While Albany leaders failed to pass a comprehensive package of housing legislation this week, some advocates and high-ranking lawmakers have been working on a pair of bills they say could strengthen protections for tenants across New York City’s stock of roughly 1 million rent stabilized apartments.
With six weeks left until the end of the legislative session, Hochul is already looking ahead, insisting that she will work with Senate and Assembly leaders to address New York’s shortage of affordable homes—a conversation that could carry over into next year.
Following the arrival of more than 27,000 asylum seekers, many of whom have struggled to find attorneys in the midst of a historic backlog of cases in New York’s immigration courts, state officials, affected families, and immigrant advocates launched a renovated campaign to guarantee statewide legal representation in deportation proceedings.
In 2021 alone, New Yorkers purchased 7,645 homes with prior flood damages that totaled more than $23.5 million. The state’s current flood disclosure law contains a loophole that “stacks the deck against buyers,” a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found.
“The governor and New York State Legislature should begin a process of discarding all property tax abatements that primarily serve the interests of landlords and developers (not tenants), and end the patchwork of other taxes required to make up the subsequent lost revenue from them.”
When COVID-19 hit, policymakers saw an opportunity: The city had interconnected affordable housing and homelessness crises; the city also had hundreds of empty hotels hemorrhaging cash. But a year after the state passed a law funding the conversion of hotels to affordable housing, not a single one has happened. The experience of the Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street illustrates why.
What exactly did state lawmakers do before starting their nearly seven-month break? Here’s a rundown.
“Beyond the emotional toll, I have learned firsthand what people mean when they say, ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ As time goes on, witnesses move and their memories fade; every day the case is dragged out by motions like qualified immunity, justice becomes more fleeting.”
Preliminary data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that over 2,500 people in New York City died from overdoses in 2021, up from 2,143 overdose deaths in 2020. The uptick comes as advocates push for the state to authorize the use of Overdose Prevention Centers, which the city opened in 2021.
“It’s pretty dreadful,” one housing advocate said. “The governor decided to-go drinks and a stadium in Buffalo were more important than housing the homeless and marginalized New Yorkers.”
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