Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 4.6% (40 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 5.3% (46 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 11.8% (103 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 2.2% (19 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 1.6% (14 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 4.7% (41 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 9.9% (87 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 0%

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More than 8K NYC renters evicted so far this year, as affordability crisis grows

More than 8,000 New York City households were evicted from their apartments in the first half of the year amid a deep affordable housing crisis that has fueled record-high rents citywide.

City records show New York City marshals completed an average of 1,345 evictions per month from January to June, approaching the rate of removals from the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and a temporary halt on evictions.

The monthly average is a decrease compared to the first six months of last year, when there were 1,514 evictions per month.

The city data shows 17,791 households were evicted from apartments in New York City in all of 2025 — the highest total since 2018.

That spike in evictions helped fuel a windfall for city marshals, who reported gross income of more than $55 million last year, up from about $37 million each of the prior two years, according to data published by the Department of Investigation.

The agency oversees city marshals, who earn a fee for evictions, car-booting and debt collection.

Raysa Rodriguez, the executive director at the organization Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, said the thousands of evictions reveal the depths of the city’s affordability crisis, and its effect on kids.

“It speaks to the number of families facing financial insecurity,” Rodriguez said.

“It means more families with children having to turn to shelter and more families with children living in crowded and doubled-up situations.”

The Citizens’ Committee for Children conducted its own eviction analysis for its 2026 annual report on financial hardship facing young New Yorkers.

The report, published in April, found that about 154,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless for at least some portion of the 2024-2025 school year.

The organization counted more than 33,600 children living in city shelters and attributed the rise in evictions to a dwindling number of apartments with monthly rents that low- and middle-income households can afford.

Nearly a third of New York City households spend at least half their income on rent, the report found.

Rodriguez said the eviction data shows the need to expand rental assistance programs and access to emergency aid to cover arrears.

“It’s a necessity to protect children,” she said.

Landlords say they file nonpayment eviction cases because they need rental income to pay their own bills, and because the threat of eviction can compel city agencies to step in with aid.

After a budgeting standoff, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council on Monday agreed to create a new housing voucher program that will cover some people facing eviction if they live in a rent-stabilized apartment and qualify based on their income.

The city typically only issues its existing voucher program, known as CityFHEPS, to people living in homeless shelters.

Mamdani, like his predecessor Eric Adams, blocked measures meant to open access to the program to people facing eviction.

CityFHEPS now helps more than 65,000 households pay their rent at a cost that budget watchdogs estimate will grow to $1.7 billion this year.

The federal government has cut back on its voucher programs, and a $50 million state rental assistance pilot program, created last year, will reach few New York City residents.

The city Department of Social Services also issues emergency loans called “One-Shot Deals” to tenants facing eviction for nonpayment, but only approved about a quarter of applicants last year, according to city data.

Mamdani’s new housing plan includes other strategies to prevent evictions, like issuing emergency assistance more quickly and increasing funds for the city’s right to counsel program, which is supposed to guarantee an attorney to any low-income tenant in Housing Court.

"Evictions are traumatic and destabilizing events,” said City Hall spokesperson Casey Berkovitz in a written statement.

“We are working to provide the support that New Yorkers need in challenging circumstances, whether that is proactively preventing cases from reaching eviction filings, ensuring New Yorkers have access to legal counsel, or working to improve Housing Court with our partners at the Office of Court Administration.”

An online research tool from the policy group Eviction Lab finds New York City property owners filed 112,000 eviction cases over the past year, accounting for about 5% of renter households in the city overall.

The steady rate of evictions over the past two years comes even as a heavy backlog of cases and some bureaucratic protections for tenants prolong the legal process.

Tenants can only be lawfully evicted after a judge orders their removal and issues a warrant.

Landlords have sued the state court system to hasten the process.

The lawsuit is now before the New York Court of Appeals.

Attorney Nativ Winiarsky represents the firms that filed the lawsuit, a collection of limited liability companies connected to the LeFrak Organization, a large property owner.

He said housing court cases take about a year on average from start to finish, a period in which the amount of unpaid rent can increase to tens of thousands of dollars.

Those additional costs make it less likely the city will agree to provide a one-shot deal to help keep someone in their apartment and “the tenant is more likely to be evicted because of the delay,” he said.