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NYC rent control bill would devastate Upstate housing market (Guest Opinion by Ellen Peterson)

When New York state lawmakers adopted the Good Cause Eviction Law last year, small Upstate owners like myself were reassured that we would not be subjected to the provisions of the law, which only applied to owners with 10 units or more. The statewide law was largely the work of Downstate New York City Legislators, who tend to measure problems based on what is going on in the five boroughs and don’t always understand what life is like in the rest of the state.

Good Cause includes rent controls that make it difficult to evict disruptive or dangerous tenants and it forces property owners to renew leases. The New York City members of the Assembly and Senate sold this bill to their Upstate colleagues as a measure to protect renters from large, wealthy property owners, with big buildings and huge portfolios of rental apartments. These regulations — which larger property owners are able to absorb more easily — included specific measures meant to exempt smaller property owners and ensure their property investments and small margins didn’t suffer under Good Cause.

While small property owners like me were skeptical of Good Cause and worried its rent control features would limit housing growth, hurt our ability to maintain and care for our properties, and would give us little ability to get rid of problematic tenants. We were relieved that our buildings and units — which for many of us represent a significant personal investment — were excluded from its control. Our slim margins would be maintained; our investments protected.

But now, New York City politicians are again trying to impose rent controls on our Upstate communities. Earlier this year, Lower Manhattan State Sen. Brian Kavanagh introduced a bill known as the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act which would allow localities across the state to enact rent control on all classes of housing — regardless of building or owner portfolio size.

These controls would apply to all owners, even mom-and-pop landlords renting a spare room or ancillary dwelling on their property. For many — especially older owners — their rental units are their only sources of income, and have factored heavily into retirement plans. Many immigrants worked hard and saved, choosing to invest in properties in Upstate towns and cities as a way to secure a future for their families.

New York’s sky-high property taxes mean my margins are already slim on the two units I own. If REST should pass, and my area enacts rent controls, many small owners would quickly move into the red. Some — like myself — are already there. Others will wind up taking their units off the market entirely, making housing shortages worse. This is already happening across New York.

In 2019, New York state passed the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act, which would allow localities to enact rent control — like the REST Act — if vacancy surveys were performed and local vacancy rates were below 5%.

But the REST Act does not require a municipality to undertake a vacancy study and offers only vague suggestions for how a rental emergency declaration could be justified. Nor does it require re-studies in the future.

Worryingly, this comes as Upstate localities have been found by courts to have tampered with their vacancy studies to manipulate the data so their vacancy rates come in below 5%. REST appears to be a way to bypass vacancy rates entirely and enact rent control in Upstate communities permanently, regardless of vacancy rates.

It’s a tired maxim that what applies to New York City does not apply to the rest of the state. Yet many in Albany still fail to grasp this. Worse still, they try to impose their New York City agenda on the rest of us.

Manhattan lawmakers like Kavanagh — with constituents who work on Wall Street — can’t possibly understand the issues facing Upstate New Yorkers who own property on Main Street.