In Arrears and Anxious

The email, along with memories of the agency’s past practices, have left tenants scared. More than more than 40,000 eviction cases a year were filed against NYCHA tenants between 2016 and 2018, according to court data collected by the Housing Data Coalition and the Right to Counsel Coalition. New York extended the eviction moratorium, a lifeline for tenants when their incomes dried up, time and again before it ended on Jan. 15.

Now, with the city struggling to find its footing as Omicron-driven infections decline, housing authority officials acknowledge that filing a large number of lawsuits could overwhelm the courts. Officials at NYCHA said they would focus on about 2,600 households that owed substantial amounts of back rent before the pandemic — about $50 million in total, or about $19,000 each.

“We want to make sure that we are pursuing evictions as a matter of last resort,” Lisa Bova-Hiatt, NYCHA’s general counsel, said in an interview.

[‘I’m Scared’: Thousands in New York Public Housing Are Behind on Rent]

New York City’s public housing system is the largest in the nation, with 350,000 residents — more than the populations of Pittsburgh, St. Louis or Orlando. And NYCHA developments are home to many of the lowest-income New Yorkers. The median NYCHA household makes $16,956 a year, compared with the citywide average of $64,000. NYCHA’s median monthly rent, which is generally capped at 30 percent of a tenant’s income, is $389, or about 73 percent below the citywide median.

The unpaid rent is a burden for the agency. After decades of decreasing investment from the federal government, as well as years of mismanagement, NYCHA relies on rent for about a quarter of the money it spends on day-to-day operations. After collecting more than $1 billion in rent in 2019, the agency collected $964 million in 2020 and only $898 million in 2021.