Nick Reisman is reporting for State of Politics top lawmakers in the state Senate and Assembly are being urged by the Legal Aid Society to approve an indefinite extension of a tenant eviction moratorium. The group September 1, released a letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to press forward on the measure. The current moratorium is set to expire in a month. The ban on evictions for both residential and commercial tenants was put in place earlier this year as a safeguard during an economic shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "If we allow evictions to take place at the cusp of a second wave – and right before the flu season and cold weather – we will be flooding homeless shelters, subways, and streets at the very moment where we need to keep people housed to mitigate the spread of the virus and avoidable deaths," the group wrote in the letter. It has been well documented that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted low-income people of color and if the eviction ban is not extended those who were living on the brink of poverty before the crisis will face catastrophic consequences, including food instability and homelessness, they wrote. According to Legal Aid, 14,000 households in New York City alone had active warrants for eviction before the the pandemic hit in March, which could be subject to enforcement when the moratorium is lifted. Read the full story at nystateofpolitics [dot] com.