On Monday, February 2, 2009 the State Assembly passed a package of ten bills to enhance tenants’ rights and restore strength to our rent and eviction protections laws.
The following is an analysis of the debate and votes on these bills, in the order on which they were called up for debate:
A2002 Silver, et al. Calendar No. 27
This bill increases civil penalties for landlords who are found to have harassed tenants, or who disobey an order of the state housing commissioner.
A465 Jeffries, et al. Calendar No. 9
This bill restores the preferential rent rules in the NYC Rent Stabilization Law and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act to their pre-2003 status: under the bill landlords will be able to jump from the preferential rent to the legal rent upon vacancy, but not when the tenant renews her lease – the landlord would be required to apply any renewal rent adjustments to the preferential rent.
A1685 V. Lopez, et al. Calendar No. 20
This bill addresses the ability of landlords in rent-stabilized apartments in NYC to empty entire buildings by claiming they want all the apartments for their own use, or for a family member. The bill brings NYC rent stabilization into conformance with all the other rent laws, by limiting owner use recapture to one apartment per building; requiring the landlord to demonstrate immediate and compelling need; and exempting tenants who have lived in the building for 20 years or more from owner use eviction.
A1687 V. Lopez, et al. Calendar No. 22
The bill allows NYC and municipalities in the three suburban counties of Nassau, Rockland and Westchester to bring project-based Section 8 buildings into rent regulation coverage if the landlord opts out of Section 8.
A857 Bing, et al. Calendar No. 41
This bill closes a loophole in the Rent Stabilization Law and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which allows landlords of former Mitchell-Lama buildings to seek to increased rent based on “unique or peculiar circumstances” – in this case, the U or P circumstances being leaving the Mitchell-Lama program. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal has stated as a matter of policy that leaving Mitchell-Lama is not a unique or peculiar circumstance, but landlords are still pursuing the remedy. Putting the prohibition into statute prevents any future governor from reversing the current DHCR policy. The bill, applicable only to New York City, prohibits U or P applications when Mitchell-Lama housing companies are dissolved and the apartments go under rent stabilization.
A860 Bing, et al. Calendar No. 42
This bill raises the rent and income thresholds for high income rent decontrol (often described incorrectly as “luxury decontrol”), from their current level of $2,000 monthly rent and $175,000 annual household income. The new thresholds would be $2,700 monthly rent, and $240,000 annual household income, and these thresholds would be indexed for inflation annually thereafter.
A1928 O’Donnell, et al. Calendar No. 26
An oldie but goodie, this bill makes rent increases for Major Capital Improvements a temporary: the landlord can still recover the entire cost of the building-wide improvement over a period of seven years, but once the cost of the MCI is recovered the rent increases disappears. In addition the rent increase would have to be listed as a separate surcharge on the rent bill, rather than compounded with the base rent.
A1688 V. Lopez, et al. Calendar No. 23
This bill repeals the 1971 Urstadt Law, named for Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s housing commissioner Charles J. Urstadt, which prohibits the New York City Council and Mayor from amending the city rent laws to make them more protective of tenants.
A2005 Rosenthal, et al. Calendar no. 30
The biggie on the calendar. The bill repeals high rent vacancy decontrol in New York City and suburban counties, and re-regulates a substantial number of apartments that have been vacancy decontrolled in the last 15 years.
A1686 V. Lopez, et al. Calendar No. 21
The final bill to come up for debate, A1686 reduces the statutory vacancy bonus from 20 percent to 10 percent, and limits its collection to once per calendar year.
The Republican arguments against this package of bills were familiar. They are the right out of the script that Republican staff members have been feeding their members for years to prepare them for debates in committee and on the floor: rent control was supposed to be a temporary, emergency measure, and the stated policy of the legislature is a transition to a free (sic) market; the answer to the housing problem in New York City is not to tighten regulation but to increase the supply, whereupon rents will come down; the rent laws primarily benefit rich people in Manhattan who do not need or deserve protection; homeowners in upstate New York are being screwed by New York City; rent control laws discourage landlords (they constantly referred to landlords as “land owners”) from improving their properties; and so forth.
To this debate they added a new twist: the article in the Sunday Real Estate section of The New York Times of the day before, about how rents are dropping in market-rate apartments in the tanking economy, as if this somehow meant that tenants in rent-protected apartments did not need protection, or that rents under rent regulation were somehow coming down, or that market-rate tenants do not need protection because of this temporary drop in asking rents for vacant apartments. Linda Rosenthal ably turned this argument back on the Republicans, pointing out that these unprotected tenants will be victimized – rent gouged – as soon as the economy recovers.
There was barely any mention of the suburban counties. No Democratic legislator from Nassau, Westchester or Rockland County spoke in favor of any of the bills, even though several of them apply to the suburbs. The Democrats who did speak uniformly described the problems addressed by the bills as affecting New York City. The only time the suburbs came up was in the debate over repeal of the Urstadt Law, when some members seemed to believe that local governments in the suburbs have home rule over rents and evictions when in fact they never have – and Ms. Calhoun is under the mistaken impression that rent regulation also exists in Suffolk County.
All the bills have been delivered to the State Senate and referred to the Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development.
A close analysis of the vote of A2005, the most controversial bill of the package, shows that three Republican Assemblymembers voted for it, and 15 Democrats voted no.
The Republican “yes” votes were all from Nassau County: Thomas Alfano (North Valley Stream), Robert Barra (Lynbrook) and Rob Walker (Hicksville).
The Democratic “no” votes were:
Marc Alessi (Manor Park, Suffolk County), Joan Christensen (Syracuse)
Michael Cusick (Staten Island), Francine Delmonte (Lewistown, Niagara County)
Roann Destito (Rome), Ginny Fields (Oakdale, Suffolk County), Dennis Gabryszak (Depew, Erie County), Sandra Galef (Ossining, Westchester County)
David Gantt (Rochester), Timothy Gordon (Bethlehem, Albany County), Aileen Gunther (Forestburgh, Orange County), William Magee (Nelson, Madison/Oneida/Otsego Counties), William Magnarelli (Syracuse), William Parment (Ashville, Chautauqua County), Robin Schimminger (Kenmore, Erie/Niagara Counties)
Seven Assembly members were absent.
All bills and summaries, including vote tallies, can be accessed on the Assembly web site: www.assembly.state.ny.us. Type the bill number into the “Quick Bill Search” box on the home page (right below the message from the Speaker). Hit GO and you will then be taken directly to the bill summary.
Source: Adapted from a summary by Michael McKee
East Side Housing Coalition 