Cuomo extends ban on commercial evictions and foreclosures
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the executive order Thursday. Credit: Charles Eckert
The state has granted another reprieve to commercial tenants and landlords struggling financially because of issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed an executive order extending the moratorium on commercial evictions and foreclosures again – this time to Sept. 20. It was set to expire Thursday, Aug. 20.
“While we have made great progress in keeping New York’s infection rate low, this pandemic is not over and as we continue to fight the virus, we are continuing to protect New York businesses and residential tenants who face financial hardship due to COVID,” Cuomo said in a statement Thursday. “I am extending the state’s moratorium on commercial evictions to ensure business owners across New York will not be forced to close as a result of the pandemic.”
The governor initially announced a 90-day moratorium on commercial and residential evictions March 20, but the executive order did not mention the pandemic.
On June 20, Cuomo extended the residential and commercial moratorium for 60 days and added language in the executive order that prohibited evictions and foreclosures of those who had experienced financial hardships because of the health crisis.
The governor put more residential protections in place on June 30, when he signed the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which bars residential evictions and foreclosures “for anyone who has suffered a financial hardship during the pandemic until all of a county’s businesses have been permitted to reopen.”
Some of Long Island’s commercial sector is beginning to recover financially since Cuomo began allowing business segments to reopen in phases after mandated shutdowns in March to help stop the spread of the virus.
But retail is still the most impacted of all commercial sectors on Long Island.
About 30% of 23 retail landlords did not receive June rent from at least half of their Long Island tenants, according to a poll conducted by the Association for a Better Long Island, a Hauppauge-based economic development group, and Long Island Builders Institute, an Islandia-based trade association representing residential and mixed-use property builders and other professionals in the real estate industry.
Those 23 landlords own about 7 million square feet of retail space on Long Island.
Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.
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