News from Pratt Center: May 2022

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Your lease is up. Your landlord said that if you want to stay another year you have to pay a massive rent hike (50%, 75%, or even 100% more than what you’re paying now). You can’t afford it. You have to move even though you don’t want to. You aren’t even sure how you’ll find another place you can afford. Unconscionable rent hikes have become an all too familiar story for New Yorkers. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Pratt Center joined forces with Housing Justice For All and Community Service Society of New York to advocate for Good Cause eviction protections (S3082/A5573). Good Cause would expand the right to lease renewal to unregulated tenants statewide and challenge exorbitant rent hikes that act as de facto evictions.

Our first report on Good Cause, The Right to Remain, revealed that 1.6 million households or nearly 50% of the tenants in the state would benefit from Good Cause protections. Expanding tenants rights is also a racial justice issue. Black tenants are three times more likely to face eviction than their white counterparts, as we showed in our second report (Racial Justice and the Right to Remain). Landlord interest groups who oppose Good Cause say the bill would prevent cities from building new housing, exacerbating the already dire housing crisis. However, our most recent report, The Truth about Good Cause and Housing Supply, showed that places with Good Cause protections like New Jersey have outpaced New York in building new housing.

The Basement Apartments Safe for Everyone (BASE) Coalition kicked off 2022 with several milestones including the release of its new Platform for Basement Apartments. The policy platform outlines city and state reforms addressing the urgent need to make basement and cellar apartments safe and affordable citywide:

The Platform for Basement Apartments was shared with City Council members at a March 10th policy briefing, presented by BASE campaign members with remarks from Jessica Katz, Chief Housing Officer in the Mayor’s Office, and State Assembly Member Harvey Epstein. Pratt Center’s Rebekah Morris presented on the growing urgency of basement apartment legalization and safety presented by climate change, which has expanded flood risk across the city beyond the 100-year floodplain, as painfully demonstrated by Hurricane Ida in which 11 New Yorkers living in basement apartments drowned. 

In April and May, we have focused on State reforms to remove barriers to legalization of basement and cellar apartments and other Accessory Dwelling Units. New legislation sponsored by Assemblymember Harvey Epstein and Senator Brian Kavanagh (S8783/A9802) would grant New York City “amnesty” from the Multiple Dwelling Law for certain ADUs in small homes. On April 28th, Pratt Center rallied in support of the bill alongside our fellow BASE members, bill sponsors Assembly Member Epstein and Senator Kavanagh, and City officials including Comptroller Brad Lander, Council Member Shekar Krishnan, Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz, and others who support the creation of safe and legal basement apartments.