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A row of residential buildings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Sept. 25, 2019. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY This article is adapted from our Rent Update newsletter sent March 7, 2022. You can sign up here to get it or fill out the form at the bottom of this post. By Rachel Holliday Smith, THE CITY  This article was  originally published  on  Mar 7 at 8:10pm EST  by  THE CITY The backlog is thousands deep, and even those who got approved for funds have hit snags. Here’s your ERAP update from THE CITY’s Rent Updates newsletter. If you’re reading this, you might be or know one of the 315,162 people who, as of March 1, have applied to get back rent paid by the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). And you may know that there’s not nearly enough money to go around. With current funding, there’s enough to cover just 165,000 applications to the program, according to recent analysis by the New York Housing Conference. Will the state allocate mor...

Tennant advocates rally outside Manhattan Civil Court, Dec. 11, 2021. | Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY By Rachel Holliday Smith, THE CITY  This article was  originally published  on  Jan 14 at 9:52am EST  by  THE CITY With no indication that Albany lawmakers will move to extend the state’s pause on most evictions, New York’s pandemic-era moratorium is set to sunset on Saturday. That means that the nearly 200,000 city eviction cases against New Yorkers currently pending in Housing Court will begin to move forward once again as early as Tuesday. Muriel Robbins is among them. The 54-year-old tenant lives in a Pelham Bay apartment with two cats, Garfield and Patchie Poo, and supports herself on Social Security, she said. She got sick in the month before the pandemic, and remained hospitalized for several months as the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, recovering from a ruptured gallbladder and other organ issues, she said. “I wasn’t thinking straight really, m...