Did Landlord Legislators Doom New York’s Housing Hopes?

Seventy-two percent of Democratic state lawmakers own property, compared to 54 percent of their constituents. (New York has the lowest homeownership rate of any state.) Democratic lawmakers who don’t own homes are nearly twice as likely to back the law as those who do: 85 percent of the party’s legislators who rent backed the law, compared to just 44 percent of those who own.

Senator John Liu, a homeowner who supports good cause eviction but has called to narrow its scope, said those numbers don’t surprise him. “If you’re a tenant and you become a legislator, it’s natural that you will understand the difficulty of being a tenant and be more appreciative of some of those challenges. The same goes for a homeowner legislator,” he said.

It’s not just a city-versus-upstate divide. Even among legislators who represent New York City, renters are far more likely to sponsor good cause eviction than owners.

Harlem Assemblymember Inez Dickens, for example, has multi-million dollar real estate holdings in three small apartment buildings in her district. A partial owner, Dickens has shares of the buildings worth about $2.5 million, according to city records and her financial disclosure form. Though there are few currently open violations on her properties, poor conditions led the city to slap Dickens’s buildings with nearly 200 violations and her tenants to declare a rent strike in 2014.

In a statement, Dickens’s spokesperson Lermond Mayes said that good cause eviction “is extraordinarily dangerous to housing of all sizes” and would “prohibit landlords of all property sizes from making necessary repairs and upgrades to their apartments due to ever-increasing operating expenses.” He didn’t comment on Dickens’s property holdings.

Cea Weaver, who coordinates Housing Justice for All, a tenant organization that has led the push for good cause eviction, said the opposition of propertied legislators points to a broader problem. “We have created a system where everybody’s end of life care and wealth is dependent on property values continuing to rise, and good cause lightly limits property values,” she said.

The final version of the measure may also reflect the strength of property owners in the legislature — and particularly the more than three dozen Democratic legislators who are landlords. Before the housing deal’s collapse last week, good cause eviction supporters had rallied just enough support to pass a scaled back version of it, said Senator Julia Salazar, the bill’s lead Senate sponsor, and two other legislative sources. That version would have exempted landlords who own co-ops or a small number of units — letting more than a dozen legislators who own small amounts of property escape its regulations.

“It was going to be [an] extremely close vote but everyone was willing to compromise,” said a source close to legislative leadership.

Governor Kathy Hochul privately threatened to veto the package if it included good cause eviction, The New York Times reported and sources told New York Focus. Salazar said the legislature should have passed it anyway.

“We are a coequal branch of government and the governor threatening to veto a bill is not a good reason to fail to print and pass a bill,” she said on Monday via text. She called on the legislature to return to Albany in a special session to pass a housing package this year.

The source close to legislative leadership told New York Focus that leaders believed sending the bill to Hochul’s desk for a veto would make it harder to pass in future years.