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BRONX TIMES REPORTER, N 12 OV. 19-25, 2021
Good Cause legislation would give tenants the right to a lease renewal in most cases and
curb unlimited rent hikes in non-stabilized apartments. File photo
BY SHERVON SMALL
Imagine that you’ve lived in your
home in the Bronx — a modest, nonrent
stabilized apartment — for years.
You’ve made the rent on time each
month, taken good care of the property
and respected your neighbors. Your
kids attend the neighborhood school,
your job is nearby, and you truly feel
connected to the community you reside
in.
But one season — after you complained
to the city about an ongoing
lack of heat and hot water in your
building — you receive news from your
landlord that they will not consider
your lease for renewal and that you
will have to look for a new place to live.
And because New York lacks meaningful
protection for tenants in non-rent
stabilized units, you have no recourse
but to leave the only home you have.
Good Cause — budget-neutral legislation
that has been gaining traction
in cities and municipalities around
New York State — is a response to the
thousands of stories just like this one
that are happening every day; stories
of struggling renters who are routinely
subjected to harassment, unconscionable
rent increases, and arbitrary —
in many cases retaliatory — evictions.
Good Cause would give tenants the
right to a lease renewal in most cases
and curb unlimited rent hikes in nonstabilized
apartments — ensuring that
all renters are provided with a basic
minimum of crucial protections.
Yet if one were to take seriously
the reactionary message of last week’s
Bronx Times op-ed targeting Good
Cause, one might draw the conclusion
that the aim of the legislation is not to
protect vulnerable, hardworking renters
from exploitation and neglect by a
minority of predatory landlords, but
rather to enable big government to victimize
landlords indiscriminately by
effectively seizing their property and
saddling them with a host of perpetual
wards — all while driving entire neighborhood
economies into depression.
The op-ed—which cynically recasts
Good Cause as the “Lease for Life” bill
— plays on the fears of property owners
that the protections provided by
Good Cause amount to de facto lifelong
rent control. But Good Cause legislation
does not prohibit rent increases —
it only restrains rapacious landlords
from using eviction as a tool to drive
out tenants by limiting those increases
to a reasonable level.
Neither does Good Cause legislation
prevent landlords from using the
courts and eviction proceedings to remove
tenants who legitimately violate
the terms of their lease. It simply requires
landlords seeking to evict a tenant
to substantiate their reasons for doing
so.
Without Good Cause in place, struggling
tenants living in the Bronx’s
100,032 non-rent stabilized households
(24.7% of the borough’s rental stock)
will continue to encounter the use of
extreme rent hikes as a way of ousting
them from their homes. In 2020, 61%
of Bronx residents reported falling
behind on their rent or mortgage, had
utilities shut off due to nonpayment, or
were threatened with eviction or foreclosure
due to wage and job loss in the
COVID era. And a staggering 83% of
low-income Bronx residents who lost
employment income report food insecurity.
New Yorkers overwhelmingly support
Good Cause. Earlier this year, Albany,
Hudson and Newburgh became
the fi rst municipalities in the state to
pass the measure, and state Attorney
General Letitia James recently came
out in public support of Good Cause.
Millions of tenants in non-rent stabilized
housing deserve basic, common
sense protections, and Albany
must enact Good Cause now.
Shervon Small Esq., is the director
of the Economic Equities Project at The
Legal Aid Society and longtime Bronx
resident.
Albany must enact Good Cause
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