When Kamilah and Nicholas Sierra walked into a three-bedroom multi-family home in East Orange, they saw a space they could call their own — a large living room for their son to run around in, enough rooms for their older kids to visit and a chance to leave a New York City homeless shelter.

That dream would be cut short.

Paint started peeling off the walls and polyurethane flaked off the floors, they said. Thieves broke in through the back fence. There was a leak in the kitchen and mice in the closet. The couple’s baby fell through an opening in the porch railing.

The apartment had never passed a local inspection, records show. But there was little the Sierras could do to force fixes, they said — their $22,200 yearly rent had been paid up front by New York City taxpayers.

“If you got this money up front, why didn’t you fix anything in this house?” Kamilah Sierra, 40, said. “These landlords are taking advantage of people at their lowest.”

The landlord rejected those charges and said the home was “pristine” when the Sierras moved in. She accused them of staging the disrepair when their lease was up and not maintaining the apartment.

Either way, a year later, the family was back in a shelter.

The Sierras are one of 2,226 homeless families from New York City who were relocated by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to 62 New Jersey towns with a full-year’s worth of rent paid up front, numbers show. The controversial program, which rolled out in 2017, is meant to curb NYC’s homeless crisis by helping working families find permanent housing across the country, including in New York City.

But New Jersey housing advocates say the special one-time assistance program takes families away from their support network when they are relocated outside NYC — providing a temporary solution and exporting the problem to other states. Too often families live under poor housing conditions, unable to leverage monthly rent in exchange for repairs, advocates say. In some cases, they end up back on the street.

“When rent runs out, they have nowhere to go and now that they’re in New Jersey, they’re New Jersey’s issue,” said Yvette Gibbons, executive director of the Essex County Legal Aid Association. “They are being set up to fail.”

Emily Mbong, the East Orange landlord, also agreed NYC’s program fell short, but for other reasons: It leaves landlords to deal with struggling families all on their own.

“You have to have some kind of programs to follow up on these tenants ... to make sure they are keeping their jobs,” she said. “Once they have been placed, the system washes their hands of it.”

New Jersey leaders say they didn’t know about the NYC program, which has relocated families in the state predominantly to Irvington, East Orange, Jersey City and Newark, until housing complaints began rolling in.

Newark, which has absorbed 1,198 families (second only to New York City’s 1,781), has taken a bold step to put an end to it.

Last month Newark outlawed the NYC program, banning landlords from accepting more than a month’s worth of rent from a subsidy or voucher program and prohibiting any party from bringing a needy person to the city for government assistance.

“We can’t afford to sit around and wait because the problem is getting worse,” said Newark’s corporation counsel Kenyatta Stewart. He said NYC won’t disclose exactly where families have been relocated, citing privacy concerns.

“They won’t give us any information," Stewart said. For Newark, “It’s a safety concern. We want to make sure the people who are living at these locations are safe and they have the necessary contacts.”

18-month-old Josiah walks through the a room where paint flakes off of the wall. David Gard | For NJ Advance Medi

NYC’s Department of Homeless Services said since the program’s inception, more than 12,000 individuals, or about 5,074 families, have been moved out of shelters into housing for a cost of $89 million. Families must be working and have enough income to make future rent payments. Units in New York or parts of New Jersey are supposed to be inspected by the agency.

Records provided by DHS show New Jersey absorbed almost half of the families. New York state took in the second highest with 2,222. Other families were relocated as far as Washington, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Of the families in the program, about 4%, or 224, returned to a NYC shelter — including the Sierras. What’s not clear is how many families returned to shelters in other states.

DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn said in a statement that homelessness is a national challenge that requires everyone to take action.

“Families and individuals experiencing homelessness have the same rights as anyone to seek housing they can afford wherever they can find it,” he said in an emailed statement. “We of course share Newark’s concern about unscrupulous landlords and we have strengthened our programs to protect those we serve. We look forward to working with Newark on these issues.”

