Rosemary Rivera, Co-Executive Director of Citizen Action of NY, said, “The Senate and Assembly have listened to the needs of tenants across the state and put forth bold legislation to end the housing crisis…”
Beth Finkel, New York State Director for AARP, said, “AARP advocated for stronger tenant protections and reforms to make New York’s rent laws work…Strengthening our rent laws will preserve existing affordable housing and help keep New York City a great place to live for residents of all ages…”
Legal Services NYC, said, “The proposed bills will make an immeasurable difference to thousands of low income and working families who are struggling to survive in NYCs housing market.”
Comprehensive tenant protection legislation
According to Heastie and Stewart-Cousins, the package of legislation will:
- Extend the rent regulation laws and makes them permanent
- Repeal high rent vacancy deregulation & high income deregulation
- Reform owner use exception to rent Regulation—limits the “owner use” provision to a single unit, requires that the owner or their immediate family use the unit as their primary residence, and protects long-term tenants from eviction under this exception by reducing the current length of tenancy required to be protected from eviction to 15 years.
- Keep stabilized apartments rented by nonprofits in the rent stabilization system
- Repeals the vacancy bonus & longevity bonus provisions allows a property owner to raise rents as much as 20 percent each time a unit becomes vacant
- Prohibits rent guidelines board from setting class-specific renewal increases
- Make preferential rents the base rent for lease renewal increases
- Provide relief from large rent increases for rent-controlled tenants
- Extends rent overcharge four-year look-back period to six years
- Reform rent increases for major capital improvements (MCIS)—reducing the rent increase cap to 2% in New York City and other counties
- Reform Rent Increases for Individual Apartment Improvements (IAIs)
- Require HCR to submit an annual report on the programs and activities undertaken by the Office of Rent Administration and the Tenant Protection Unit regarding implementation, administration and enforcement of the rent regulation system
- Reform co-op/condo conversions
- Establish rent stabilization as an option for localities statewide
- Remove the geographical restrictions on the applicability of the rent stabilization laws
- Establish stronger housing security and tenant protections statewide
