NEW YORK — Lincoln Eccles owns a building in Crown Heights.

He has 14 tenants and nine of them owe him tens of thousands of dollars in back rent. He can't evict them because of the state eviction moratorium

But a new ruling by the United States Supreme Court gives him hope.

“I haven't been able to pay my water bill, hot water, my property tax,” Eccles said. “I’m barely just getting by.”

“It gives us some leeway in terms of tenants that are gaming the system,” Eccles said.

State lawmakers designed the moratorium to protect people who can't pay rent due to the COVID-19 pandemic from being evicted and uprooted during the health crisis.

But Eccles believes some of his tenants are choosing not to pay because the moratorium shields them.

“People who are piggybacking on the pandemic emergency to cover the fact that they haven't been paying significantly before the pandemic,” Eccles said.

The new ruling blocks part of New York state’s eviction moratorium. It says renters can no longer avoid eviction simply by submitting a hardship declaration. Like a federal eviction moratorium, they must prove it in court.

“Landlords and tenants will both be heard on this question and then a court can decide,” said Randy Mastro, an attorney and lead counsel on the landlord case.

“It’s very hard sometimes to prove hardship"

Tenants like Esteban Giron believe the ruling will harm good people trying to make ends meet.

“It’s very hard sometimes to prove hardship,” Giron said. “It's not just being unemployed. For example, my husband and I both had COVID, I had long COVID, I still have long COVID symptoms. It makes it almost impossible to have a regular job.”

“It’s very hard to show that in court or very hard to show that on a piece of paper,” Giron added.

Legal Aid Society attorneys believe this ruling will open the eviction flood gates on thousands of  families citywide who are behind on their rent.

“I think on Monday people will start receiving notices of evictions if there’s a warrant or a judgment in their case,” said Ellen Davidson, an attorney for Legal Aid Society. “And then in two weeks we will start seeing evictions. People will be locked out of their homes, thrown out on the streets, right in the middle of the delta variant.”

But Joseph Strasburg, the president of a landlord advocacy group, the Rent Stabilization Association, says that’s not how it works.

“The way the housing court operates in the city of New York pre-COVID is that it takes an average of 6 to 8 months to actually evict someone, assuming you even go that far,” Strasburg said. “So even if the moratorium ended today, nothing is going to happen to any tenant for months and months.”

The eviction moratorium is set to expire Aug. 31 and tenant advocates want it extended, something most landlords do not want.

Both sides encourage people to apply for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which, despite moving at a snail's pace, automatically protects tenants from eviction.

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