The City Council:
What Will 1999 Bring?
By Jenny Laurie

What will the City Council bring tenants in 1999? Most members of the Council are lame ducks, due to leave office in the year 2001, and are now positioning themselves for their next jobs. While some are planning to leave the Council for retirement, many are collecting money and favors to run for other offices or to hunt for jobs in the private sector. The scrambling caused by term limits will have a number of consequences for tenants.

Coming up very soon in the Council are several bills having to do with the condition of housing. On December 17, tenants and health advocates lobbied the Council for a hearing on Intro 205. This bill would change the way the city protects tenants (as well as kids in schools and daycare) from lead-paint poisoning. The real-estate lobby strongly opposes this bill, but even more strongly opposes the current law, know as Local Law 1. Observers of the Council believe that this issue will come up either before the end of 1998 or in early 1999. Expect the Council leadership to do something sneaky on this issue.

On December 11, the Council held a hearing on Intro 108, which advocates hope will prevent landlords from harassing SRO tenants. Under the bill’s provisions, the city would have to stop landlords from renovation and conversion work if proper permits are not in place, or if tenants are being harassed. Owners of SRO units are now converting and renovating the units to make them attractive to tourists on short visits to New York. Owners make a lot more money from those guests than from the rent-regulated SRO tenants. The issue of dangerous SROs has had high profile discussion recently in the New York Times, Village Voice and City Limits.

Tenants forced out of legal, traditional SROs are often forced into illegally converted one-family homes in Queens. Tenant advocates want to preserve this vital housing resource by making it harder for owners to force out rent-regulated tenants through dangerous construction work. Politicians and advocates in the outer boroughs are concerned about the wide range of problems caused by illegally constructed rooming houses. Many of these houses are fire traps; tenants are living in unhealthy basement units, and the character of neighborhoods is being changed by the pressures of these conversions. While we hope that the Council will act to protect the legal hotels and rooming houses, which are mainly in Manhattan, the real-estate industry recognizes the great profits to be made by converting these units for rich tourists and students. Watch the Council for action on this issue.

Will self-certification rear its ugly head again just before Christmas, or in the next two years? If the real-estate industry gets its way, the City Council will make it easier for landlords to lie and say that they have corrected violations which in fact have not been corrected. Last year at this time, Brooklyn Councilmember Anthony Weiner, soon to be US Representative Weiner, sponsored such a bill and held a hearing on it. It was defeated, but Council watchers think we may see it again.

Farther off, but great importance, is the renewal of the rent laws in the City Council in the year 2000. In 1999, the Housing and Vacancy Survey will be conducted to produce the vacancy rate. Experts believe that the rate will be well below the 5% needed for the continuation of the rent laws. However, the Council must vote in 2000 to extend the rent-stabilization law. While the state Urstadt Law prohibits New York City from strengthening its rent laws, the Council can weaken them. It did just this in 1994, when it took advantage of the renewal vote to weaken the rent laws by extending high-rent decontrol provisions passed by the state legislature the year before. Tenants will need to be working on the City Council throughout 1999 to ensure that we lose no more to the real-estate industry when the vote comes up in the spring of 2000.

What’s the lesson in all this? Those Councilmembers who are leaving office will not have to face the voters’ wrath if they are doing something to offend tenants. Those seeking other office, or private jobs, are looking for campaign contributions or to powerful businesses which owe them favors. The real-estate industry has been a heavy contributor to the Council leadership over the years, and it has been a great source of jobs for people leaving city government (The classic example is Joe Strasburg, who for many years ran the Council as Speaker Peter Vallone’s chief of staff and now runs the Rent Stabilization Association, the lobbying group for the city’s largest landlords.)

Tenants who want to get should involved contact Met Council. There will be special elections in Brooklyn and Manhattan to replace departing Councilmembers Tom Duane (elected to the State Senate) and Anthony Weiner. There are tenant advocates running for both seats, and tenants can make a difference in these elections.