that our
15 landlords are our neighbors, they are our
16 constituents. They are also small businesses who
17 rely on this income, not only to pay their
18 mortgages, which is addressed in this bill, but
19 also to purchase food, medication, and other
20 needs for their families, to pay utilities for
21 the units, to even pay workers that help to
22 maintain the units.
23 This bill only kicks the can down
24 the road, allowing for the accumulation of more
25 rent owed, month by month, that will most likely
3173
1 never be paid because the amount becomes
2 insurmountable.
3 In short, this bill allows
4 protection to those who truly don't need it,
5 delays the inevitable -- eviction -- does not
6 provide any payment whatsoever to landlords, does
7 not set the stage for recovery, and in fact is
8 bad for New York's economy.
9 I'm a no vote on this bill, which I
10 believe is yet another hastily put together piece
11 of legislation that at some point will have to be
12 fixed because of its unintended ramifications.
13 It's disappointing that the Democrat
14 Senate Majority will not consider the amendment
15 that the Republican Senate Minority has put
16 forth. That bill protects those that truly need
17 help and would provide some payment to landlords
18 rather than mounting debt.
19 Thank you.
20 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
21 Boyle on the bill.
22 SENATOR BOYLE: Mr. President, will
23 the chairman yield for a few questions?
24 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
25 the sponsor yield?
3174
1 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
2 Mr. President.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 sponsor yields.
5 SENATOR BOYLE: Thank you, Senator.
6 Senator, we talked a little bit
7 about this bill in the Housing Committee today,
8 and one of the concerns I had -- and I'll express
9 it here on the floor -- is the fact that we have
10 a CDC federal moratorium on evictions and we also
11 have an executive order by Governor Cuomo which
12 bans evictions at this point in time. I don't
13 know if he signed an extension of it, but I
14 assume he's going to before the end of this year.
15 My question to you is, why do we
16 need this bill, which is much more expansive,
17 rather than just letting the Governor extend his
18 moratorium? And you can add on to that, is there
19 a three-way agreement on this bill that you've
20 talked to the Governor about that we don't know
21 about?
22 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Mr. President,
23 through you, it's a good question. And the
24 answer is that neither the CDC moratorium nor the
25 Governor's current executive order and the
3175
1 accompanying decisions by the courts through
2 administrative orders do in fact prevent
3 evictions from happening.
4 And as I mentioned earlier in the
5 debate -- I know we're in and out of the room in
6 this strange time of COVID -- but evictions have
7 resumed all over New York State. We had
8 evictions resume in Rochester in the second week
9 of October; we had the first eviction that I'm
10 aware of in New York City in the third week of
11 November. And there's a strong expectation that
12 that will accelerate as cases proceed through the
13 courts, as the courts are able to process them
14 and issue eviction orders.
15 And that is the harm that we are
16 trying to prevent today. The CDC moratorium
17 requires the tenant to attest to a great many
18 things in addition to the fact that they're
19 experiencing a financial hardship, and it doesn't
20 prevent a case from being filed and a case from
21 proceeding. And similarly, the Governor's
22 current executive order, although it has been
23 protective of many tenants, is not sufficiently
24 protective of tenants who may be experiencing a
25 hardship.
3176
1 Similarly, homeowners are not
2 protected from tax foreclosure, from tax lien
3 sales, from mortgage foreclosures under present
4 law either at the federal or state level. And
5 small landlords are not protected in the way this
6 bill will protect them from tax foreclosure and
7 mortgage foreclosures either.
8 So this is a bill that is adding
9 protections that do not currently exist under
10 law.
11 I -- my -- I've been -- I was busy
12 preparing for this debate and then in the chamber
13 today. I understand that the Governor has made
14 positive comments about his intent to sign this.
15 I haven't spoken with him personally, but I
16 understand he has said publicly that he expects
17 to sign this bill. But again, I was not present
18 for that; I believe it was at a press conference
19 today.
20 I do believe that this is a governor
21 that has expressed a strong desire for the state
22 government to take decisive action to protect
23 people, and I believe that he and many others
24 will see this bill as protective. And I expect
25 the Assembly to pass it, and I do expect it to
3177
1 become law today, but again, that's up to the
2 other parties.
3 But we are -- we are genuinely
4 trying to add protections. And I will note that
5 a vote against this bill is a vote against
6 protecting homeowners from having tax foreclosure
7 on their homes and mortgage foreclosure on their
8 homes between now and May 1st. It's not -- even
9 though there's been a lot of talk about, you
10 know, dishonest tenants in this chamber today,
11 the bill puts homeowners and tenants and small
12 landlords on equal footing, in that they can
13 declare a morator -- they can declare a hardship
14 and receive some of the protections of this bill.
15 SENATOR BOYLE: Mr. President, if
16 he'll continue to yield.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
18 the sponsor yield?
19 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
20 Mr. President.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
22 sponsor yields.
23 SENATOR BOYLE: Yes, Senator, I
24 think we all agree that we want to protect
25 tenants and we want to protect landlords and
3178
1 people that owe mortgages, but we just disagree
2 perhaps on the way to do it. We think this bill
3 is far too expansive.
4 So this bill really is not a
5 moratorium on evictions, it's a moratorium on
6 proceedings of evictions. And I'm an attorney,
7 I've done a little bit of landlord-tenant, not
8 much. But anybody that's done this area of law
9 can tell you that when you -- when you -- when a
10 landlord files something in court to evict a
11 tenant, it doesn't happen the next day or the
12 next week or the next month, it's several months
13 down the road.
14 And these cannot even begin until
15 this bill ends in May, and then we're talking
16 months and months after that. Would you agree
17 with that assessment?
18 SENATOR KAVANAGH: I would amend
19 that assessment in a couple of ways.
20 First of all, I would remind my
21 colleague that it is equally a moratorium on
22 filings in foreclosure cases against homeowners
23 and small landlords. It is not an eviction
24 moratorium bill, it is the Eviction and
25 Foreclosure Prevention Bill -- Act.
3179
1 And it's important to note that
2 these provisions are parallel and weakening
3 one -- all the arguments for weakening the
4 protections of tenants would presumably apply to
5 weakening the protections for homeowners.
6 Secondly, the problem we face is
7 that cases have been permitted to be filed now
8 since June 20th. There are thousands and
9 thousands of cases pending. This bill stays --
10 creates a mechanism to stay those cases if the
11 tenant respondent or the homeowner respondent in
12 those cases is experiencing a hardship.
