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By: Ilana Siyance
Legislators in Albany have introduced a bill which would, for the first time, control rental prices on market-rate buildings.
As reported by the NY Post, the proposed bill, named the Good Cause Eviction Bill, written by Socialist-minded lawmakers, would sneakily impose rent controls on market-rate buildings throughout the five boroughs of New York City. Critics say the bill, which guises as an eviction-prevention measure, would put small landlords and minorities out of business, by dictating how much they can charge for rent at their buildings. “This bill is universal rent control,” said Sharon Redhead, an immigrant who owns five small buildings in Brownsville and East Flatbush, Brooklyn. “The sponsors don’t believe in free enterprise.”
“If this bill comes to pass, a lot of small housing providers will have to sell,” added Cynthia Brooks, who owns a four-family brick house at 2181 Strauss Street in Brownsville. “You have to be in control of your building,” she said, adding that the measure may not allow her to charge enough rent to manage the building. “My name is on the deed, but am I the real owner or not?” Many of the smalllandlords say the bill will force immigrant and minority-group owners out of business and leave their buildings to be bought up by large real-estate companies and well-heeled developers, who will demolish the smaller buildings and replace it with new construction.
The proposed bill, which will need to be passed by the State Assembly and State Senate, would be the first to impose rent controls on NYC’s 1.4 million market-rate apartments. It would cap rent increases on market-rate units at 3% or 1.5% of the consumer price index, whichever is higher. Per the Post, till now, limits on rent increases were only for rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments. This new bill would also require landlords to offer tenants new leases when the old lease expires, regardless of the reason for not renewing them. Currently, the law allows owners to decline to renew a lease, as long as 30-90 days of advance notice is given. The bill also has other controversial provisions, including stopping legal conversion to market-rate rents by making improvement to certain vacant rent-stabilized units. Landlords who make improvements to apartments could now only increase rent by 2%, instead of 6%. Critics say this will just discourage any improvements and lead to a drop in the standard of living for tenants.
As per the Post, the bill was sponsored in the Assembly by Pamela Hunter (D-Syracuse) and in the Senate by Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), who calls herself a “Democratic socialist”. The bill has 54 co-sponsors in the 150-member Assembly, and 22 co-sponsors in the 63-seat Senate. The progressive Legal Aid Society and socialist-oriented organizations have called the bill a “priority.”
Homeowners for an Affordable New York, a coalition which includes the Real Estate Board of New York and other landlord-advocacy groups, said the bill is “an ideologically-driven pursuit by far-left socialists that does nothing to address the housing supply shortage and would, in fact, make finding an apartment more difficult and impossibly expensive for new renters.”
