New York City apartment evictions in 2023 not as bad as media say it is
![The 12,139 apartment tenant evictions in 2023 were 28.6% fewer than in 2019.](https://theloadedgunn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/New-York-City-apartment-evictions-in-2023-not-as-bad-780x470.jpg)
Bleeding-heart real estate myths die hard. Take propaganda that residential evictions are surging in the Big Apple.
The false argument was endlessly cited to support so-called “good-cause eviction” (which would have made it near impossible to boot deadbeat tenants) and, later, to whine that the watered-down version passed by the state Legislature didn’t go nearly far enough.
The New York Times’ tendentious coverage made it seem that renters were being thrown onto the street wholesale.
![There were more than 25,000 evictions in 2015 alone](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/young-caucasian-man-hands-head-81174304.jpg?w=1024)
Gothamist wrote in January, “Evictions are surging across New York City, with the monthly rate of legal lockouts beginning to mirror pre-pandemic numbers in the second half of 2023.”
Patch howled that evictions were “up nearly 200 percent.”
But the truth is 100% to the contrary. Evictions did rise in most of 2022 and 2023 — but only because of a backlog of cases from a statewide, Covid-era eviction moratorium in effect until mid-January 2022.
The meaningful recent-eviction comparison is with the years before 2020.
The 12,139 apartment tenant evictions in 2023 were 28.6% fewer than in 2019.
What’s more, 2023 evictions were barely half the previous 20-year average (again, excluding the moratorium period). There were for example more than 25,000 evictions in 2015 alone.
These statistics aren’t from a real estate lobbying organization, but from a source that can hardly be considered a landlords’ tool: the New York City Rent Guideline’s Board, which laid out the facts in its 2024 Income and Affordability Study. You can look them up on Page 31.