NYC NOW - Midday News: Judge Blocks GOP Request for Columbia Student Records, Feds Flag Bridges for Safety Review, DOC Swears In New Officers, and Evictions Rise Among Moderate-Income New Yorkers

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, March 21st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. A federal judge is telling officials at Columbia and Barnard schools not to comply with a request for a student disciplinary records from congressional Republicans until a hearing next Thursday. and-led House Committee wants files on students involved in campus protests against Israel's

war in Gaza. Several students, including detained recent Columbia grads, Mahmoud Khalil, are suing to keep them from getting those records. The federal government is recommending that local authorities take a closer look at the safety and structural integrity of some bridges in and around New York City. The National Transportation Safety Board says 68 bridges across the country should be examined to see whether they could withstand a boat hitting them. Crossings in this area include the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and George Washington bridges, plus several others in New York State and New Jersey. Federal investigators, as you've been hearing, say Maryland transportation officials could have done more to prevent the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March when a container ship hit it. More than 100 new officers will join the ranks of the city's Department of Correction after graduation ceremony this morning.

The group is joining the department in one of its darkest times, Rikers Island, the notorious. city jail complex is on the brink of a federal takeover amid accusations of corruption, violence, neglect, and sexual assault leveled at officers. And a city commission just reported Rikers will not meet its legal deadline to shutter because little progress has been made in building replacement jails in the boroughs. Forty-one and mostly sunny down windy, sunny, high in the mid-50s today and gusty, and then tomorrow's slim chance of early afternoon showers, partly sunny, a high and near 60, and then Sunday. Cooler. with sunshine. Stick around. There's more to come.

I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. Moderate income New Yorkers are increasingly becoming the face of eviction in the city. That's according to a new report from the Community Service Society of New York, which found that nearly half the tenants who are now at risk of eviction are not the lowest income New Yorkers. WNYC's Arroon Venigapal joins us to talk about the findings and why some housing experts say, there is also cause for celebration. Okay, Aaron, we might think of eviction as a problem that hits people living in poverty. So why are moderate-income New Yorkers increasingly deface the problem?

So this is because of a law that passed in 2017, Sean. It's called the right to counsel law. It's the first in the nation, and it guarantees New Yorkers the right to legal representation in housing court if, big if, if they're living in poverty or near poverty, which say if they're a family of three earning more than $50,000 a year, which means if they are earning less than that, then they qualify that. So basically anything below 200% of the federal poverty line, all right? If you're above that level, if you're, say, a family of three earning more than $50,000, then you're considered moderate income and you don't qualify.

Okay, but still, you're dealing with these rising rents, right? Now, prior to the pandemic, people in this category, moderate income New Yorkers, they counted for just over a quarter of those fighting eviction, according to this report. Since 2021, okay, in the last few years, that figure has jumped to nearly 40 percent. Big jump. Yeah. We should note that, meanwhile, we are seeing a big drop in the overall number of evictions thanks to that law, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, between 2017, when that law was passed and last year, the number of eviction filings, in the city fell by half.

And during the same period, the number of court-ordered convictions, actual evictions, fell by 26%. Okay, another big drop. Oksana Miranova is a senior policy analyst at the Community Service Society. I spoke to her. She's also co-author of the report. This is what she had to say. When looking at data, any kind of data, whether it's housing or other types of social

indicators, these type of numbers are essentially unheard of because of a policy intervention. So this is a pretty huge deal. Yeah. And just having access to a lawyer can make a significant difference. Okay, Sean, like according to a report last year from the New York City Office of Civil Justice, nine out of ten tenants who did have an attorney were able to stay in their homes. Wow, that's really interesting stuff. So it looks like that in just a few years here, high rents, of course, notwithstanding, right? The city has made some serious strides. Yeah. One of the, one expert I spoke to who was not involved in this report from the Community Service Society is Peter Hepburn. He's an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers also helps run the eviction lab at Princeton University.

He says this is a pretty significant development. He told me prior to the pandemic, one in 10 New Yorkers faced an eviction threat. That's now closer to one in 20. Right now, the eviction filing rate in Houston is twice as high as it is here in New York. it's twice as high in Cincinnati. In Phoenix, Arizona, it's almost three times as high. We're the envy of these places. Now, since New York City passed its right to counsel law,

16 other cities across the country have followed suit. Now, Arun, when it comes to evictions, what do housing experts think needs to be done going forward? A couple of things. Kadeja Hussein is she's with the right to counsel NYC coalition. She says they're fighting for a statewide right to counsel so that tenants, you know, whether they're in Rochester or Albany, they can also have legal representation if they have to go to housing court.

Another thing that groups want, this is the Community Service Society, they say they want to happen, is an expansion of the right to counsel to people who are within that moderate income bracket. But as Oksana Mironova told me, you know, the protections for low-income New Yorkers who are at risk of eviction, it's especially critical. at this moment when, as she says, we see social safety nets really being removed by the federal government under the Trump administration. That's WNYC's Arun vetting, Apoll Arun. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Sean. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.