More rent reform now, please

The housing reforms are working. Last June, Albany enacted historic legislation to undo decades of the real estate industry’s tight grip over New York’s housing market. Those bad old days saw the dwindling of our rent stabilization stock — by an estimated 1 million affordable units — and one reform proposal after another scuttled by landlords and their lobbyists. Profits were prioritized over people. This has undoubtedly led to the affordable housing and homelessness quagmire that we currently find ourselves mired in.

Now, New York shows promise. After only seven months, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 has already made a difference for thousands of New Yorkers. Eviction filings are plunging across the boroughs. Cases are down by more than 35,000 since the law was enacted on June 14, 2019, compared with the same period in 2018.

The Legal Aid Society conducted an analysis this past month of evictions executed by New York City marshals. Between when the new law was enacted through the end of last year, 8,951 evictions have been executed compared to 10,958 during the same period from the previous year, a reduction of 2,007 evictions or 18%. This a clear product of the reforms and New York City’s Right to Counsel program, which connects lowincome tenants to attorneys in housing court.

And despite claims from landlords that cranes would disappear from the skylines and that construction sites would empty, that is simply not happening. Moreover, landlords also claimed that violations would balloon following the reforms because upkeep would be too costly. City data suggests otherwise.

But Albany still has much work left to do. Lawmakers must enact, without further delay, Good Cause legislation to bring renters rights and other crucial protections to tenants in smaller buildings and in manufactured home communities that fall outside of rent stabilization — an estimated 600,000 households in New York City and another one million upstate.

Across the ocean, Theresa May, the conservative former United Kingdom prime minister, proposed similar legislation to scrap no-fault evictions, which many considered a leading driver of homelessness throughout the country. May recognized a reality that, prior to the reforms, millions of tenants could at any moment be “uprooted by their landlord with little notice, and often little justification,” on account of no-fault evictions.

California enacted Good Cause legislation this past October to mitigate its housing crises. California Assemblyman David Chiu justified the legislation, saying that “the housing crisis is reaching every corner of America, where you’re seeing high home prices, high rents, evictions and homelessness that we’re all struggling to grapple with. Protecting tenants is a critical and obvious component of any strategy to address this.”

Beating New York, other jurisdictions have recognized that Good Cause is an effective policy against unjust evictions and keeping people in their homes.

Several other worthy measures warrant support from Albany lawmakers, including Home Stability Support, a statewide rent supplement program for homeless families and those facing eviction; ample funding for public housing authorities across the state to the tune of $3 billion with $2 billion allocated to the New York City Housing Authority; and the elimination of wasteful real estate subsidies — 421-a and 485-a — that cost taxpayers billions and encourage gentrification, which only causes further housing dislocation for low-income residents.

Gov. Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did right for our clients and other low-income tenants by enacting the rent reforms last year, but this isn’t a “Mission Accomplished” moment. Tenants in other dwellings need assistance and protections, and there is plenty of good reasons to enact Good Cause this year, ensure that our neighbors in public housing do not live in squalor, and eliminate costly and ineffective tax expenditures for developers that cause more harm than good.

Goldiner is attorney-in-charge and Davidson is a staff attorney of the civil law reform unit at The Legal Aid Society.