Despite word from apartment investors that the tough economy has forced a sharp rise in the number of tenants paying late or not at all over the past year, the volume of such cases being brought to landlord and tenant courts in the city rose just modestly in the first 10 months of the year, court records show.

The number of nonpayment cases filed in landlord and tenant courts in the five boroughs through October rose by 5.3 percent to 188,381 in 2009 from 178,752 in 2008, data from the Clerk of the Civil Court of New York City shows.

The steepest rise was 9.6 percent in Queens, while in only one borough, Staten Island, filings declined, by 11 percent. The increase in Manhattan was 5.6 percent to 43,321 cases.

The cases are filed in civil courts in the five boroughs for the first 10 terms of the year, with each term slightly shorter than a month.

Landlord and tenant attorney Todd Nahins, a partner at Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Nahins & Goidel, said the low numbers were unexpected.  More

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Lawyers, judges and tenant advocates say more middle-class New Yorkers
who were once able to pay their rent are now facing eviction after
losing jobs. “There’s definitely an uptick of people who were basically
very good rent payers until the economic downturn,” said Todd Nahins, a
lawyer who represents owners of luxury residential buildings and has
been negotiating payment plans for tenants in arrears. No one knows
exactly how many middle-class tenants are facing eviction since the
city’s housing courts do not keep data on the income level of
litigants. Overall, court records show that the number of cases filed
citywide for nonpayment of rent jumped about 19 percent in the first
two months of 2009 from the same period last year. [more]