Metro

Give Sandy evict-ims more time, pol says

City courts should extend their moratorium on residential housing evictions until Jan. 1 to help Sandy victims, a city councilman said yesterday.

Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan), a candidate for city comptroller, called on the city’s civil-court system to halt plans to lift the moratorium today.

“We were in the midst of a serious housing crisis in this city even before the hurricane hit,” he said. “Our city shelters are full, even without the thousands of those displaced because of the storm.

“Let’s give people just a little more time to get on their feet. To resume evictions when we know many families have nowhere to go is callous and irresponsible.”

Garodnick joined the chorus of 19 legal service groups that wrote a letter last week to Fern Fisher, deputy chief administrative judge for city courts, asking her to postpone lifting the moratorium.

He pointed out that resuming evictions could stress the city’s shelter system, which is already bursting at the seams from those displaced as a result of Sandy.

In the letter to Fisher, Jeanette Zelhof wrote, “Ultimately, New York City will once again prove itself resilient, and there is reason to believe that after the new year, it would not be impractical and unseemly for the business of eviction to resume.”

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bloomberg did not respond to a request for comment.