Stop Using "Nuisance Abatement" As an Excuse for Kicking People out of Their Homes Even When They have Not Committed a Crime

  • by: Freya Harris
  • recipient: The New York City Police Department

The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970’s to combat the sex industry in Times Square. Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city’s crime rate has reached historic lows. The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences.

The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes. Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved. The police need a judge’s signoff, but residents aren’t notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they’ve already been locked out for days. And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney. Perhaps most fundamentally, residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime.

"Nuisance abatement" is an excuse to throw people out of their homes even when they have not been charged with a crime. In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan. 1, 2013 through June 30, 2014. The analysis also reviewed the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases against hundreds of people who were banned from homes as a result of these actions. 173 of the people who gave up their leases or were banned from homes were not convicted of a crime, including 44 people who appear to have faced no criminal prosecution whatsoever. Overall, tenants and homeowners lost or had already left homes in three-quarters of the 337 cases for which the Daily News and ProPublica were able to determine the outcome. The other cases were either withdrawn without explanation, were missing settlements, or are still active. In at least 74 cases, residents agreed to warrantless searches of their homes, sometimes in perpetuity, as one of the conditions of being allowed back in. Others agreed to automatically forfeit their leases if they were merely accused of wrongdoing in the future. The toll of nuisance abatement actions falls almost exclusively on minorities. Over 18 months, nine of 10 homes subjected to such actions were in minority communities. Out of 215 of the cases where people were barred from homes in nuisance abatement battles, and the race of the people involved was known, only five were white.

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