{"id":339613,"date":"2026-09-06T23:44:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T23:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/339613\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T23:44:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T23:44:51","slug":"mamdanis-housing-court-fast-track-for-tenants-ignores-landlords-120000-unpaid-rent-cases-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/339613\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s housing-court fast-track for tenants ignores landlords’ 120,000 unpaid-rent cases: critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

City Hall\u2019s latest lefty push to fast-track tenant repairs through housing court <\/a>ignores landlords, who are forced to file up to 120,000 claims annually over unpaid rents and face yearslong eviction delays, critics say.<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration last week announced a \u201cHousing Court Fast Track\u201d plan to accelerate its cases against building owners involving such issues as vacate orders, hazardous conditions and elevator outages, citing monthslong backlogs in the court system.<\/p>\n

But the fast-track directive only deals with one side of the equation, leaving landlords still grappling with tens of thousands of unpaid rent cases<\/a> against their tenants \u2014 legal procedures that account for nearly 80% of all housing court proceedings in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n

\"ZohranMayor Zohran Mamdani speaking at a press conference at Manhattan Housing Court to announce a fast-track program for \u201ccritical\u201d cases on Aug. 25, 2026. Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like, you know, you\u2019ve got an HOV lane for the tenants \u2026 and you\u2019ve got the traffic backed up for miles for the owners,\u201d said landlord lawyer Deborah Riegel of Rosenberg & Estis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Valentina Gojcaj, a property manager at Onesource, said it\u2019s all by design, noting democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s history of anti-landlord rhetoric.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s part of his agenda \u2014 I mean, he\u2019s made it clear he doesn\u2019t believe in private ownership,\u201d Gojcaj told The Post.<\/p>\n

She cited one particular debacle for her employer in which a tenant installed an illegal washing machine in one of its Bronx apartment complexes that crashed through the ceiling into the apartment below, sending the unit\u2019s downstairs neighbor to the emergency room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of this month, that tenant owes approximately $30,000 in arrears and remains in her apartment with the illegal washing machine, Gojcaj claimed, despite multiple attempts to litigate the violations in housing court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PamphletsCritics have claimed Mamdani\u2019s fast-track program ignores thousands of unpaid rent cases in the city. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s newly minted fast-track plan ensures city-initiated claims involving repairs that landlords are required to make according to the Housing and Preservation Department will have a scheduled court appearance within five days or less of filing.<\/p>\n

About 10,000 to 15,000 HP cases are filed in housing court yearly, with a current average 10- to 20-day appearance wait time. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis fast-track will accelerate the cases that are both the most egregious and the most complex,\u201d Mamdani said last week in announcing the new policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cCases where at least one-third of units in a building are subject to an open vacate order, where families have been forced from their homes. Cases where at least one-third of the units have an open and immediately hazardous violation for essential services, like a lack of heat, hot water, electricity or gas,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By contrast, landlords file as many as 120,000 unpaid rent cases yearly, and they can take up to 50 days for a first appearance.<\/p>\n

Gojcaj said her firm has multiple active cases in housing court \u2013 some of which have been going on for more than years \u2013 including involving one tenant who hasn\u2019t paid rent since 2022, owing the company over $71,000 in back rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not getting evicted because the judge won\u2019t let us issue a warrant, which by the way takes six months to get processed,\u201d Gojcaj said.<\/p>\n

As for the washing-machine outrage, \u201cWe have so many cases where this happens, and then the tenants just leave, leave an owner with, you know, $60,000 or $70,000 \u2026. we have cases where tenants have left owing over $100,000 in rent. There\u2019s no recourse,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Riegel said the backlogs in housing court exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic when landlords were temporarily barred from filing eviction notices until January 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The moratorium \u2013 which did not include HP violation cases \u2013 caused the backlog of housing court appearances to stretch from an average of up to six months to 15 months or more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven pre-COVID housing court was not great, but it wasn\u2019t the delays that we were at now,\u201d said Ann Korchak, president of the Small Property Owners of New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Korchak argued that the city already has many tools available to it to deal with negligent landlords \u2013 and worries the new program will further delay property owners from collecting unpaid rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if just one of the tenants is not paying for two or three or six months \u2013 which not is uncommon \u2014 [it] can really really sink the finances of your building,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A rep for the Housing and Preservation Department told The Post in a statement, \u201cSafety always comes first: the Unified Court System\u2019s fast track applies to buildings with immediately hazardous conditions. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re grateful for their action to speed the most urgent cases, and we look forward to continuing to work with the UCS to improve Housing Court for all New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Hall\u2019s latest lefty push to fast-track tenant repairs through housing court ignores landlords, who are forced to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2907,2954,57,9,24,55,54,56,7978,58,82],"class_list":["post-339613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-housing","tag-landlords","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-tenants","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}