NYC Gears Up For Coronavirus Crisis Rent Strike

NEW YORK CITY — Donnette Leftord, a Flatbush mom of three and an undocumented New Yorker, wouldn't pay her $1,700 month rent next month even if she could. She's one of thousands taking part in a rent strike on May 1.

"There is no way I can pay rent going forward from here," said Letford. "How are we going to manage to pay?"

Housing advocates hope as many as one million New Yorker will participate in the May 1 rent strike to pressure Gov. Andrew Cuomo to cancel rent for the duration of the stay-in-place order — extended Thursday to May 15 — and through June.

Their demands also include a rent freeze for 2020 and housing for about 92,000 New York City dwellers currently without homes.

So far, 2,166 renters and tenant leaders from buildings with about 1,100 apartments have signed up for May 1's rent strike, according to Housing Justice For All organizer Cea Weaver.

An additional 10,000 New Yorkers have requested access to the group's rent strike toolkit, Weaver said.

Winsome Pendergrass, a Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance organizer and Brooklyn renter, hopes New Yorkers who can pay their rent will refuse to do it in solidarity with those who cannot.

"We want tenants to come on board," Pendergrass said. "We don't want anyone thinking they're going on the street corner."

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The economic impact of COVID-19 and a tristate shutdown remain unclear, but politicians and economists have repeatedly warned New Yorkers to prepare themselves for a financial climate akin to the Great Depression.

Both Mayor Bill de Blasio — who released his greatly reduced "wartime" city budget Thursday — and Gov. Cuomo report their governments are "broke."

But so are newly unemployed New Yorkers.

Roughly 475,000 New Yorkers are projected to lose their jobs in 2020 because of the COVID-19 shutdown, according to the city's Independent Budget Office.

Washington Heights renter Lena Melendez, a former Uber driver, is among them.

Melendez is frightened to accept the city's offer of $15-an-hour to deliver food to vulnerable New Yorkers even though she is not eligible for unemployment and is running out of cash, she said.

Uber is offering its drivers a single benefit, said Melendez: "If you manage to survive coronavirus, you'll get two weeks of paid vacation."

Yet Melendez's biggest concern is for her undocumented neighbors who cannot receive government aide but must still pay $2,000 in rent next month.

"Those people are in peril," Melendez said. "The first people who fall by the wayside are the people are undocumented. It's going to be bad."

Thus far, Cuomo has put a moratorium on foreclosures and banned landlords from evicting tenants between April and June.

Guadalupe Paleta, a 42-year-old nanny who lives in Woodside, worries about what will happen once the stay on eviction ends and tenants are faced with three months of back rent to pay.

"Everyone is losing right here," she said through a translator. "Why is it always the tenants at the end of the line?"

Leftord was quick to point out that cost of COVID-19 is much more than financial.

As of 2:30 p.m. Thursday, 7,563 New York City dwellers had lost their lives to COVID-19 and the deaths of another 3,914 were deemed to be the "probable" result of the virus, Health Department data show.

The Brooklyn mom said she working in a nursing home when the virus began to spread and watched as residents began to disappear. When she left, there were just 16 occupied beds in a unit which once held 38 patients.

Said Leftord, "Where did all those people go?

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