City Council members have several housing-related bills on their desks, including a new version of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, and measures that some groups estimate will drive up the cost of city-funded housing by millions of dollars.
Council members worked to finalize these bills on Wednesday to ensure they could be voted on at their final meeting of the year — and under the Adams administration — next week. Bills must age seven days (not including Sundays) before they can be called to a vote.
Aging doesn’t guarantee a bill will be placed on the next agenda, but several measures closely watched, and in many cases feared, by property owners and developers are eligible.
“If the most recent legislation aged by the City Council is approved next week, the real-world effect is simple: we will build less housing,” Real Estate Board of New York President Jim Whelan said in a statement.
COPA, amended
In preparation for next week, the Council released a new version of COPA that applies to a smaller universe of multifamily buildings and would further reduce the time that nonprofits (and, if applicable, their private partners) are given first dibs to buy these properties. The basic principle, however, is the same: When the owner of certain multifamily buildings decides to sell, they have to first allow nonprofits approved by the city (or private companies, also approved by the city, that partner with nonprofits) the first chance to bid on the buildings.
The latest version of the measure, sponsored by Council member Sandy Nurse, still applies to multifamily buildings with four or more units that have a certain level of unpaid tax liens, unresolved violations or that have affordability requirements expiring within the next two years.
The amended bill tweaked some of these qualifications.
The bill would no longer apply to buildings that had affordability requirements expire in the past two years, nor to those with unpaid municipal charges totaling $1,500 or more per unit, as was the case in the bill introduced last week.
Buildings enrolled in the city’s alternative enforcement program would still be subject to COPA, but this requirement would kick in if the building has been part of the program for at least a year. The new version also no longer includes vacant properties zoned for housing.
The bill still applies to buildings that were denied a certification of no harassment from the city (a process where owners must demonstrate to the city that they haven’t harassed their tenants) within the past year.
The measure further limits the exclusivity window for these deals. After receiving notice of an owner’s intent to sell, nonprofits and qualifying joint ventures (dubbed qualified entities) have 25 days to notify an owner that they are interested in bidding on a property.
Once that time runs out, the qualified entities have 80 days to submit an offer. The previous version of the bill created a 135-day window, while the latest measure calls for 105 days. As was the case previously, qualified entities have 15 days after a competing bid comes in to match it.
These changes are not likely to assuage the bill’s fiercest critics, who objected to the idea of having HPD act as a middleman in these deals. Landlords and brokers argued that the measure will disrupt the residential market and scare away would-be investors, while proponents see COPA as leveling the playing field for nonprofits and community land trusts.
More controversial bills
Pro-housing groups are particularly concerned that the Council will pass a package of bills that would add new restrictions to city-funded housing.
In a letter sent to the Council last week, the New York Housing Conference and other groups urged against the passage of five measures that, together, they estimated would increase the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s budgetary needs by $1.3 billion.
One of the bills requires that, of the housing units built or preserved using city funding, at least 50 percent must be affordable for extremely and very low-income households, and at least 30 percent for very low-income households (both are federally defined terms). The latest iteration limits the universe of buildings that would count toward that overall percentage, excluding buildings with fewer than 75 units.
Another would set minimum percentages for the amount of city-funded units that have two- to three-bedrooms. An amended version of the bill adds a number of carveouts to the pool of projects that would count toward those overall percentages, excluding projects where at least 50 percent of the units are reserved for seniors, that have fewer than 20 units, where more than 30 percent are supportive housing units and projects that have received key approvals by a certain date.
Under the bill, starting July 1, 2027, HPD must ensure that, over a five-year period, at least 25 percent of the dwelling units financed by the city are two-bedroom units and at least 15 percent have three bedrooms or more. The amended bill also specifies that HPD can adjust these percentages if federal housing funding is cut by 50 percent or more, compared to the prior four years, or if the city sees a “complete loss of availability of such resources to fund newly constructed affordable housing.”
Emily Eisner, an economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute who is also on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s housing transition committee, warned in a report released Thursday that applying these rules to city-funded special needs and supportive housing would lead to fewer units being built for these vulnerable populations (larger units are more expensive to build).
In an interview, she said that while the changes to limit the scope of these measures were welcome, the newer versions of the bills still don’t address the time and cost of adding new restrictions.
“Legislating these size requirements puts major new requirements into HPD’s funding pipeline, which will slow the development of affordable housing units,” she said.
Through a spokesperson, Council leadership pushed back on this criticism.
“The city’s public dollars should be used to support the development of affordable housing that best meets New Yorkers’ affordability needs,” a City Council spokesperson said in a statement. “These bills prioritize a use of public dollars for maximum affordability and serving the needs of families and residents with the greatest housing needs, rather than to just build a higher number of less affordable apartments that fail to serve them.”
Another bill would set a minimum percentage of city-funded homeownership units, but a separate measure that would limit the percentage of city-funded studio apartments in senior housing projects did not make the aging list.
The union-backed Construction Justice Act, which would set $40 per hour minimum wages and benefits for construction workers on housing projects that are funded by $1.5 million or more in city financing, also advanced Wednesday. The New York Housing Conference has estimated that the measure would add $750 million to HPD’s production costs, a figure supporters have disputed.
After expressing disappointment about a previous version of the bill that carved out certain affordable housing projects, the Mason Tenders’ District Council said Thursday that it is satisfied with where the measure landed.
“We’ve been proud to champion this effort from the start and believe the CJA will help deliver our city’s construction workforce the standards they deserve,” David Bolger, business manager for the district council, said in a statement. “Passing it would be a monumental achievement for this Council.”
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