At the advice of doctors, Hugo Santana and his wife were stranded in Ecuador at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s grounds for an eviction from their $897-a-month rent-stabilized apartment of 43 years, according to their new corporate landlord.
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.A couple stranded in Ecuador at the peak of the COVID pandemic could soon lose the rent-stabilized Hell’s Kitchen apartment they’ve called home for 43 years because the landlord says they were away for too long.
The Santanas were gone for 13 months as a result of the "impossibility and impracticality" of traveling during a global pandemic, they say in court papers. In an interview last week, Santana told Gothamist that the eviction proceedings blindsided him. He said he still doesn’t quite understand how he and his wife could be at risk of losing their home after paying rent on time for more than four decades.The new owner, a limited liability company, could stand to make a massive profit by ousting the family, deregulating the unit and jacking up the rent to market rate in a neighborhood where the— over six times what the Santanas pay now.
Within a matter of weeks, a deadly new virus was spreading across the globe. Countries enacted curfews, issued lockdowns, shuttered businesses and banned travel to stymie the spread of COVID-19. “We call them COVID refugees,” said Samuel Himmelstein, a veteran tenant lawyer frequently consulted by other attorneys. “Very often these were older people and/or people with health conditions [who] had reason to be nervous.”
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