13 The logic of this bill is that if
14 we're going to stay all those cases, there's not
15 a whole lot of point in allowing people to file
16 new cases against tenants and new cases against
17 homeowners at a time when the court is not
18 allowed to move forward with those cases. People
19 who receive notice that eviction cases have been
20 filed against them could be forgiven for thinking
21 that that might lead to their eviction, and they
22 then need to respond in some way.
23 We are trying to avoid all of that
24 activity, we're trying to put a pause on that.
25 And again, we're trying to limit the protections
3180
1 to people who are experiencing a hardship, as
2 opposed to some of the blanket moratoriums that I
3 and some others have talked about in the past.
4 This is a bill that is targeted to
5 the fact that we have very large numbers of
6 people experiencing hardship, and it would be a
7 hardship to allow enormous numbers of cases to be
8 filed against those folks and then have them have
9 to go defend themselves during the course of this
10 pandemic.
11 SENATOR BOYLE: Will the sponsor
12 continue to yield?
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Does
14 the sponsor yield?
15 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Yes,
16 Mr. President.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
18 sponsor yields.
19 SENATOR BOYLE: Yes, I think that
20 if a proceeding is started, though, a lot of
21 these would go -- I don't know what's going on in
22 New York City, but I know that our judicial
23 system on Long Island and upstate are using
24 online ways of doing it so there's not really --
25 not a big rush of people going to court. These
3181
1 proceedings are going, but they're all done
2 remotely and safely.
3 I'd just like to get back to one of
4 the issues you spoke with some of the earlier
5 Senators about: means testing. There's no
6 provision in here to say if you make over a
7 certain amount of money, that you're not going to
8 be able to use this provision.
9 Now, I know -- I think -- correct me
10 if I'm wrong, I could be wrong -- the California
11 legislation or moratorium on evictions, they have
12 means tests, but this bill does not. Or is -- am
13 I reading that wrong?
14 SENATOR KAVANAGH: The California
15 provisions -- the California process has several
16 mechanisms that this bill does not have. Several
17 of them were in the hostile amendment presented
18 by the Minority today.
19 They for example require that to be
20 protected at all if you're having a hardship, you
21 must be paying at least 25 percent of the rent.
22 That's something that is on the books in
23 California. That's something that the Minority
24 here tried to add to this bill through a hostile
25 amendment earlier in this session.
3182
1 And again, the problem with that is
2 if people do not have money to pay the rent
3 because they've lost their job entirely, because
4 they have no income, telling them -- they are
5 arguably the people with the greatest hardship,
6 the ones that don't even have enough money to pay
7 25 percent of their rent. So that provision.
8 And similarly, there is no income
9 threshold. As the Minority has proposed it and
10 as some other moratoria have proposed it,
11 including the CDC moratorium, there is an
12 absolute prohibition on any protection at all.
13 In this case the Minority proposed
14 that anybody making more than $99,000 as a
15 single-income household does not get any
16 protection at all if they're having a hardship.
17 In my world, there are people who make more than
18 $99,000 who might have somebody in their family
19 who's seriously ill, who might have a significant
20 rent, who might have several children and lots of
21 expenses associated with keeping a family intact
22 during a pandemic. And in our view, those folks
23 deserve some protection if they're experiencing a
24 hardship and they're unable to pay their mortgage
25 or unable to pay their property taxes or unable
3183
1 to pay their rent.
2 And so rather than setting an
3 arbitrary threshold, we're allowing people, even
4 people who make more than $99,000 or $198,000 for
5 a couple, we're allowing those people to attest
6 that I cannot pay my rent, I cannot pay my
7 mortgage, and therefore I'm getting some
8 temporary protection.
9 SENATOR BOYLE: Mr. President, on
10 the bill.
11 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
12 Boyle on the bill.
13 SENATOR BOYLE: The sponsor -- I
14 don't think we're talking about 99,000 or 100,000
15 or 105,000, I think that some of us are concerned
16 about people making millions of dollars. I never
17 thought that the Republican Party would be here
18 being the one asking the very wealthy to pay a
19 little bit more and maybe pay maybe 25 percent
20 towards their rent. Because obviously there's
21 not many places other than perhaps Manhattan in
22 New York State that has monthly rents of $10,000
23 or more.
24 But I think that if an individual is
25 making millions and perhaps is only making one
3184
1 million instead of a couple million, they can
2 find the additional funds to pay the rent and not
3 try to delay this inevitable.
4 Mr. President, I think once again
5 we're seeing the Majority here take a noble idea
6 and go way too far, which is going to cause much
7 greater problems down the road. We saw the same
8 thing with bail reform earlier this year.
9 We have a situation where
10 individuals hurting, both as tenants, as
11 landlords, they're suffering healthwise and
12 financially as a result of this pandemic, and
13 they're not able to pay all or part of their
14 mortgage. However, what are we doing? What are
15 we setting up? The phrase has been used "kicking
16 the can down the road." Well, I can tell you
17 months and months of people adding onto the
18 amount of rent that they owe is going to cause
19 disaster in the spring.
20 Obviously the vaccine's here,
21 hopefully we're all going to get it, perhaps by
22 May or June, and we won't have to extend this
23 again. And then what are we looking at?
24 I personally know numerous people,
25 the children of my friends, who have apartments
3185
1 in New York City and other parts of the state,
2 and they tell me: "Phil, I don't have to pay
3 rent." And I tell them, "Yes, you do. You can't
4 be evicted, but you still owe the rent." And
5 they are shocked and mortified, because they
6 haven't been doing it.
7 And these are just the people I
8 know. This could be thousands if not tens of
9 thousands of people who are going to be sitting
10 here, when this moratorium is over, owing
11 $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 in rent. And it's
12 going to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
13 They will be evicted, maybe months down the road,
14 but it's going to be a disaster.
15 So it begs the question, what is the
16 real agenda here? I think just by allowing the
17 proceedings to start, it's going to show them
18 that this is serious, that they still owe the
19 money. Because they don't know it. They're
20 going to find out when the proceedings are put
21 against them, commenced against them, after this
22 moratorium ends.
23 I personally think it could be
24 something else -- perhaps a more Democratic
25 Socialist agenda we're seeing here? We've seen
3186
1 it in the past on other issues. I looked at
2 socialist.nyc.gov. On their platform it says:
3 "What are we fighting for? Universal rent
4 control. This means tenant power over where we
5 live and an end to evictions and displacements."
6 It doesn't say an end to evictions
7 and displacements during the pandemic, it says an
8 end to evictions and displacement. That's the
9 real agenda. And that's -- even if it's not the
10 agenda, it's what's going to happen.
