City Council Passes Anti-Harassment Bill

A City Council bill passed yesterday makes permanent a program requiring some distressed building owners to certify that they aren’t harassing tenants before they can go forward with certain renovations or demolition.

The Certification of No Harassment pilot, first put into place in 2018 and extended four years later through Sept. 27 of this year, covered 1,508 properties across the city’s five boroughs. The initiative will continue after receiving 36 yes votes, five no votes and one abstention yesterday.

It now requires the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to put out a new list of properties that fall under the program by April 15, 2027, renewing that tally every three years. As amended, the program can now include multiple buildings owned by the same landlord who has failed to secure a CONH within a five-year period.

The bill, sponsored by Council member and Chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings Pierina Sánchez, will require owners of distressed residential properties to secure the certificate from the city before moving forward with apartment alterations, construction or demolition in a given building. The Real Estate Board of New York took a position supporting the bill, but pushed for provisions aimed at cutting down on maintenance delays that could arise from it; one proposed amendment made its way into the final bill text.

Before the bill resoundingly passed a City Council vote, Sánchez cautioned a committee of lawmakers that landlords would seek to frame CONH as a prohibition on basic repairs.

“Colleagues, this is a thing that will be lodged at you about this legislation, ‘oh, now we can’t do basic repairs because of the CONH program,’” Sánchez said to fellow Council members during a Thursday committee vote on the bill. “That is false. Basic repairs are still allowed.”

Landlords have indeed decried delays related to the CONH initiative, in some cases hindering their ability to quickly fix structural issues without the certificate.

Sánchez also emphasized that the amended bill expands its definition of harassment to include threats of immigration enforcement, citing tenant anecdotes that landlords had wielded the prospect of ICE action to harass them.

One amendment that made the cut allows certain owners to apply for removal from the CONH program after 180 days of being on the list but they will, among many other hurdles, have to wait for a city inspection in order to get removed. It was among the provisions REBNY had angled to include in the bill text to mitigate wait times for renovations. A REBNY spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the same meeting yesterday, Sánchez introduced a bill to reauthorize and broaden the J-51 tax abatement, which she framed as a way to “fix up properties,” calling upon fellow lawmakers to support maintenance of the city’s multifamily, co-op and condo buildings by offsetting the cost of upgrades to boilers and facades, among other climate-related revamps mandated under Local Law 97.