No one is satisfied with their housing.
A reliable sign that a landmark housing package is nearing reality, with many parties making last-minute cries to get priority, including a final plan to increase the number of homes and apartments in the Big Apple. That’s what I’m raising.
Negotiators have reached preliminary agreements on many key elements of a complex, multifaceted plan to build new homes, suggesting a deal may be within reach.
Exclusive Post reports that Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Senate and Assembly leaders have generally agreed to include key parts of a progressive “just cause eviction” bill.
The bill, sponsored by Democratic Socialist Party of America state Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), would effectively prohibit landlords from raising rents above a certain level and allow tenants to challenge evictions in court. This makes it easier to file a complaint.
While many lawmakers, including Salazar, told the Post they feel relieved, those for and against the Good Cause continue to sound the alarm.
“Some elected officials are more interested in scoring points with extremism and ideology than in adopting practical and responsible solutions,” says small landowners opposed to Good Cause. A spokesperson for Affordable New York for Homeowners, a coalition that includes the United Nations, said in a statement to the Post.
“Let me be clear: Just cause evictions are a disaster for New York State and are unacceptable in any form. It will only make things worse,” the spokesperson continued.
Activists from the cause’s most vocal progressive group, Housing Justice for All, loudly paraded through the Capitol on Tuesday morning, calling on the Legislature and the governor to reject the compromise. they called “It’s a tragedy and an embarrassment.”
Nine of the activists blocked one of the entrances to Hochul’s office on the second floor of the National Assembly building and were themselves arrested.
If it takes shape, this multifaceted agreement would boost housing construction in New York City, combine it with a review and expansion of housing construction, and create new opportunities for left-wing and liberal lawmakers, many of whom have a history of opposing new development. ) with the aim of making it more favorable to the public. How are rents set across the city, according to more than a half-dozen sources?
Supply increase provisions currently being considered as part of the package include:
- Restore affordable housing subsidies for new high-rise apartment buildings and provide property tax exemptions for developers to secure housing for working and middle-income families.
- It would eliminate decades-old state density regulations that prohibit the construction of buildings like those along Central Park and allow for the construction of “pencil towers,” depriving the city of potentially 20,000 apartments per decade.
- It could accelerate the conversion of vacant office towers into housing and bring much-needed revitalization to Lower Manhattan and Midtown after the pandemic.
These boosts would be accompanied by significant changes to the way rents are set in New York City, which is the subject of many of the ongoing negotiations.
For years, leftists and progressives have been pushing for a “good cause” that would give rent-paying tenants the right to automatic renewal of their leases and allow them to petition housing court for large rent increases if they can’t pay. has been promoting the enactment of such laws.
Mr. Hochul and his landlords have pushed the door open to such an arrangement, but the cap would likely be well above the level of inflation and would be calculated by a formula independent of the city’s rent board.
The deal currently being considered would cap rents at 5% of the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, the Post reported. In theory, landlords could raise it even more, but that could drag tenants into lengthy court proceedings to justify the increase.
“We want to make sure that people are not abusing tenants and focus on anti-gouging and what is reasonable for them to endure,” Hochul told reporters last week.
In addition, expansion may result in new construction.
Instead, landlords can give tenants covered by the Rent Stabilization Act, which allows rent boards to set rents for many apartments built before 1977, a larger share of the cost of building and unit upgrades. There is a possibility that this can be transferred.
State Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) told reporters Tuesday that the housing agreement includes changes for these upgrades under the individual apartment improvement provisions of the Rent Stabilization Act passed in 2019. It was acknowledged that it was included.
Some provisions could include a path to upgrading and legalizing basement apartments in New York.
These provisions could help New York expand housing production from pre-pandemic levels of about 200,000 units per decade to 250,000 units per decade, according to various estimates by officials and The Post. A summary of reports showed that.
City Hall is pushing another bill that would ease zoning requirements for an area called the “City of Yes.” That includes scrapping rules requiring developers to include parking lots with new buildings, which could create an additional 60,000 to 70,000 homes per year. . Officials say, “It’s been 10 years.”
New York City needed to build about 350,000 housing units over the past decade to meet demand, and it missed its goal by an estimated 150,000 units, according to a RAND Corporation study.
If all these changes were enacted, that gap would be reduced by more than two-thirds, to about 30,000 to 40,000 units.
