Relates to enacting the rent emergency stabilization for tenants act on local determinations of a housing emergency

Showing the cosponsors who are on Agora, A to Z. The official record may list more.

• Democratic82

Shown in neutral colors by design; Agora is non-partisan.

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Brian Kavanagh says this is needed

Rent stabilization in localities other than New York City is governed by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 (ETPA). Under the ETPA in its original form, municipalities in Nassau, Rockland, and Westchester counties may adopt rent stabilization if they declare a state of housing emergency, defined as having a rental housing vacancy rate of less than 5% in building classes they designate to be regulated. The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) amended the ETPA so that any municipality in the state may opt into rent stabilization if it meets the emergency declaration criteria. According to HCR's most recent data, a total of 40 localities outside of New York City have adopted rent regulation: 16 in Nassau, 2 in Rockland, 21 in Westchester, and 1 in Ulster (the City of Kingston). To adopt rent stabilization under current law, a municipality must conduct a formal study to determine whether to declare a housing emer- gency. The study must examine only housing built before 1974 and only in buildings with 6 or more units, even if this is a very small portion of the housing in the area; and the sole factor the study may consider is whether the vacancy rate in this subset of the housing stock is below 5 percent. If this standard is met, the municipality may declare an emer- gency and adopt rent regulation, but only for this subset of their hous- ing, built more than half a century ago. There are about 150 jurisdictions other than New York State that have rent regulation laws; none include language that defines a housing emer- gency based on a single, quantifiable threshold similar to New York's five-percent vacancy threshold, according to analysis conducted by the Community Service Society of New York. The Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act recognizes that, in addition to vacancy rates, publicly available data on a locality's eviction rate, homeless shelter population, renters' housing cost burdens, and other relevant indicators can also demonstrate a locality's lack of housing availability, affordability, and stability. For example, eviction filing data in each county is available and updated monthly on the Office of Court Administration's Statewide Landlord Tenant Eviction Dashboard, and localities may have access to data on their local home- less shelters. These metrics can paint a fuller picture of a locality's housing needs and can fulfill the ETPA's requirement that localities may institute rent stabilization only after declaring a housing emergency. At the same time, there may be localities that wish to declare an emer- gency pursuant to the existing process, based on the vacancy rate; this bill leaves that process unchanged. The REST Act also seeks to update the ETPA so that localities adopting rent stabilization may do so in a way that makes sense for the here and now. The ETPA in its current form extends rent stabilization to build- ings with six or more units, an easy threshold to reach in high-density New York City where multifamily residential buildings are more common. Recognizing that the mix of housing varies widely across the state, this legislation would allow localities to set a lower building size thresh- old of four or more units for rent stabilization coverage. Finally, when the ETPA went into effect in June 1974, the law permitted localities to apply rent stabilization to eligible buildings that had been constructed at that point - on or before January 1, 1974. This eligibility date has not changed in over 50 years. More recently, when the legislature enacted the Good Cause Eviction law, it exempted all buildings built within the last 15 years. This bill would reflect the ETPA's original intent of enabling localities to provide rent stabilization protections to a substantial portion of their housing, not just to buildings that are half a century old, by including buildings constructed or substan- tially rehabilitated more than 15 years ago.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.