Melissa Mark-Viverito and Adam Leitman Bailey discuss tenant harassment bill: VIDEO

City Council members will vote today on whom to declare their new Speaker, and Melissa Mark-Viverito, a liberal Council member representing East Harlem, is the front-runner. Daniel Garodnick of Manhattan’s East Side is another contender, but Mark-Viverito has the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio and has said she has the numbers necessary to defeat Garodnick.

In 2008, Mark-Viverito sat down with noted real estate lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey and The Real Deal to discuss a proposed tenant protection bill, which would prevent landlords from unduly harassing tenants in rent-stabilized apartments. We’ve gone into the archives and pulled up the video, in which Mark-Viverito and Bailey go over some of the key challenges that tenants face and what the implications of the bill would be for landlords.

The bill was signed into law by Mayor Bloomberg in March 2008. “While we believe that the vast majority of landlords throughout the city are responsible and do not engage in tenant harassment, we cannot turn our backs on the bad actors who participate in such behavior,” Bloomberg said at the time of the signing. — Hiten Samtani