Nicholas Sierra holds pieces of varnish that come off the floor. David Gard | For NJ Advance Medi

Illegal rentals

On a hot, sticky day this summer, 18-month-old Josiah Sierra ran around his nearly-empty East Orange home on North Burnett Street in nothing but his diaper.

“Right now all we can do is go day by day,” Nicholas Sierra, 31, said as he sat on his porch that day. “It’s hard to look for work and be worried about where you are going to be stable, too.”

A few weeks later, Josiah and his parents were evicted, unable to make $1,900 monthly rent payments.

Nicholas Sierra lost his job as a contractor and the family couldn’t afford to pay.

The Sierra family landed in an NYC homeless shelter in 2017 after they were displaced following a dispute with a family member. They stayed in the shelter for three months until they found housing under the special one-time assistance program.

“We skipped the minor details,” Nicholas Sierra admitted. “Once you settled in, that’s when we started noticing a lot.”

Mbong said the Sierras left the state for two months which meant she couldn’t enter the home to make certain repairs. But she said she sent an exterminator every three to six months and was constantly communicating with the family until things turned hostile when the lease was running out.

Inspection records obtained by NJ Advance Media detail the condition of the unit — which was illegally rented because the apartment never underwent a required city inspection. Landlords cannot rent units in East Orange without obtaining a “certificate of habitability" and passing an inspection.

Violations issued by East Orange’s code enforcement cite a long list of issues, including new paint for all the walls, a replacement of the floor covering, changing the tiles in the bathroom and kitchen, replacing ceilings, resurfacing the tub, installing a smoke detector, repairing damaged cabinets, repairing windows that don’t open properly, locating the source of leaks, repairing light fixtures and eliminating the rodent infestation.

Mbong admitted she made a mistake in renting out the unit without a certificate of habitability but said the tenants complained to the city about the unit’s conditions only after she had already filed an eviction notice and the lease had expired. The unit is back on the market but Mbong said she’ll think twice about being part of the program again.

“It was a very bad experience,” she said, adding that the eviction process meant she lost two and a half months of rent.

East Orange officials say they don’t know how many families like the Sierras have been relocated in town. They know of at least 14 families in eight properties — none of which are in legal rentals, prompting city summons — officials told NJ Advance Media. Records show East Orange has received 278 families.

“For a city to do this for their population is extraordinarily generous and well-meaning,” said Gladys Moriarty, an attorney with the Essex County Legal Aid Association. “But putting them in rat-infested, no-heat, no-hot-water (units), I don’t know what the benefit is.”

CBS2 has reported on families living in illegal rentals in East Orange and others in Newark with no heat or running water.

East Orange Mayor Ted Green said while the NYC program can help transition homeless families to stable housing, landlords “have taken advantage of new residents who are seeking a place to live.” He urged NYC to work with the city and others to ensure the program works for all.

“We are also exploring how to enact new policies in East Orange to ensure that every resident who lives here has a home that is clean, safe and healthy,” he said in a statement, responding to Newark’s actions.

Mayor de Blasio press office did not respond to a request for comment on Newark’s move.

For Newark, finding affordable housing is already a major concern and officials say NYC’s homeless program isn’t helping people in the long run and displacing others in need in Newark.

“It has an impact on our housing stock here. A landlord is never going to decide to go with the person who has to pay month-to-month when they can take a person or agency whose going to give a check for an entire year,” Stewart, the corporation counsel, said. “It has a negative impact and displaces people.”

Stewart said the new law will not only ban NYC’s program but more broadly help ensure housing conditions are safe before tenants move in. Under the new measure, approved by the city council last month, landlords must obtain a certificate of code compliance from city inspectors every time they rent to a new tenant.

Kamilah Sierra still supports the rental assistance program but said NYC officials need to help families throughout the year, connecting them with local resources and offer extensions if they’re not back on their feet after a year.

“Everybody has downs,” she said. “Sometimes you can’t see them.”

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.

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