Is It Finally COPA’s Year?

The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), which would give some tenants and community groups pathways to bid early on certain buildings that go up for sale, finally has support of Council, city housing officials, and the mayor.

There was tempered optimism among housing advocates gathered outside City Hall Wednesday morning. They had been down this road before.

Last year, Councilmember Sandy Nurse finally passed the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would give community groups and tenants a pathway to bid early on some buildings when they go up for sale.

But then-Mayor Eric Adams vetoed it on his last day in office. An effort to override the veto early this year fell one vote short, Nurse said. The bill was first proposed over five years ago.

“The coalition just stuck together. We were very committed,” said Nurse. “We put in a lot of time and consideration with all stakeholders to improve the bill, make it even better than it was before, and so I think we’re in a good place to pass it.”

The bill would give “qualified buyers”—either vetted housing preservation groups or nonprofits like community land trusts—20 days to stake a claim when a building goes up for sale, and another 70 days to put up an offer before the property hits the wider market. Those groups would also get a chance to match any private offers the owner gets.

Supporters say the legislation will help fight displacement and create permanently affordable housing, while putting distressed buildings on a path to stability.

Judith Douglas, a tenant in East Flatbush, formed a tenants union in her building, saying the heat was not working for several months this winter. The law could help people facing displacement pressure in gentrifying neighborhoods, she said.

“Why can’t we stay in our old community and fix it up and remain there?” Douglas asked.

Critics of the bill say it will create an uneven playing field that favors nonprofits at private owners’ expense, and will slow down transactions.

The number of buildings eligible is smaller than lawmakers had originally proposed. The updated legislation exempts some smaller properties and targets others that are nearing the end of their affordable housing protections, or have a requisite number of housing code violations.

“About 2,100 buildings today we think would be eligible under COPA,” Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy testified to the City Council Wednesday. 

Levy said fine-tuning eligibility was important to the intent of the bill, “which is to really capture buildings that are in physical distress and being sold and at risk of being subject to speculation, where it is very critical that a preservation purchaser is picking it up to ensure that the building is repaired.”

Some owners remained unconvinced, saying they expect the number of eligible properties to grow because of the currently shaky market for rent-stabilized housing. Owners have blamed rent laws (like 2019’s Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, or HSTPA) and policies like the recent rent freeze that limit the income they can generate, and thus reinvest, in their buildings.

“They are setting us up for failure,” said Ann Korchak, president of the Small Property Owner’s Association of New York (SPONY). 

“They are creating the conditions that force a building into financial distress. You have the fallout from HSTPA. They just instituted a two-year rent freeze. They’ve vilified us through publicly funded ‘rental rip-off’ hearings,” she added. “We have broken housing courts. We have runaway taxes and utilities. And all of those things create a financially distressed owner, not a negligent owner. And then they come in with, ‘oh here we have COPA’—a government intervention to solve a problem that they created.”

Nurse said that the Council Speaker Julie Menin has promised to call the bill for a vote and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said earlier this year that he supports it.

“Opportunities for a trusted community-based nonprofit to buy the building, fix it up, repair it, renovate it, and keep the rent low is a huge win for working families in the city. It would mean a world of difference,” said Nurse.

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