Earlier this week, tenants’ advocate Laura Felts told Capital Tonight that the law in place purporting to be an eviction moratorium, “The Tenants Safe Harbor Act,” doesn’t save many tenants from eviction and needs to be either fixed, scrapped, or replaced.

“All this law affords is an affirmative defense to an eviction, so landlords have every right to sue tenants no matter what the situation is that they’re in,” said Felts, executive director of United Tenants of Albany.

But the act, which was signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo in June, and sponsored by Senator Brad Hoylman and Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, looks different from the landlords’ perspective.

Jaime Michelle Cain, an attorney with the Rochester law firm of Boylan Code, and coalition leader of “Under One Roof,” a group formed by the Capital Region Apartment Association, argues that “The Tenants Safe Harbor Act” is working as it should.

“The implications of it as well as the applications of it in court, in my legal opinion, has been something that actually is a good thing,” Cain told Capital Tonight. “I think it’s making it so that there is no abuse to the system. And that tenants are having the burden of proving that they are COVID effected. Once they are able to show that, then they are, practically speaking, at least where I practice… getting the help that they need.”

Tola Strategies’ Lisa Damiani, a lobbyist and executive director of the Western New York Property Owners Association told Capital Tonight that with courts accepting filings, but not scheduling hearings until February, her members view “The Tenants Safe Harbor Act” as a moratorium.

“Many of my members, they can’t get into court,” Damiani said. “So, in essence, for them, there is an eviction moratorium.”

Both Cain and Damiani feel that landlords’ rights have been overlooked during the pandemic.

“Nobody wants to evict anybody but there’s got to be help on both sides,” said Cain. “It’s been a travesty that no one has recognized, on any side, that landlords are critical to keeping people in their homes.”

Cain is also concerned about how the Rent Relief Program has been administered. There is still $60 million left in the federal program to distribute before the end of the year.