11 Because we all know, as some of my
12 colleagues alluded to, when this moratorium is
13 over, we're not going to sit here and just say --
14 I know the majority is not going to say, All
15 right, start the evictions, you can start kicking
16 out your tenants because they owe you $30,000 in
17 back rent, you know they can't pay it. We're
18 going to say: We're going to continue a
19 moratorium in some way, shape or form. People
20 are going to be remaining in these apartments,
21 homes, without paying anything and with a backlog
22 and back rent and back mortgage that they will
23 never be able to pay for decades.
24 This is creating a disaster. It was
25 well-meaning, but it's a big problem. There's a
3187
1 way to do it: Let the Governor extend his
2 current moratorium through his executive order,
3 and we can work on the rest with help from
4 Washington, hopefully, help from here in Albany.
5 But this is not the right way to go,
6 and I'll be voting in the negative.
7 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Are
8 there any other Senators wishing to be heard?
9 Seeing and hearing none, debate is
10 closed. The Secretary will ring the bell.
11 Read the last section.
12 THE SECRETARY: Section 5. This
13 act shall take effect immediately.
14 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Call
15 the roll.
16 (The Secretary called the roll.)
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
18 Gianaris to explain his vote.
19 SENATOR GIANARIS: Thank you,
20 Mr. President.
21 What we're doing today is incredibly
22 important. But having listened to that debate, I
23 also want to make the point that it by no means
24 solves the problem. It merely allows us to put a
25 finger in the dam to keep it from bursting. But
3188
1 the pressure in the housing market is going to
2 continue to mount.
3 And the real problem is we have not
4 provided -- save for a $100 million program which
5 has helped some people -- we have not provided
6 real relief to help people pay their rent and
7 maintain their housing.
8 And so as we're wrapping up this
9 year, this is critically important, because we
10 will keep people from being thrown out of their
11 homes. At a time when we're telling everyone,
12 Stay in your homes, the last thing we want to
13 allow is for people to become homeless by the
14 thousands.
15 But we have to go into next session
16 with a mission to provide real relief and hold up
17 this housing market so that tenants will be made
18 whole and, yes, small homeowners will be made
19 whole as well, because they shouldn't bear the
20 entire burden on their own either.
21 Now, I've heard -- listening to this
22 debate, I heard two concerns predominantly. One
23 is for small homeowners, who I totally sympathize
24 with. And we should provide real subsidization
25 and relief for them as we go forward.
3189
1 But the other thing I heard about
2 was the millionaire scammers. Which is kind of
3 funny and contradictory, because I promise you
4 the people who are making millions of dollars in
5 income are not renting the basement apartment
6 from the small -- the woman who owns the building
7 on your corner, a two-family home.
8 So suddenly the big concern is that
9 a multimillionaire is going to scam a
10 multi-billion-dollar real estate corporation. I
11 don't think that's really what we're trying to
12 get at here. What we're trying to get at is
13 helping the tens and hundreds of thousands of
14 tenants in this state, many of whom have lost
15 their jobs through no fault of their own because
16 we have shut down entire segments of our economy
17 for good reason through this health pandemic that
18 we're dealing with.
19 And what we've seen both in the
20 federal moratorium, in California, and in the
21 executive orders that New York has already had is
22 that putting the burden on tenants to go make
23 evidentiary proof of their hardship is only going
24 to result in tens of thousands of them having
25 default judgments entered against them -- because
3190
1 they don't have the money to hire lawyers, they
2 don't have the wherewithal to show up in court
3 with a basket of evidence to present to a judge.
4 Many of them don't speak English as their primary
5 language.
6 And all we're doing is setting up
7 mass evictions if we don't do something to stop
8 that from happening right now, and to make it
9 easier than putting the entire burden on the
10 tenants to go make a proof, a legal proof in
11 court.
12 And so what we've come up with
13 today, and I commend Senator Kavanagh, Senator
14 Myrie and all the -- all my colleagues who worked
15 so hard on this, is just to allow us to get
16 through the next few months while hopefully,
17 God willing, the federal government does more
18 than it's done so far to help us and, if need be,
19 the state step in and do additional work on our
20 end to help us get through the back end of this
21 without a full-blown housing crisis, which is
22 where we're heading if we don't take the
23 necessary steps.
24 So I'm proud to cast my vote in the
25 affirmative, and I thank my colleagues who are
3191
1 supporting this bill.
2 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
3 Gianaris to be recorded in the affirmative.
4 Senator Jackson to explain his vote.
5 SENATOR JACKSON: Well, thank you.
6 Mr. President and my colleagues, I rise this
7 afternoon, I came up to Albany in order to let
8 you know how important this issue is to the
9 constituents that I represent.
10 And as you know I've said many times
11 before, I represent 13 miles of Manhattan and I
12 have the most rent-regulated units in the entire
13 State of New York. But I'm not only here to talk
14 about my constituents, I'm talking about the
15 constituents in Staten Island and Buffalo,
16 Rochester, in rural areas that will -- if we
17 don't pass this bill, will be evicted or
18 proceedings will take place not only from their
19 apartments, from their homes.
20 This is about saving the people of
21 our state. They have said to me loud and clear,
22 We need help from you guys up in Albany. When
23 are you going to do it? Well, I say to all of
24 you, the time is now.
25 And what this is doing is putting
3192
1 off eviction proceedings or foreclosure
2 proceedings for all of the people in the State of
3 New York that will make a declaration about this
4 pandemic and what effect it had on them. That's
5 what this is about -- signing, saying that they
6 pledge that the information they're giving is
7 true.
8 And we are saying that addressing
9 this is absolutely a necessity of halting
10 evictions, foreclosures, negative credit reports
11 for all of the working people. And we are
12 creating more protections for senior citizens and
13 disabled homeowners.
14 But there are more problems we must
15 address in the coming weeks. Too many people are
16 one food bank drive away from not being able to
17 feed their kids. Too many people have little or
18 no healthcare in our state during one of the
19 worst epidemics in human history. Too many
20 children at our already underfunded schools are
21 being denied a sound, basic education that is
22 guaranteed by the New York State Constitution.
23 The only way forward for our state
24 is to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers to raise
25 revenue that we need to protect the vast majority
3193
1 of our society. Our next step is to create
2 revenues we need to protect millions of our
3 friends and neighbors.
4 And with that, I vote aye on this,
5 in understanding that the time is now to help all
6 New Yorkers. Be they Republican, Democrat, or no
7 party, the time is now.
