"Brooklyn's Housing Court is where tenants end up on their worst day; they've fallen thousands of dollars behind on rent, they've just been evicted, or they're about to be. They're greeted by this squat office building, which is full of metal detectors, court officers with heavy utility belts, cracked walls, and a handful of fluorescent-lit courtrooms where New Yorkers wait, sometimes for hours, to appear before a judge-often alone, no attorney by their side."
"City marshals evicted 11,253 households (and counting) in the first seven and a half months of 2025, as the city's sky-high rents kept breaking (and continue to break) records. That's around 1,500 evictions per month-the highest monthly rate since 2018, Gothamist reported. (This year also marks the first time eviction rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels, after a statewide eviction moratorium in 2020 ground housing courts to a halt for two years.)"
"Thus, the long line, which at 9:25 a.m. on a recent weekday already stretches down the block and is still growing. A man in a black shirt and work boots half-runs, half-walks to the end of the queue, muttering, "This is crazy."An older Black woman, her checkered shirt dotted with a light mist of rain, begins to worry that she'll miss the judge calling for her to step into court."
Brooklyn's Housing Court on Livingston Street functions as the mandatory venue for tenants confronting eviction, housed in an ugly glass-and-steel building with metal detectors and aging facilities. Tenants often arrive early and wait in long lines to access a few fluorescent-lit courtrooms, frequently without legal representation. City marshals executed over 11,000 evictions in the first seven and a half months of 2025, returning eviction rates to pre-pandemic levels and reaching the highest monthly numbers since 2018. Legal eviction requires a court case, after which tenants receive papers giving them 14 days to vacate before marshal enforcement.
Read at Hell Gate
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