Happy holidays, here are half a dozen new versions of City Council bills you hate.
“You” refers to landlords, brokers, developers and others who have been closely tracking and dreading bills like the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act.
Next week is the City Council’s final meeting, and COPA, along with a package of controversial housing regulation bills, managed to squeak through to the aging list. That means they could be called for a vote on Thursday. Bill aging could also refer to the years shaved off my life today as I tried to figure out when the latest versions of these bills would be made public and what they included.
Here’s a cheat sheet of the bills that aged and some of the most notable changes included in the latest versions:
COPA
— No longer applies to vacant properties zoned for residential.
— No longer applies 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.
— New version specifies that properties enrolled in the alternative enforcement program qualify if they have been part of the program for at least a year.
— Shortens the exclusivity timeframe to 105 days (25 plus 80), down from 135 and 180 before that.
Construction Justice Act
— Applies to housing projects receiving $1.5 million or more in city financing, up from previously proposed $1 million.
— Excludes supportive housing.
— Applies to projects that create or preserve 150 units or more, instead of 100 units.
Air conditioning law
— Requires landlords to provide cooling systems (between June 15 and Sept. 12) that keep “covered rooms” at a maximum air temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit. “Covered rooms” apply to a tenant’s primary sleeping space, rather than the whole unit.
— Rent-regulated tenants elect to have their apartment covered by the law. The new version specifies that rent-regulated tenants must consent to improvements to comply with the law and the charges associated with it (as permitted by state law, which only allows the landlord to recoup a portion of the cost of individual apartment improvements through rent increases). This is a win for rent-stabilized owners.
HPD termsheet bills:
Minimum percentage of two- and three-unit apartments funded by city
— Carves out projects where 50 percent of the units are reserved for seniors, those that have fewer than 20 units, projects where more than 30 percent are supportive housing units and projects that have received key approvals by a certain date.
— 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.”
Minimum affordability for city-funded housing units
— Limits the universe of buildings that would count toward that overall percentage, excluding buildings with fewer than 75 units and those that have secured key approvals by certain dates.
Minimum homeownership units in city-funded projects: No amended version posted yet.
What we’re thinking about: If you read the above and thought, “Hey, she forgot about this change!” or “Actually, I have no fear of that passing because I think this bill won’t pass or even come to a vote because I know something,” please send details to kathryn@therealdeal.com. This was my first crack at these bills, some of which weren’t posted until late Thursday.
A thing we’ve learned: Newark International Airport was built in 1928 on 68 acres of marshland, which was filled in with things you would expect, like mud dredged from Newark Bay and dry dirt, as well as some more surprising items, like 7,000 discarded Christmas trees and 200 bank safes donated by a junk dealer, according to the 2009 book “Newark Airport,” by Henry Holden. (H/T to my husband, who passed along this tidbit.)
Elsewhere in New York…
— Gov. Kathy Hochul has more than 150 bills waiting on her desk, Gothamist reports. One of those bills would increase cameras and oversight at the state’s prisons, and another would add safety requirements to artificial intelligence models. President Donald Trump has pledged to preempt states from passing such measures.
— Soon after his win in November, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tried to pump the brakes on the race for the next City Council speaker by asking unions, party leaders and individual Council members to hold off on endorsing a candidate, Politico New York reports. He and his team then tried to figure out how to influence the competition, but Politico reports that these efforts came too late. Council member Julie Menin declared victory in late November.
Closing Time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Thursday was $12.5 million for a 3,541-square-foot condominium at 11 North Moore Street in Tribeca.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $7 million for a
6,750-square-foot multi-family townhouse at 198 Sixth Avenue in Soho. Paul Murphy and Edward Svec with Compass had the listing.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $16 million for a 4,400-square-foot condominium at 92 Laight Street in Tribeca. The Leonard Steinberg Team at Compass has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new project filing for 6 individual new building permits for a total of 360 affordable units in East New York. Permits were filed by Michael Gelfand, AIA, on behalf of Rona Reodica, Assistant Commissioner for the Division of Building and Land Development Services.
— Matthew Elo
