The New York City Housing Court was established half a century ago, when the city’s Civil Court was beginning to buckle under the weight of an increasingly high volume of landlord-tenant matters.

These days, as sky-high Big Apple rents threaten to push some New Yorkers out of the city entirely, the vast majority of cases that come before housing judges today are nonpayment and holdover matters. A relatively small chunk of their time is spent on cases alleging landlord neglect.