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Auffant sits at her desk inside EDI\u2019s Brooklyn office.Photo by Max Parrott<\/p>\nIn the whirlwind of housing court, it\u2019s not uncommon for tenants without a lawyer to come out of a hearing in confusion about what just happened in their case.<\/p>\n
Enter the Eviction Diversion Initiative, a shoebox-sized office nestled in the corner of the chaotic waiting area of Brooklyn\u2019s Housing Court, where any tenant navigating rent subsidies can get away, have a snack and debrief. There, a program advocate will hear them out and try to diagnose the root cause of their issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cEDI has kind of been the fairy godmother in housing court,\u201d said Priscila Auffant, the program\u2019s deputy director.\n<\/p>\n
Its purpose is to help tenants avoid evictions that are the result of administrative errors that cause rent subsidies to underpay, lapse or be delayed \u2014 all issues that can prompt a landlord to seek remedy in housing court.<\/p>\n
As a result, EDI\u2019s operations provide a window into what is not working underneath the surface of the city\u2019s housing programs.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cShockingly we ended up with the majority of our cases being folks with CityFHEPS,\u201d said Viviana Gordon, Director of Housing Justice Initiatives.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Advocates look to be voice for voiceless tenants
\nAuffant sits at her desk inside EDI\u2019s Brooklyn office.Photo by Max Parrott<\/p>\n
The initiative sits at the intersection of housing policy issues. Though they mainly work with low-income or income-restricted tenants, fewer than 20% of their clients actually have a housing attorney through the citywide right-to-counsel program that guarantees them one.<\/p>\n
Of the approximately 300 tenants that participated in EDI in Brooklyn, around 60% were CityFHEPS recipients, and a majority of participants ended up in the program after they have already seen a judge and entered a settlement or received a judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when the payment issues are rooted in lapsed subsidies, a tenant\u2019s problems straddle the court system and municipal government. The small team behind the program helps to escalate cases within the relevant agency to flag what went wrong and what needs to be paid to keep them in their home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re that facilitator\u2026 that is bridging the gaps that people aren\u2019t aware are there,\u201d Auffant said. \u201cThe tenant is frustrated because they don\u2019t know how to navigate all these systems \u2014 housing court, CityFHEPS. The landlord\u2019s attorneys are frustrated because they\u2019re having to come to court.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Center for Justice Innovation, the state court system\u2019s nonprofit community programming, recently announced that it\u2019s expanding the initiative from its pilot in Brooklyn Housing Court and Suffolk County District Courts to the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens, as well as upstate to Rochester and Syracuse.<\/p>\n
That means that the three new borough-based will get offices like that in Brooklyn, focused on troubleshooting subsidies like CityFHEPS.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
An \u2018overwhelming\u2019 battle for vouchers<\/p>\n
Kerry, a Brooklyn resident who asked to be identified by first name only, had come to EDI after she didn\u2019t receive paperwork in the mail to renew her CityFHEPS application, and her payments lapsed. She said her landlord was used to getting delayed payments in batches, so it wasn\u2019t immediately clear that her case had been closed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the time she found herself in court, she had rental arrears for over a year. She appealed to the city\u2019s office of Human Resources Administration, the agency that oversees CityFHEPS, but said an administrator simply told her that her subsidy had been discontinued and that her case would be dismissed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was overwhelming,\u201d she said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Auffant helped Kerry assemble her paperwork and create a timeline of the arrears that they needed to be paid through the subsidy. By the end of the process, she said that Kerry was taking the lead in talks with her landlord\u2019s attorney to resolve her case, and even advocate for repairs that needed to be made in her apartment.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that you\u2019re not alone in the process makes a difference, and it gives you that additional confidence,\u201d Kerry said.\n<\/p>\n
Unlike the Section 8 subsidy, which had its own housing court section, there\u2019s no automatic process of notifying a judge when a tenant is receiving a voucher so it often comes up later on in court proceedings. It\u2019s then up to the judge to refer the tenant to EDI.<\/p>\n
The ever-expanding CityFHEPS program now covers more than 67,000 households, a more than 200% growth since its launch, and the Mamdani administration is facing a difficult fiscal position<\/a> of whether it can abide by a City Council mandate to expand the program\u2019s eligibility criteria.<\/p>\n