The Legal Aid Society raised concerns over the de facto nixing of a popular website tool that allowed tenants to sue for apartment repairs online during the pandemic. The portal – found on the website JustFix.nyc – arose last March when courts suspended the requirement for tenants to present notarized paperwork in person.

The resumption of pre-pandemic policies now threatens to make the site inoperable – a development civil legal service attorneys say would rebuild barriers that had fallen during the lockdown, as reported by Law360.

Jessica Bellinder, a supervising attorney at The Legal Aid Society, decried the NYC courts for backtracking on adjustments made in the COVID-19 era that simplified courts processes for tenants, noting that many New Yorkers “have an inability to get to housing court in an easy way either because of a disability or incredibly busy work schedules.”

“I think those barriers existed pre-COVID, and to the extent we are working out ways to make the courts accessible to people who had barriers pre-COVID, we need to keep those adaptations,” she said. “We need to make it more accessible, not less.”