Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Residential Evictions will be Extended Until January 1, 2021

Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the State's Tenant Safe Harbor Act will be expanded until January 1, 2021 to protect additional residential tenants from eviction if they are suffering financial hardship during the COVID-19 public health emergency. The Executive Order extends the protections of the Tenant Safe Harbor Act to eviction warrants that existed prior to the start of the pandemic.

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Hi, Good morning, guys - guys being gender-neutral - I have Melissa DeRosa on the telephone, Robert Mujica, Beth Garvey, James Malatras, Gareth Rhodes.

First to all our Jewish brothers and sisters, we wish them Happy Holiday, Happy Yom Kippur and we wish them the best for the season.

Today is day 212. We did 52,000 tests yesterday; 834 positive - that's 1.5 percent. Eleven New Yorkers passed away - they're in our thoughts and prayers. 543 hospitalized, 135 ICU, 57 were intubated.

The numbers today are interesting. First, we're coming into the fall and all the health experts said we have to be careful about the fall. People go indoors, colleges open, flu season, etcetera. We have spikes in other states. You have states, Wisconsin is 18 percent positive, Iowa is 15 percent, Utah 12 percent, Missouri 12 percent, Florida 10 percent, California and Illinois about 4 percent.

We have the quarantine in place and we have a global spike - France, Spain, Israel are seeing spikes and I have a measure on that that I'm going to mention in a moment - but that's the overall environment of the fall and a nationwide spike and a global spike.

But we're also seeing in these numbers significant action in clusters. It's basically Brooklyn, Orange and Rockland that are increasing this number. Brooklyn is at 2.6 percent. Mid-Hudson is at 3 percent but within Mid-Hudson it's Orange County and then it's Rockland County. It's Orange, Rockland and Brooklyn.

Southern Tier has a blip but that comes to three clusters also. There's a nursing home Steuben County, there's a church gathering in Chemung County that created issues, and a pub in Broome County. The point of the tests is just this. It is being is to be able to pinpoint and identify the clusters to find where the cases are coming from. Brooklyn is a major contributor in the number of cases and then Orange and Rockland and we have specific zip codes in Brooklyn that we're going to be looking at because it's very targeted and our health officials are going to be reaching out to those Brooklyn communities, Orange, and Rockland today to do additional testing and compliance measures in those areas. But it is very targeted and very focused in those clusters.

I also want to announce today that the residential tenant eviction protection that I have done by Executive Order, I'm going to extend that Executive Order to January 1, 2021. That's what we call the State's Safe Harbor Act. It protects tenants from COVID-related residential evictions and foreclosures through the COVID-19 emergency. We're going to extend that to January 1, 2021. We had extended the commercial eviction protection. I'm now extending the residential protection. I want people to have fundamental stability in their lives. Nobody is going to be evicted because of housing.

On the global increase in cases, the CDC ended enhanced screening at the airports for some international travelers, but with seeing alarming increases in countries around the world, especially France, Spain, and Israel. So we are going to increase our presence - and I'm signing an Executive Order requiring the Department of Health to alert all travelers that we have a quarantine, mandatory quarantine that will be for any Level 2 or Level 3 country and that is all but 31 countries on the globe right now will be subject to that quarantine.

Last point is there's been stories on the President's taxes. You know, what I would say is we know the President here in New York. The President is a marketing man. That's what he does. He's a marketer and he marketed himself as a successful business man for many years. But it was marketing, and he now markets himself as a successful president, or an effective president. Yeah, but if you ever look at the specifics, which is what the taxes reveal in terms of the actuality of his business success, he's a business failure when you actually look at the facts. But he has marketed himself as a successful entrepreneur, president. You look at how he managed COVID internationally, he's one of the worst global country leaders, national leaders on a global scale if you look at the numbers. So yeah, reality at one point catches up with perception and that's what's happening to the President.

On education in New York City, the principals, the union that represents the principals in the New York City schools, has taken a no-confidence vote in the New York City Board of Education. They've asked the state to take over control. On the New York City school reopening, we are going to be getting daily testing numbers, so we'll be able to tell on a day-to-day basis what is actually happening with the tests in New York City schools, both for the teachers and the pupils. We all agree that it's about educating our students. We want to get them back into school, but we want to do it safely and we all agree with that. I can't believe the teachers union would want to subject teachers to a dangerous situation and I'm sure the Boards of Education on the city and the state, the last thing they want to do is expose the children to a dangerous situation. Especially since children themselves are at risk, this is all an unknown disease still. We're learning things about it all the time. So much of what we thought was wrong. We know that children can be infected and can be in a dangerous situation and we know that children can be carriers, right? And we're looking at numbers in New York City that already pose challenges, and clusters, the Brooklyn number. So, we'll get the numbers and we'll act prudently based on the numbers, but I get the concern of the Principals' Union and we will be watching the numbers very closely. And again, I think the concern of the principals union is also going to be shared by the teachers union and it's also going to be shared by the parents of the students in New York City schools. If there's a problem, there's a problem, and the numbers will show if there's a problem and we'll then act accordingly.