8 I say aye, Mr. President.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
10 Jackson to be recorded in the affirmative.
11 Senator Parker to explain his vote.
12 SENATOR PARKER: Thank you,
13 Mr. President, to explain my vote.
14 I gladly stand with the people of
15 the State of New York who have been suffering
16 through this pandemic, and I vote aye on this
17 bill.
18 There has been literally millions of
19 people who not only have been under the effects
20 of being sick, there are people who have lost
21 lives, have seen their friends and families and
22 community members die because of this horrible
23 pandemic. But on top of that, they've been
24 stressed because they have not had income because
25 they lost their jobs, many times because of
3194
1 nothing that they have done other than being in a
2 industry that got affected by the pandemic.
3 We in this Legislature are finally
4 doing something about that. I'm so proud of my
5 colleagues -- Senator Myrie, Senator Kavanagh --
6 who have, you know, come together, have organized
7 us to bring forward this legislation that is
8 going to provide at least some temporary relief
9 as we start to sort out the economic hardships
10 that people are going through.
11 I vote aye on this because we need
12 to protect tenants, we need to protect landlords,
13 we need to protect property owners. And we need
14 to protect the financial livelihoods of the
15 people of this state.
16 Thank you so much, all of you, for
17 all of the important work that you've done. And
18 I look forward to even doing more in the next
19 coming session to provide relief for the people
20 of our great state.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
22 Senator Parker to be recorded in the affirmative.
23 Senator Carlucci to explain his
24 vote.
25 SENATOR CARLUCCI: Thank you,
3195
1 Mr. President.
2 I want to thank my colleagues for
3 supporting this extremely important legislation.
4 And for me, I'm truly honored to be here today to
5 vote for this legislation, being that it will be
6 the last piece of legislation that I get to vote
7 for in this chamber.
8 And it's been an amazing experience
9 to work with such wonderful individuals in this
10 house, and I just want to thank each and every
11 one of you for the work you've done over the
12 years and the work that you will continue to do.
13 I specifically want to thank
14 Senator Kavanagh and Senator Myrie and our
15 leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, for shepherding
16 through this extremely important piece of
17 legislation.
18 And as we've heard from the comments
19 and the debate on the floor, it's not easy, but
20 we've worked together to push through and make
21 sure that people still have a place to rest their
22 head and call a place home.
23 A part of this bill I'm really proud
24 of is the extending the disability and senior
25 property tax exemption. This is something that
3196
1 often goes unseen, but by requiring that
2 municipalities reinstitute the homeowner
3 exemption, this will allow for tens of thousand
4 of New Yorkers, whether they have a qualifying
5 disability or they're a low-income senior, to be
6 able to stay in their home.
7 And particularly in Rockland and
8 Westchester Counties, the district that I
9 represent, which happen to be the highest
10 property-taxed counties in the nation, this bill
11 is extremely important and will be the difference
12 between them being able to stay in their homes or
13 having to leave and move out of the community or
14 out of the state entirely.
15 So again, this is extremely
16 important. It does -- strikes the right balance
17 to protect our tenants, protect landlords and
18 property owners throughout New York State.
19 So it's so gratifying and so
20 exciting to be able to cast my last vote in this
21 chamber for these extremely important
22 protections. And I want to thank each and every
23 one of the Senators that worked on this, and all
24 the Senators I've been able to work with in the
25 past. I thank you, and I wish you the best of
3197
1 luck. I know that the next session will be a
2 challenging one with so many issues to work on,
3 but I know all of the Senators that are here in
4 this chamber are ready for the challenge and will
5 do great work in the future.
6 So thank you so much. I vote aye
7 and encourage my colleagues to do the same.
8 Thank you, Mr. President.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
10 Carlucci to be recorded in the affirmative.
11 Senator Harckham to explain his
12 vote.
13 SENATOR HARCKHAM: Thank you,
14 Mr. President.
15 I want to wish you and everybody in
16 the chamber a Happy New Year. It's a bit ironic,
17 though, that it's a very challenging new year for
18 many of our residents here in New York -- over
19 1.7 million of our fellow New Yorkers out of
20 work; the hardship that many of our tenants, our
21 homeowners, and our small landlords are facing is
22 why we're here today.
23 I want to thank Senator Kavanagh and
24 Senator Myrie for their work on this bill. I
25 think Senator Carlucci just said this: This
3198
1 strikes the appropriate balance.
2 And I wanted to come and voice my
3 support for this measure for several reasons. My
4 district is very mixed. We have a mixture of
5 large rental buildings, a vast amount of small
6 rental properties, and we've got a lot of
7 single-family dwellings. And all of them are a
8 challenge right now.
9 And what this bill does is it simply
10 gives us a four-month time-out to allow folks to
11 get back on their feet or to allow the federal
12 government to come in in a meaningful way to
13 assist those folks. It helps tenants, it helps
14 people with mortgages from either bank
15 foreclosure or taxing foreclosure. This helps
16 our seniors and our disabled with their tax
17 exemption extensions, which are now automatic and
18 they weren't.
19 So this is really an appropriate
20 bill. It's a timely bill. It gives us time to
21 work with our federal partners so that we can
22 provide the relief that's absolutely necessary
23 structurally. In the long term, this is not
24 going away, but in the short term, this is an
25 appropriate measure.
3199
1 So I want to thank the sponsors for
2 their hard work, and I vote aye.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
4 Harckham to be recorded in the affirmative.
5 Senator Thomas to explain his vote.
6 SENATOR THOMAS: Thank you very
7 much, Mr. President.
8 Thank you to our leader, Andrea
9 Stewart-Cousins, for pushing this bill forward,
10 and to Senator Myrie and Senator Kavanagh for all
11 their tireless work on this matter.
12 New Yorkers are hurting. New York
13 was hit hard and we lost so many lives and
14 continue to do so every day. This pandemic led
15 to many businesses shutting their doors and
16 laying off their workers. And for New Yorkers
17 who have been laid off through no fault of their
18 own, unemployment insurance is often the only
19 source of income. They've got to support their
20 families while they look for a new job.
21 Months have gone by and the economy
22 is still stagnant. Many New Yorkers who need to
23 pay their rent, mortgage, and other bills are
24 finding it hard to do so because they are still
25 unemployed or underemployed. But we are going to
3200
1 get through this.
2 The COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and
3 Foreclosure Prevention Act before us today is an
4 absolutely necessary step to help our economy
5 recover. This legislation is the strongest bill
6 in the nation to block eviction proceedings from
7 going forward and will help ensure renters and
8 homeowners can stay in their homes if they are
9 facing hardships due to this pandemic.
