Hearings on two laws intended to adjust the power balance between village landlords and tenants flowed into one another at the January 12 New Paltz Village Board meeting. One of the proposals would require leases be renewed unless there is good cause not to, and the other would create a court process to object to a rent increase that is believed to be unfairly large. Most of those speaking during the simultaneous hearings did not specify what their views were about one bill or the other. The four trustees present opted not to vote on adopting either measure and agreed to hold both hearings open.
This was the last hearing on these tenant protections before a state-level eviction moratorium is expected to expire on January 15. Housing advocates have clamored for action before that date, but it’s not clear how either Village law would help a tenant who will be facing eviction at that time. Someone who is currently in a rental unit for which the lease will not be renewed, or who is facing a high increase to the rent upon that renewal, may be facing a personal housing crisis, but that’s not the same as eviction. Eviction is a process that involves a judge signing a warrant, which is then executed by the sheriff. Telling a tenant that they must move out when the rent is paid up, or changing the locks, or physically moving a tenant’s property out of an apartment, are all illegal acts. Tenants must be served with legal papers that include information about their rights and the process tends to stretch out over weeks or months. A holdover eviction — which is what is needed if a tenant has paid up, but stays past the end of the rental period — can’t even be started until that rental period ends.
It may be that renters who are ignorant of their rights may choose of their own free will to leave at the end of the term, if the lease is not renewed or the rent hike is too steep. That’s not an eviction, which is why trustees have changed the inaccurate phrase “good-cause eviction” to “good-cause rental renewal” instead.
As has been the case with past sessions on these hearings, those who spoke in support of constraining landlord powers were almost entirely people who do not currently rent apartments in the Village and that fact was pointed out. Landlord Mohammed Serdah expressed the hope that trustees would “listen to the residents and landlords who pay Village taxes,” for example.
One of those out-of-town supporters, former village resident Rachel Labare, had some thoughts on that. Labare declined to participate in these hearings while still renting in the Village, out of concern that it would result in retaliation such as a lease renewal being denied, or the rent increased more than expected. Even with a “nice” landlord, Labare said, “you have to be careful.” Labare, who claimed to have a track record of paying rent early, reported being uncomfortable asking for repairs out of concern that a future lease might not be offered to a tenant known for asserting these rights.
Rosaria Lara, a current Village renter, agreed that fear keeps many from sharing their thoughts. “We have no rights.”
Another former resident, Amanda Sisenstein, pointed out that the emergency housing with which one might be provided could be in a rural area like Kerhonkson, where access to grocery stores and public transportation to jobs is much more limited even than in New Paltz.
Nevertheless, landlord Serdah continues to believe that this isn’t a problem in this village in particular. While there are anecdotes, there are no data supporting the idea that lease renewals are withheld or that increased rents are excessive. Those data have been requested before by Serdah, who frequently speaks on behalf of the local landlord group.
Several landlords have expressed that forcing the renewal of a lease strips them of a non-confrontational way to end a difficult relationship with a tenant who nevertheless follows all the rules and laws. Serdah shared an anecdote about tenants whose noise was disturbing neighbors over the course of months, resulting in neighbors calling police a dozen times at the landlord’s suggestion. However, no tickets were ever written. While it’s been said that breaking the law would be good cause not to renew a lease, the local noise ordinance is difficult to enforce by police. It’s not clear if the language in the current version would give the landlord good cause in that kind of situation. Serdah ended up selling that property because rentals weren’t working on “this quiet residential street.”
Landlord Liz Elkin called the good-cause proposal “divisive and problematic,” protecting one group of residents at the expense of another rather than addressing the core issue: more people want to live in the Village than can easily find housing, resulting in costs going up. Generally preferring that the protections in state law be enforced more consistently, Elkin also had specific concerns about this local ordinance, should it be passed. For one, Elkin doesn’t care for the fact that a tenant can refuse to accept payment in lieu of good cause and the idea that a renewal lease should be “substantially identical” to the current one. “Many times, a follow-up lease requires fine-tuning,” Elkin explained.
Benjamin Miller may well agree with the idea that this is divisive. Miller is now a “former Village landlord,” who feels “forced out by the unbalanced legal environment.” Echoing the call for data to support the need for these changes, Miller also said, “Poverty is not an excuse to legalize theft.”
Rubin Cash looks at poverty differently. “Landlords have enough space to rent,” Cash observed. “They are not impoverished. Tenants can’t move to their second home.”
Landlords can’t always move to a second home, either, according to Adele Ruger. “We have a lot of senior [citizen] landlords who want to move back into their rentals,” but cannot. Presumably, forcing renewals would make that even more difficult to accomplish.
Resident Faith Nichols raised the idea of acknowledging that renters who are college students are qualitatively different, for reasons such as an ability to pay higher rents than their income would suggest. While this may be true, no one has found a way to put such a distinction into a law without running afoul of housing discrimination rules.
Matt Eyler expressed concern about the “makeup and attitude of the local landlord community.”
Roger Spool, a self-described “model landlord,” announced the intention to follow Miller’s example and sell Village rental properties. Spool warned that prices right now are too high for an investor to make money, and that these laws could result in more homes being occupied by their owners instead of being used as income vehicles. That’s because the landlord business is largely riddled with debt, and the rent needs to be high enough to cover those monthly payments over and above taxes and maintenance costs.
Another of the few local tenants who spoke, Jane Schanberg, believes that recent high increases in rent are the direct result of these discussions.
Deputy Mayor Alex Wojcik, who ran the meeting in the absence of the mayor, was eager to vote on these measures, but did not find any allies. The other trustees appeared to agree with the position that these laws will not affect anyone facing an eviction when the moratorium expires, and do not wish to act in haste. What was agreed to was another workshop meeting to look at the language in depth and in dialogue with residents.
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