Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

New York state elected leaders and housing advocates are pushing for the extension of a program that has helped renters across upstate New York remain in their homes and keep landlords paid. 

The state allocated $10 million in its 2024-2025 budget last April meant to help upstate tenants catch up on rent payments through a pilot program, a move that local housing advocates say is vital in reducing homelessness and keeping people housed.

The funds — sent to counties last September to implement the Shelter Arrears Eviction Forestallment program, or SAEF — pay for up to six months of rent for households. Onondaga County received around just under $600,000 to implement the program.

SAEF, advocates and state leaders say, comes at a time when renters in the city of Syracuse are facing steep rent increases and a steadily high number of evictions. As of the start of the year, the county had disbursed around $37,000 in aid to 16 households — about $2,300 per household. At that pace, the county could end up helping around 250 homes with the $600,000. 

“We have prevented eviction and kept these households housed,” Sayles said, adding that fourteen of those households are home to families.

The future of the program will likely be decided once the current funds run out. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office did not respond directly to questions about potentially renewing the program for this upcoming budget year, or about what results the governor would like to see to renew the program. Instead, Nicolette Simmonds, a spokesperson for the governor sent the following statement via email:

“This program is in the early stages and we are closely reviewing implementation,” Simmonds said. 

Counties are in various stages of implementing the program. Onondaga County’s is up and running and could help hundreds of tenants remain housed. The county’s report to the state is due later this fall.

Helping tenants stave off evictions contributes to their stability and that of their families, state elected leaders say.

“It doesn’t just keep people in their homes, this is a win for whole families. and their schools, and their communities,” said State Senator Rachel May, a Democrat who represents the State Senate’s 48th District, which includes parts of Onondaga County.

State Senator Sean Ryan, who advocated for the funding, said preventing an eviction also helps reduce the workload of social services meant to help unhoused individuals. 

“The alternatives for people being evicted often ends up being a burden to counties’ overwhelmed shelter systems,” said Ryan, an Erie County Democrat representing the State Senate’s 61st district. 

Ryan, a former legal services attorney who is running to be Buffalo’s next mayor, sponsored the bill in the senate that led to the creation of the SAEF program. The senator said that his office estimates those savings to Erie County services to be of around $13,000 per family. 

Based on an analysis of court records performed by Ryan’s office, tenants are being evicted in courts across upstate New York for owing on average $1,400 in back rent, the senator said.

Keeping tenants housed, Ryan added, alleviates another component of the housing crisis in cities like Syracuse and Buffalo: the lack of affordable housing options.

“There are no apartments for tenants to move into if they lose their home and so that’s led to people going to hotels and shelters, which costs thousands to the counties,” Ryan said. 

In Onondaga County, a monthlong stay at a county motel can cost up to an estimated $2,170, according to a Syracuse.com report. 

But seeking an apartment is also just as complicated. Last year Apartment Advisor deemed Syracuse as having the most competitive rental market in the country, noting that from 2022 to 2024, the cost of renting an apartment had escalated around 23%. Part of that, the report states, is due to an increasing population and a low vacancy rate. In the last quarter of 2023, the report states, there was a vacancy rate of 1.8%.

“Entire neighborhoods and communities, and school districts depend on a stable, safe supply of housing for people who live there,” May said.

How does the program work in Onondaga County?

The criteria for eligibility for households in Onondaga County is as follows:

  • They live at or below double the federal poverty limit, which is $30,120 for one person, scaling up to $62,400 for a family of four.
  • The head of household must be at least a permanent resident of the U.S. (or a Green Card holder).
  • The landlord must accept the SAEF aid.

SAEF, Ryan and May said, is also meant to cover tenants who aren’t eligible for other rental assistance aid like the Emergency Assistance to Families with Children (EAF) and Emergency Safety Net Assistance (ESNA) programs. Both of those programs have even stricter income restrictions, as well as the provision that families show they are in a true emergency. Tenants can also only tap into those programs once in a five year period.

The program is meant to curb the high number of evictions by paying rental arrears accounts when they are relatively low. This, advocates say, prevents cases from languishing in housing court and stops the accumulation of even more back rent for tenants. Landlords won more than 61% of the 2,253 eviction cases filed for nonpayment of rent in Syracuse City Court in 2024.

Typically, tenants are able to pay rent back and get an eviction warrant dismissed any time prior to banishment. But as an eviction court case drags — be it because of the timeline in which notices of rent being due and notices of eviction are served, or because tenants are seeking legal counsel which grants tenants at least two extra weeks — months of due rent pile up. 

These months are vital in helping tenants look for legal help, a new place to stay, or government assistance, said Sal Curran, the executive director of Volunteer Lawyers Project of Central New York. But the rent doesn’t stop accumulating while tenants face their cold reality, often decreasing their chances of remaining in their homes.

At a December Syracuse Common Council special meeting concerning tenants protections against eviction, Gary Valerino of MCV Law said that on average an eviction can take around 82 days from when rent is due to the actual displacement. 

“The reality is that most of the people that we see in there for non-payments at the time that the petition was filed, they’re only behind one, maybe two months,” Curran said. “Most of them are now behind five or six months now by the time that we finish the case. If we had those rental arrears payments, we could prevent the eviction and keep the family stably housed.”

Curran said that, anecdotally, her office has been successful at settling nonpayment cases with landlords when the funds are available through EAF, ESNA, or the county’s pandemic-era Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERAP. 

“Whatever money we have had helping tenants in our cases has been incredibly helpful for avoiding eviction,” Curran said.

Future of the program

Both May and Ryan said they want to advocate for more SAEF funding and for the permanency of the program. 

Counties are due to submit a report detailing the success of the program at avoiding evictions sometime this year. Onondaga County’s report to the state’s Office of Temporary Disability Assistance is due Oct. 31, Sayles said. 

May said the number one metric the state will be looking at will be if the program is keeping people in their homes and in how many cases tenants are still being evicted despite catching up on rent.

“Was it a pretext in the first place and the landlord wanted this person out anyway and they just found another way to evict the tenant?,” May said. “Or does it actually help people remain in their home? I think that in itself is a powerful measure with a lot of positive impact.”

The senators said it is unlikely the rental assistance proves ineffective. 

“It’s not like the program is just something that is a stop gap and then the problem just keeps recurring,” May said. “It typically helps people get their feet under them and start paying the rent regularly and moving forward.”

Ryan echoed May’s hypothesis, adding that tenants in his district have told his office they fell behind due to a work injury or a fluctuation in monthly income due to unexpected circumstances.

“What we found is that most of the people have had just a temporary interruption of their income and they can’t catch up,” Ryan said. “Think of people working full-time minimum wage jobs. You just can’t make the hours up.”

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...