10 This bill will prevent evictions
11 till May 2021. It will protect against
12 foreclosures and tax lien sales. It will protect
13 against negative reporting and discrimination on
14 extending credit and protect the exemptions of
15 senior citizens and disabled homeowners.
16 Simply put, this will protect our
17 tenants, our small landlords, our homeowners, our
18 senior citizens, and those disabled, and I
19 proudly cast my vote in the affirmative.
20 Thank you so much.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
22 Thomas to be recorded in the affirmative.
23 Senator Myrie to explain his vote.
24 SENATOR MYRIE: Thank you,
25 Mr. President.
3201
1 Firstly, Happy Kwanza, everybody,
2 and happy holidays to all who celebrate.
3 I want to first thank the staff that
4 helped draft this bill: Adriele Douglas, Kenan
5 Kurt, Nic Rangel. I want to thank the chair of
6 our Housing Committee, Senator Kavanagh, who I
7 think did a masterful job defending this bill.
8 And I want to thank our Majority Leader for
9 making this a priority and dealing with this
10 issue.
11 I remember the first time that I saw
12 an eviction notice as a child. I didn't know
13 what the repercussions were until much later when
14 I was in housing court with my mom. But that
15 experience is the same pain and anxiety and
16 trauma that is experienced by a homeowner who
17 gets a call or a letter from the bank telling
18 them that the home that they've invested in is
19 now in peril of being foreclosed on. It is the
20 same pain and shame and anxiety that is felt by a
21 property owner who gets a notice from their city,
22 town, or village that their house is now going to
23 be on sale because of back property taxes.
24 We are in the midst of an
25 unprecedented pandemic, one that has claimed
3202
1 hundreds of thousands of lives, permanently
2 affected thousands more, and that has wreaked
3 havoc on our economy. Just this morning the
4 Governor reported that the state is seeing
5 hospitalizations and infections and deaths unlike
6 what we've seen since early May of this year.
7 These are not normal times. We are
8 in a public health crisis, an economic crisis
9 together, which has given way to a looming
10 eviction crisis.
11 So what this bill stands for today
12 is a simple proposition, that you do not solve a
13 public health crisis, you do not solve an
14 economic crisis by kicking people out on the
15 street. You solve it by keeping them in their
16 homes.
17 I've heard a lot today about kicking
18 the can down the road. And I would ask my
19 colleagues who think that we are kicking the can
20 down the road, what is your alternative? To kick
21 people on the streets instead?
22 The data is clear. When eviction
23 moratoria end, COVID-19 infections and
24 consequently COVID-19 deaths increase. This
25 isn't a business proposition, this isn't a profit
3203
1 proposition, this isn't a bottom-line
2 proposition -- it is life or death.
3 So I proudly support this bill today
4 because not only is it the strongest protection
5 for tenants and homeowners in the country, but
6 because the single mom in Rochester who lost her
7 job through no fault of her own deserves to stay
8 in her home. The family in Syracuse that
9 has to take care of more children and the elderly
10 deserve to stay in their home. The restaurant
11 worker in Buffalo who has less hours through no
12 fault of their own deserves to stay in their
13 home. And property owners in Brooklyn, in
14 Queens, the Bronx who have invested everything
15 into their homes, who have sheltered tenants,
16 they too deserve to stay in their homes.
17 Now, some have said that this bill
18 doesn't go far enough, that more relief is
19 needed. And I agree. And we will fight for
20 more. But this Democratic Majority stood up and
21 led the nation in protecting tenants and property
22 owners at a time when they needed it the most.
23 So help is on the way, and we believe that you
24 should be able to stay in your home to receive
25 it.
3204
1 For those reasons I vote in the
2 affirmative, Mr. President. Thank you.
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
4 Myrie to be recorded in the affirmative.
5 Senator Kavanagh to explain his
6 vote.
7 SENATOR KAVANAGH: Thank you,
8 Mr. President.
9 I've had a great deal of opportunity
10 to speak today on this bill. I just want to
11 conclude today's conversation with a few comments
12 and a few additional thank-yous.
13 Senator Myrie very rightly thanked
14 Nic Rangel and Kenan Kurt and Adriele Douglas,
15 who worked on this. I just want to add Andra
16 Stanley, who's committee counsel for Housing, and
17 Stanley Davis, who spent a great deal of time
18 over the last few days over Christmas fielding
19 lots of questions from lots of folks about this,
20 and Elizabeth Nowicki and Allison Bradley and
21 Chris Friend.
22 And it should be said that
23 Shontell Smith has defined so much of what we do
24 here that it's almost like, you know, thanking
25 the air and the water around you.
3205
1 (Laughter.)
2 SENATOR KAVANAGH: But she really
3 is the motivator of so much of what we do and
4 obviously played a huge role in getting this done
5 today, and I wanted to acknowledge and thank her
6 for her work.
7 I want to thank the leader, who from
8 the beginning of this crisis has said that this
9 house is going stand for the proposition that
10 people will not lose their homes during the
11 pandemic, and we are living up to that promise
12 today.
13 I want to thank Senator Myrie we
14 just heard from so eloquently today, but also who
15 has been a champion of tenants and particularly
16 of addressing the eviction problem through
17 legislation for many months now.
18 I want to thank Senator Hoylman, the
19 chair of our Judiciary Committee. You know, at
20 the beginning of this the most obvious way to do
21 this was to get an executive order in place from
22 the government, get administrative orders from
23 the courts. We called for that in the very first
24 days of things being shut down, Senator Hoylman
25 and I, and that was in place through the end of
3206
1 September, a blanket moratorium on evictions.
2 And obviously he also was somebody
3 that cochaired that hearing I mentioned earlier
4 where we examined the impacts of the court's
5 reopening.
6 Senator Gianaris, as our deputy
7 leader, and also as someone who has really stood
8 very strong for the notion that the Legislature
9 needs to act to protect tenants.
10 In the other house, we have
11 Senator -- Assemblymember Dinowitz, our sponsor
12 of the bill, Assemblymember Reyes, who's also
13 been carrying legislation to address this, and of
14 course Speaker Heastie, who was a partner in this
15 negotiation and got this done.
16 I also do want to thank our Minority
17 members today for a thorough debate. Obviously
18 we have a really fundamental different
19 understanding of what steps we should be taking,
20 but I think having a debate as we did today that
21 gets into the details of this is an important way
22 of making people understand what's at stake and
23 how the bill will work and, you know, elucidating
24 all of that in a way that's better than just, you
25 know, passing the bill and leaving people to read
3207
1 it and figure it out. So I thank the many
2 members of the Minority who jumped up today to
3 have that conversation.
