There’s No Eviction Moratorium on NYC Storage Units. Now the Contents of Hundreds are Being Auctioned Off (The City)(Brooklyn Eagle)(Bklyner)
The City, October 26, 2020
Bklyner, October 27, 2020
Brooklyn Eagle, October 27, 2020
There’s No Eviction Moratorium on NYC Storage Units. Now the Contents of Hundreds are Being Auctioned Off
Lisa Pearlstein, director of the City Bar Justice Center‘s Legal Clinic for the Homeless, was so concerned about auctions among people who had lost their jobs during the crisis that she asked a law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, to examine the possibility of a moratorium on auctions. ‘They’re unemployed, they can’t pay their storage bills so easily,’ Pearlstein said. ‘They pay their rent, they buy their food first. And then, you know, boom, they’re hit with a storage auction notice, and they don’t have the funds to pay the bill and they lose their possessions.’ Since the start of the pandemic, the city is down 648,000 jobs, and unemployment has soared to 14%. ‘Paying rent and buying food when you’re unemployed is the priority,’ she said. ‘And items in your storage facility, you know, are not. I mean, you go for your basics.’ The law firm found that a mandated pause on auctions would require either executive action from the governor or for the state legislature to modify the lien law that governs storage, Pearlstein said.
