The Legal Aid Society brought four actions against the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) for violating public housing tenants’ right to due process in eviction and in penalty proceedings. In 1971, NYCHA and Legal Aid entered into a Consent Decree establishing minimum procedural safeguards for public housing tenants, thereby overhauling NYCHA’s policies for terminating tenancies on the ground of non-desirability. Escalera is the seminal case on the adequacy of notice; it has been cited in hundreds of appellate decisions.

When Escalera was filed, NYCHA tenants were required to sign month-to-month leases which could be terminated with one month’s notice. If NYCHA determined that a tenant violated its rules or regulations, or that a tenant was non-desirable, it could move to speedily terminate that tenant’s tenancy without providing the tenant either any advance notice of the conduct at issue, or access to the evidence considered against them. In 1996, a federal judge modified the Escalera Decree to allow NYCHA to proceed under New York Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law § 711(5) and 715 (the Bawdy House Law), to evict tenants for drug-related reasons in an expedited manner.