4 I will conclude by just saying, as
5 has been said today in various forms, we are
6 committed to addressing the great hardships that
7 have come from this pandemic. We recognize this
8 is an ongoing pandemic.
9 We began this work at a time when in
10 many of our communities, including my own, you
11 could hear very little other than sirens in the
12 streets, where we had a tremendous shutdown of
13 this economy and of people's ordinary lives.
14 There are parts of the state where we're getting
15 things back to normal. We are seeing disturbing
16 trends of infections going upward. We know that
17 we are still in the midst of a very serious
18 health crisis. And as has been said in many
19 contexts, in the midst of a health crisis your
20 home is very much a part of your health. And our
21 means of addressing our health crisis is very
22 much going to be a matter of continuing to
23 protect people's homes.
24 This bill does that. It does it for
25 homeowners as well as renters, and it does it for
3208
1 small landlords. It is an enormous step forward.
2 And I, like many people in this chamber, intend
3 to get back to work on addressing the second part
4 of this, which is the enormous financial
5 implications, the financial resources that are
6 going to be necessary for a real, long-term,
7 robust solution that many people, including
8 members of the Minority, have called for today.
9 I vote aye, Mr. President.
10 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
11 Kavanagh to be recorded in the affirmative.
12 Announce the results.
13 THE SECRETARY: In relation to
14 Calendar 1034, those Senators voting in the
15 negative are Senators Akshar, Amedore, Borrello,
16 Boyle, Felder, Funke, Gallivan, Griffo, Helming,
17 Jordan, Lanza, LaValle, Little, O'Mara, Ortt,
18 Ranzenhofer, Ritchie, Robach, Serino, Seward and
19 Tedisco.
20 Ayes, 40. Nays, 21.
21 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
22 bill is passed.
23 Senator Gianaris, that completes the
24 reading of the controversial calendar.
25 SENATOR GIANARIS: Thank you,
3209
1 Mr. President.
2 At this time I wish to call up
3 Calendar Numbers 132 and 146, with corresponding
4 Assembly Print Numbers, 2405 and 4770A, and move
5 to reconsider the vote by which these Assembly
6 bills were substituted.
7 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
8 secretary will read the titles of the bills.
9 THE SECRETARY: Assembly Number
10 2405, an act to amend the Education Law;
11 Assembly Number 4770A, an act to
12 amend the Real Property Law.
13 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
14 Secretary will now call the roll on
15 reconsideration.
16 (The Secretary called the roll.)
17 THE SECRETARY: Ayes, 61.
18 SENATOR GIANARIS: I now move to
19 recommit those Assembly bills to the Committee on
20 Rules and restore the Senate bills to the order
21 of third reading.
22 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: All in
23 favor say aye.
24 (Response of "Aye.")
25 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
3210
1 Opposed?
2 (No response.)
3 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: The
4 Assembly bills are recommitted, and the Senate
5 bills are restored.
6 SENATOR GIANARIS: I now move to
7 recommit the calendar of bills to the
8 Rules Committee.
9 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: It is
10 so ordered.
11 SENATOR GIANARIS: At this time,
12 Mr. President, we're going to hear from the
13 leaders, beginning with Minority Leader Ortt.
14 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
15 Minority Leader Ortt.
16 SENATOR ORTT: Thank you,
17 Mr. President.
18 Leader Stewart-Cousins, nice to see
19 you.
20 I want to thank Deputy Leader Lanza,
21 his first day here in this chair.
22 And of course, Mr. President, nice
23 to see you.
24 I just wanted to -- I guess this is
25 the official end of session. It came much later
3211
1 than I think most of us would have anticipated.
2 And it's been a tough year. And I don't mean for
3 the people in this room. Certainly we've borne
4 the burdens of being in public office, the
5 burdens of leadership in a trying time.
6 I'm talking about the people who
7 aren't in this building. I'm talking about the
8 people who own businesses, whether they be
9 restaurants, salons, any small business, any
10 business. I'm thinking about the people who work
11 in those businesses -- the waiters and the
12 waitresses, teachers, nurses, doctors, police
13 officers, people who work in long-term-care
14 facilities -- I could go on and on. There's been
15 no aspect of our life that has not been impacted
16 by the pandemic and by the resulting
17 restrictions, lockdowns, whatever you want to
18 call it.
19 It has been a very tough year for
20 New Yorkers. And I think there is some hope on
21 the horizon, but there's also continued
22 uncertainty about what the future may hold.
23 Because I firmly believe we will get through the
24 public health part of this crisis. We have the
25 best research and development -- you look at the
3212
1 companies that have brought the vaccine to the
2 market -- and I firmly believe we have the best
3 doctors, the best medical personnel in this
4 country that we will get through the public
5 health component of this.
6 But there are lingering aspects of
7 this, socioeconomic impacts of this pandemic that
8 we're living through that will be with us for
9 many years. Whether it's the impact on our
10 schoolchildren who are remote-learning, or
11 whether it is the impact on businesses, on our
12 economy both in New York City and across New York
13 State.
14 And when we come back to work next
15 week, I can tell you that the Republican
16 Conference will be coming back to work with that
17 single-minded focus, to make that we are doing
18 our jobs so that New Yorkers can go back to doing
19 theirs.
20 And that is going to be -- we stand
21 ready to work with the Majority. Of course we
22 stand ready also to be the loyal opposition on
23 policies that we think do not achieve those ends.
24 But I know, in talking with Majority Leader
25 Stewart-Cousins, everyone is looking forward to
3213
1 getting back to work for the people of this
2 state, the people who have elected us, millions
3 of New Yorkers who turned out in record numbers.
4 And they expect not only the Governor, but they
5 expect the 63 members in this chamber to go to
6 work and represent them. And I think they have a
7 right to expect that, and I look forward to
8 fulfilling that obligation.
9 Before I sit down for the year, I do
10 want to mention a couple of my members in our
11 conference who are leaving after in some cases
12 decades of public service. And again, unique
13 because we didn't get to -- and I'm sure Leader
14 Cousins could say the same for members in her
15 conference -- we didn't get to say the farewell
16 that we have grown accustomed to in this chamber.
17 I know I've been here for six years
18 now, and when members who have been here for a
19 long time -- be they Democrats, be they
20 Republicans -- have left, there's always been
21 both a fitting sendoff both in the chamber,
22 obviously internally with the conference, maybe
23 there's a dinner involved, you know, some old war
24 stories. None of that really happened the way it
25 normally would.
