Joan Rodriguez slept on a park bench the night after the landlord locked her out of her apartment. In the three years since then, she has slept on the train, in friends’ living rooms and at a shelter while fighting to get back into the apartment she said she was illegally barred from.

Rodriguez had been living in downtown Brooklyn with her roommate, whom she loved like a sister. In October 2022, her roommate died suddenly, and about two weeks later her landlord changed the locks. Rodriguez said she was in shock. She had been living there for more than four years and had gotten no court order saying she had to leave.

“I was so scared,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, because I never had that problem.”

Rodriguez is one of thousands of New Yorkers who have accused their landlords in h

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