May 21, 2020. People in Corona Plaza, Queens, N.Y unfold banners from a subway platform during a vigil memorializing more than sixty persons who died from COVID-19 and were associated with Make the Road New York. AP Photo: Bebeto Matthews
On April 22, 2020, the New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson introduced a bill meant to give much needed relief to residential and commercial tenants suffering from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic (the Bill). The Bill—Int. No. 1912, titled “A Local Law in relation to ceasing the taking and restitution of property and the execution of money judgments by the City sheriff and marshals due to the impacts of COVID-19”—is intended to effectively extend the existing federal and New York state moratoria on evictions by directing New York City marshals and sheriffs not to enforce any possessory or money judgments until as late as April 2021, so long as the judgment debtor can show a court that it has suffered a “substantial loss of income” because of COVID-19. The Bill is part of a larger tenant-focused legislative package, some parts of which the City Council has already recently approved.
In addition to the profound negative economic consequences that the Bill would have—among other significant oversights, the Bill does not consider how property owners would be expected to pay their property taxes, mortgages, staff salaries, maintenance costs, utilities, and other expenses without rent revenue for nearly a full year, nor does it address how the City would make up for the significant shortfall in the City’s largest source of tax revenue—the Bill likely runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Takings Clause because it creates government-coerced tenancies without just compensation to property owners.
Takings Clause Challenges
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