3214
1 And so I just want to take just a
2 few moments to recognize a few of my colleagues
3 who will be leaving in a couple of days.
4 Senator George Amedore, who we all
5 heard from today. I want to thank Senator
6 Amedore for being willing, even though he was at
7 the end -- I always say you can tell a lot about
8 somebody when it's at the end of their time and
9 they're still willing to show up to work.
10 Senator Amedore was here today; I'm sure he could
11 have been with his family, he could have sent his
12 vote in remotely. He was here, he was here to
13 ask some important questions of Senator Kavanagh.
14 And Senator Amedore has been a very
15 important member of our conference as a business
16 owner, as someone who I always say signs the
17 front of checks as well as the back of checks.
18 He employs a lot of folks in this district, in
19 his district, and he has been a great voice for
20 small businesses, for business owners, for
21 taxpayers here in the State of New York.
22 And I want to thank him. He is
23 someone I am proud to call a personal friend. He
24 came in with me in 2015, January 2015, we were
25 both elected in November of '14. And he will be
3215
1 missed, but obviously not forgotten.
2 Senator Rich Funke, Senator Joe
3 Robach, both from the Rochester region. Senator
4 Funke, of course, a very long term broadcaster.
5 Senator Joe Robach has been here in Albany for
6 many years. He was in the Assembly as a
7 Democrat -- which I'm sure my colleagues across
8 the aisle might find hard to believe, but
9 certainly he was -- and then he ran as a
10 Republican to the Senate and has been reelected
11 time and time again.
12 I will tell you this. There are few
13 people who really bled for their community the
14 way Senator Robach did. He was a tireless
15 advocate for the City of Rochester. Whether it
16 was inner city Rochester, whether it was the
17 first ring suburbs, it didn't matter to Senator
18 Robach, he would go to bat for that community,
19 and on several occasions delivered for that
20 community over the years, whether he was a
21 Democrat, whether he was a Republican, whether he
22 was in the Majority or he was in the Minority.
23 And he certainly brought some levity
24 to our conference, which I will tell you -- and
25 as I'm sure both -- everyone in this room can
3216
1 agree, sometimes whether you're in conference,
2 whether you're on the floor, you're discussing
3 very serious things, and sometimes a little
4 levity is helpful. And Senator Robach certainly
5 was -- was that for us. But he could also,
6 obviously, be a statesman and a hard-fighting
7 advocate for the City of Rochester and for Monroe
8 County. So I want to thank him and
9 Senator Funke.
10 Senator Seward. You know, Senator
11 Seward in some ways has been a microcosm of this
12 year. He battled through cancer, he battled
13 through COVID-19. And if you were to see
14 Senator Seward today, you would never know that
15 he had any health issues. I like to say he's
16 kind of the Republican answer to Dick Clark. He
17 just never seems to get older, always looks
18 great, always upbeat, a gentleman. I think for
19 those who were on the other side, always a
20 gentleman in his floor debates, in the way he
21 handled himself.
22 And he is the definition, I think,
23 of a statesman and will certainly be missed by
24 the people of his district as he is succeeded by
25 Senator-elect Oberacker.
3217
1 Senator Ranzenhofer, a neighbor of
2 mine in Western New York, an attorney but someone
3 who was certainly a -- served in this body for I
4 believe a decade.
5 Senator Betty Little, from the
6 North Country, a champion for women's rights, for
7 women's issues. I think certainly when it came
8 to the Women of Distinction event, whether it
9 came to environmental issues up in the
10 North Country, a very fierce advocate. But also
11 a very gentle person. Another person who has
12 battled through some health issues this year,
13 remarkably so. Someone who has a lot of courage
14 and who I think very highly of and will be missed
15 is Senator Betty Little.
16 And then last but certainly not
17 least, I want to recognize Senator Ken LaValle.
18 Senator LaValle has been in this chamber -- and I
19 know sometimes it's easy to sort of knock people
20 that have served a long time in public service,
21 but Senator LaValle served in this chamber longer
22 than the person speaking right now has been
23 alive.
24 And I don't say that in any way
25 demeaning; I say that as a real positive.
3218
1 because he was reelected, right -- that wasn't a
2 lifetime appointment, he was continually
3 reelected by his constituents. And I know when
4 it came to specifically environmental issues and
5 higher education issues, Senator LaValle has a
6 lot to be proud of, and so do the constituents of
7 the First Senate District, who sent him back here
8 time and time again to be their champion and
9 their representative.
10 So I want to recognize -- those are
11 our retiring members. Obviously Senator
12 Flanagan, no longer here. I want to thank him
13 for his service, as well as Senator Chris Jacobs,
14 who is now in Washington, D.C.
15 But, Mr. President, I want to thank
16 you for the indulgence. I want to thank you for
17 giving me the time to share those comments about
18 my colleagues.
19 Leader Cousins, I look forward to
20 working with you in the new year.
21 And I wish everyone a Happy New Year
22 and a safe holiday season.
23 SENATOR GIANARIS: Mr. President,
24 can you now recognize Majority Leader
25 Stewart-Cousins.
3219
1 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN:
2 Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins.
3 SENATOR STEWART-COUSINS: Thank you
4 so much, Mr. President.
5 And it's certainly good to see you
6 in person and to congratulate you for your
7 election as leader. I too look forward to
8 working together, you know, on behalf of the
9 people of New York State.
10 And I wanted to say to Senator
11 Lanza, congratulations on your new position as
12 well. I know that you will do a great job
13 working with my fabulous floor leader and deputy,
14 Senator Mike Gianaris, so.
15 So -- and thank you, Mr. President.
16 I also want to make a quick mention
17 of our newest Senator. We had Senator John
18 Mannion, who voted for the very first time today.
19 And we normally will do this when we introduce
20 our new members in January when we come back, but
21 since Senator Mannion was able to take his seat
22 today, I just wanted to recognize that we are
23 very, very happy to have him. He's a science
24 teacher, and I know that we will learn a lot from
25 Senator Mannion. And I was really, really happy
3220
1 that he was able to make this first historic
2 vote.
3 I think everyone understands that
4 this year has been extremely challenging for all
5 of us. We've seen the COVID-19 pandemic ravage
6 our communities, our state, our nation, and the
7 world. It's chilling to think that we've been
8 through so much in just this last nine months.
9 Family members, friends, colleagues, constituents
10 have passed away due to this awful pandemic.
11 Businesses have closed, jobs have been lost.
12 People are hurting. We're a changed state.
13 We're a changed nation. We're changed throughout
14 the entire world.
