United States | Stay in place It is getting much harder to get evicted in New York City Tenants win. Potential** tenants** lose One in one out Sep 25th 2025|NEW YORK |3 min read There are few things that unite all New Yorkers, but one is an obsession with talking about the housing market. And so it is no surprise that it is dominating the city’s mayoral election on November 5th. The Democratic candidate (and front-runner) Zohran Mamdani has made a slogan out of his promise to “freeze the rent” on the 50% of flats that are rent-stabilised. The trailing candidates have scraped together their own housing plans. Yet for all the noise, one thing has been missed: New York City’s rental sector has already changed rather dramatically. Last year the city had the lowest apartment-vacancy rate in almost 60 years. And yet at the same time, landlords filed almost 50% fewer eviction cases than in 2016. Completed evictions are down by a quarter. New rights and procedures introduced over the past decade have transformed the legal landscape for tenants. A decade ago, one in ten New York City renters faced eviction proceedings every year. Evictions are costly, financially and in human and social terms. After being evicted, renters tend to see their incomes fall, they are more likely to become homeless and they visit hospital emergency rooms more often. For children, being evicted has roughly the same impact on high-school graduation rates as being in juvenile incarceration. For landlords, evictions can cost the equivalent of two to three months of rent, not including the vacancy rent gap while new tenants are found. The first big change came in 2017, when the city introduced a right for poor tenants to legal representation. This was followed by a new tenants’ rights law passed by the state government in 2019. The effects of both seem to have been dramatic (see chart). Before the representation law came in, just one in 100 tenants had counsel, compared with 95% of landlords. On paper, tenants in New York benefit from powerful legal protections, but in practice, without lawyers, these are hard to enforce. Since the change, landlords do seem to have stopped filing as many legally weak eviction cases. That is despite limited funding. Munonyedi Clifford of New York’s Legal Aid Society says she has been hiring “like gangbusters” but it is not enough. Ms Clifford also says that the 2019 law passed by the state “really changed the landscape”. Landlords agree. The law “systematically changed the economics of housing”, says Kenny Burgos of the New York Apartment Association, which represents property owners. More change came last year: the state limited rent increases further and now requires some landlords to renew most leases automatically. The trouble with all this is that there is inevitably a trade-off. Existing tenants are certainly better off. But newcomers and movers find it harder and more expensive to find a place to live, as landlords become more cautious. Nicole Upano of the National Apartment Association, a landlord trade association, says many are already introducing stricter screening to exclude risky tenants. In Washington, DC, pandemic-era rules made evictions harder and slower. Unpaid rent rose from $11m in 2020 to $100m in 2025. Affordable housing disappeared from the market, as landlords became more conservative. The city is now rolling back many of the changes. ■ 我們要聊一個幾乎所有紐約人都會談的話題——房市。是的，不管立場怎麼分，紐約人都對住房市場特別「執著」。所以一點也不意外，今年 11 月 5 日的市長選舉，房租問題成了主戰場。民主黨候選人、目前的領先者 Zohran Mamdani，打出了「凍結房租」的口號，特別針對那一半屬於租金管制的公寓。其他落後的候選人，也急忙拚湊出各自的住房政策。不過在這些喧鬧聲裡，有個事實被忽略了：紐約市的租屋市場，其實已經發生了很大的變化。去年，紐約的空屋率降到將近 60 年來的最低。但有趣的是，房東提出的驅逐案件，比 2016 年少了將近一半。最終真的被趕走的租客，也下降了四分之一。過去十年裡，市府陸續推出了新的租客權益和法律程序，徹底改變了遊戲規則。十年前，每十個租客裡，就有一個人每年要面臨驅逐官司。對租客來說，驅逐不只是金錢損失，更是人生和社會上的重擊。收入下降、增加無家可歸的風險、醫院急診室報到的次數也變多。對孩子來說，被趕出家門，對高中畢業率的打擊，差不多就像進了少年感化院一樣。至於房東，驅逐同樣很傷，成本大概等於兩到三個月的租金，還不包括空屋時的租金損失。 2017 年，第一個大轉變出現：市政府宣布低收入租客有權獲得法律代理。2019 年，州政府又通過一套新的租客權益法。這些改變帶來的影響相當驚人。在法案通過之前，幾乎只有 1% 的租客有律師幫忙，而房東有 95% 都請得起律師。紙面上，租客看似有強大的保護，但沒有律師，這些保護根本很難落實。自從政策改變後，房東明顯少提一些「站不住腳」的驅逐案。紐約法律援助協會的 Clifford 說，她正在「瘋狂招人」，但仍然不夠用。她也提到 2019 年的新法，真的「徹底改變了局勢」。連房東也承認，這部法律「改變了住房經濟的規則」。接著，去年又有新規：州政府限制了更多的租金漲幅，並要求部分房東必須自動續約。不過，事情也有另一面。現有的租客的確更有保障，但新搬來的人，或是想換房子的人，反而更難找到可負擔的住處。因為房東變得更謹慎，開始設更嚴格的審核，直接把「高風險租客」排除在外。其實在華盛頓特區也有類似的經驗。疫情期間，他們讓驅逐變得更困難、更緩慢，結果未繳租金的金額，從 2020 年的 1100 萬美元，暴增到 2025 年的 1 億美元。可負擔住房消失，房東更保守。現在，華府正在逐步取消這些規定。總結來說，保護租客和維持市場之間，始終存在一個拉鋸。舊租客受益，卻可能讓新租客更難進入。那麼紐約要怎麼平衡？也許這會是選戰裡最難解的題目。 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

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