When the pandemic hit, and restaurants, bars and clubs were required to close, one of the critically important policies the NYC Hospitality Alliance and others advocated for was a moratorium on commercial evictions. The moratorium was enacted and has since been extended month to month, but now Governor Cuomo will sign legislation codifying and strengthening the moratorium on commercial evictions.
While the NYC Hospitality Alliance supported this legislation, we expressed concern as it only covered businesses with 50 or fewer employees, thus excluding from eviction protections many local restaurants and nightlife establishments because they are labor-intensive businesses and often employ over 50 workers. And because our city’s hospitality industry was mandated by government to close or severely limit their operations, they cannot pay their rent and desperately need continued eviction protections.
Well, today, we’re happy to announce that the NYC Hospitality Alliance’s advocacy led to an agreement to expand eviction protections to small businesses with 100 or fewer employees, and to any business with 500 or fewer employees that was closed to in-person operations by executive order or department of health directive for two or more weeks between May 15, 2020 and May 1, 2021. The eviction moratorium will extend until May 1, 2021 and we will advocate to extend it based on the situation at that time. The final language and enactment of the legislation will occur soon, and we recommend you speak with counsel if you have questions particular to your situation.
The NYC Hospitality Alliance also expects our city law suspending the enforcement of personal liability guarantees in leases to be extended again, past its current expiration of March 31, 2021. More to come on that soon.
We thank the Governor, Senator Kaplan, Assemblymember Bronson and all supporters in the state legislature who passed this very important legislation. Of course, thank you to our members whose support of the NYC Hospitality Alliance allows us to fight successfully for our industry!