15 But, Mr. President, we're standing
16 here because hope is on the horizon. We have
17 vaccines beginning to be distributed, and we have
18 some form coming in the latest COVID relief bill
19 that's been signed by the president. And come
20 January 20th, we'll have an administration in
21 Washington that will be looking to help us and
22 not to hurt us.
23 I thank all of my colleagues over
24 the last year for all of the amazing work they've
25 done during this crisis, work that I don't think
3221
1 anyone could have envisioned being part of their
2 job. Working to get refrigerated trucks for
3 local hospitals; setting up massive food banks
4 for constituents; checking on people stuck in
5 quarantine; setting up Zoom town halls; working
6 to get an unprecedented number of unemployed
7 constituents through the unemployment claims
8 process; providing PPEs to front-line workers and
9 to members of our community -- and that's just to
10 name a few.
11 And I also want to thank our
12 Governor, Governor Cuomo, whose leadership during
13 this pandemic has been so important to this state
14 and has frankly spread to people across America.
15 Together, our voices continue to
16 ring loud and clear. We need the federal
17 government to do the right thing and provide the
18 needed support for our state -- for all of our
19 states.
20 But right now we're here, back on
21 the floor of the Senate. In a time normally
22 spent getting ready for a new year and a new
23 session, we're here in this empty chamber --
24 relatively empty for what we do -- taking
25 historic action.
3222
1 When I first took over as Senate
2 President, I spoke of two different paths that we
3 could take together, the path of putting up
4 barriers or the path of creating opportunity.
5 This pandemic has made these choices seem
6 sometimes impossible. This pandemic has created
7 insurmountable barriers.
8 But this chamber today has again
9 chosen the path of tearing down barriers, sending
10 out a lifeline of hope to millions of New Yorkers
11 who will now be able to stay in their homes.
12 We've chosen to stand with these millions of
13 people hurting during a crisis and say that we
14 understand. We've made a commitment to enact the
15 strongest eviction moratoriums in the nation
16 while at the same time helping homeowners, small
17 landlords, and our seniors and disabled
18 community.
19 I want to thank all the advocates
20 who have tirelessly fought to make this possible.
21 And I want to thank my counterpart in the
22 Assembly, Speaker Heastie, for being a strong
23 partner in moving this legislation forward.
24 And then of course I want to thank
25 the chair of our Housing Committee, Senator Brian
3223
1 Kavanagh, whose steady leadership was so
2 important in making sure we get this done. And
3 of course I have to recognize Senator Zellnor
4 Myrie for the work and the effort that he put in
5 when he initially brought this forward. I want
6 to thank him and frankly all of my Democratic
7 Majority colleagues for doing the work that was
8 required so that we could stand here in this
9 historic moment.
10 And I know I've heard you, Senator
11 Kavanagh, when you were talking about Shontell
12 Smith and her incredible staff, including Eric
13 and the Housing team that worked tirelessly to
14 try and get this done so that we would have it
15 ready at this moment, especially because of the
16 uncertainty that was happening in the federal
17 government.
18 So I want to thank them, and also
19 make sure that we understand that this is not a
20 panacea, that we know more must be done. But
21 what I always understood is that we could not go
22 into next year leaving this undone.
23 Once again, we've sent the message
24 that when given the choice, this house will
25 always take the path of creating hope and
3224
1 creating opportunity and tearing down barriers.
2 Mr. President, today, as Leader Ortt
3 said, is also our last session day of the
4 2019-2020 term, and I wanted to thank not only
5 all my members, but to take an opportunity to
6 recognize some of my members -- and yours -- who
7 are going to be leaving at the end of this term.
8 I don't know what this chamber is
9 going to be like without my friend, my mentor, my
10 inspiration, Senator Velmanette Montgomery.
11 She's done so much for so many New Yorkers -- her
12 advocacy for children, her fight to finally pass
13 criminal justice reforms, juvenile justice
14 reform. Her standing with all those who needed
15 help have made this a stronger place. And I know
16 for Senator Montgomery, for this vote to be her
17 last vote is really rewarding for her.
18 And of course on the other side of
19 the aisle I will mention Senator Ken LaValle
20 because he not only had decades of service -- I
21 think he was the dean of our chamber -- but he
22 was my first seatmate when I came. When, like
23 you, you all were spread over there, and he was
24 my first seatmate. So I'm going to miss him.
25 And of course I'm going to miss
3225
1 Betty Little, who's also been a strong friend and
2 a leader in this chamber. And wish the very,
3 very best for Senator Seward. I'm happy to hear
4 that he's doing so very, very well.
5 And in my world here, we're going to
6 miss Senator Jen Metzger, who did so much in
7 terms of the environment and agriculture, a
8 strong voice for farmers, just an advocate for
9 every good thing.
10 And Senator Monica Martinez, who
11 spent her career as a teacher and administrator
12 and never, ever lost the heart for her children,
13 for education, and her passion to take care of
14 animals big and small.
15 And of course Senator Carlucci as
16 well, who really made his mark in terms of the
17 mental health field, where he had the opportunity
18 to chair for so many years.
19 And also I just want to wish a fond
20 farewell to Senators Robach and Ranzenhofer,
21 Amedore and Funke, and Senator Flanagan, for
22 their service to this state.
23 So, Mr. President, I really thank
24 you, as well, for presiding over the most unusual
25 session probably in the history. When I first
3226
1 came I remember I entered with a governor at that
2 time whose motto was "Day One, Everything
3 Changes." That was in 2007. I don't know what
4 he thought he was saying, but I can say that
5 everything has changed. And every time I think
6 that we've seen it all, we get to see more.
7 So I can only say that we will have
8 yet another change. There will be a new year. I
9 don't say that it can't be worse, because now I
10 don't know. I do know, however, that I wish
11 everyone a happy and healthy, prosperous New
12 Year. And I know that whatever the new year
13 brings, whatever it holds for us, we in this
14 chamber will stay focused on the people of
15 New York and doing the very best we can for them.
16 So thank you very much.
17 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: Senator
18 Gianaris.
19 SENATOR GIANARIS: Thank you,
20 Mr. President.
21 Is there any further business at the
22 desk?
23 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: There
24 is no further business at the desk.
25 SENATOR GIANARIS: Then I move to
3227
1 adjourn until the call of the Temporary
2 President, intervening days being legislative
3 days.
4 ACTING PRESIDENT BENJAMIN: On
5 motion, the Senate stands adjourned until the
6 call of the Temporary President, intervening days
7 being legislative days.
8 The Senate is adjourned.
9 (Whereupon, the Senate adjourned at
10 3:56 p.m.)
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