The Remarks Of Speaker Sheldon Silver

Press Conference: Unveiling the Assembly Majority's Tenant Protection Legislative Agenda

State Capitol, Speaker's Conference Room, Albany, NY
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How do we keep working families from losing their homes? That is the challenge facing government at every level.

To address the affordable housing crisis, the Assembly Majority has set in motion a three step plan.

Step one, we secured an additional $200 million in this year's state budget, thereby increasing the state's investment in affordable housing to an unprecedented $303 million. Included within these funds are:

• $54 million for Mitchell Lama Rehabilitation and Preservation;
• $31 million for the Low Income Housing Trust Fund;
• $20 million for the Affordable Housing Corporation;

And millions of dollars for affordable housing programs across this state.

Step two, we passed our comprehensive sub-prime mortgage plan to help homeowners who are in default or facing foreclosure, and backed it up with an investment in the state budget of $25 million.

Step three, today we are taking aggressive steps to protect tenants.

Tenants are no different than those who own a home. They need an affordable, safe place to live, and they need to be protected from abuses and from a market that drives them out.

To that end, the Assembly Majority will shortly take up - and we intend to pass - our "Tenant Protection Legislative Agenda:"

• To protect and strengthen the rent regulation system in the City of New York and its surrounding suburbs;

• To ensure that tenants can remain in their homes and communities, and not be subjected to landlord harassment;

• And to prevent working families - the firefighters, the teachers, the law enforcement officers, the civil servants - from being priced out of the City that relies so heavily upon their work each and every day.

Joining me to discuss our "Tenant Protection Agenda" are:

• The Chair of the Assembly's Committee on Housing and a long-recognized leader in the fight for tenant protections, Assembly Member Vito Lopez;

• The Chair of our Sub-Committee on Mitchell Lama Housing, Assembly Member Jonathan Bing;

• And a great number of the Assembly Majority sponsors and/or co-sponsors of the bills that comprise our agenda.

We are gratified that a number of housing advocates and tenants have come to Albany to stand with us in support of our legislation.

Joining us are:

• Ramona Santana, a tenant leader with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition;

• Maria Davilla, a leader of Housing Here and Now;

• Angela Battaglia and Carmen Bonilla, representing the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizen Council;

• Maritza Davila and Sonya Rivera, representing the North Bushwick Residents Association;

• Maria Viera and Elizabeth Torres, representing Brooklyn Unidos;

• And, of course, no rally for tenants would be complete without my good friend, Bertha Lewis, Executive Director of New York ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The shortage of affordable housing in the Metropolitan New York area is well-known and longstanding.

Rent regulation, which is a response to that shortage, has been debated, criticized, attacked and reformed since its advent following the Second World War.

Certainly, throughout my tenure as Speaker, the Assembly Majority has had to fight hard to preserve the rent regulation system and to protect the tenants that serves.

Governor Pataki and the Senate Majority attempted to use the sunset provisions of our rent laws to wipe out the system and in the process, injected fear into the lives of the hundreds of thousands of working families protected by those very laws.

Together, we stood our ground.

We prevented the Governor and the Senate Majority from gutting tenant protections.

We protected more than a million rent-regulated apartments, and we ensured the security of more than two-and-a-half million tenants living in New York City and its surrounding suburbs.

The fact is that years of Republican leadership have done nothing to ease the affordable housing crisis and now, that crisis is being exacerbated by our declining economy.

While household incomes have been falling, median rents, food and fuel costs have been rising, and tenants in rent-stabilized apartments are being hit particularly hard.

The proportion of "non-payment-of-rent cases" resulting in tenant eviction is at its highest level in a decade.

We cannot sit idly by and allow this to happen in our great city.

Over the years, there have been compelling debates about rent regulation and the free market economy, but behind the "buzzwords" are real people - some of whom you see here today - who are facing the loss of cherished homes and communities where they have lived all of their lives.

And frankly, it is shameful when public servants, such as firefighters and law enforcement officers, cannot afford to live in the communities that they risk their lives to protect.

So, it is our intention to end the practice of "high rent" vacancy decontrol and to reform luxury decontrol.

We intend to significantly increase the penalties for tenant harassment and to restrict an owner's ability to recover multiple rent-regulated apartments for personal use.

We intend to repeal the Urstadt Law and to disallow the practice of increasing a previously set preferential rent upon leasing renewal.

We are extending the length of time over which major capital improvements may be recovered and we are requiring that rent surcharges authorized for these capital improvements come to an end when the cost of the improvement is recovered by the landlord.

This will both save tenants money and encourage improvements in the buildings in which they live.

Let me add that we have already passed legislation this year to protect tenants in our Mitchell Lama developments and to ensure tenant representation on rent guideline boards.

As I stated earlier, protecting our tenants is a fight that this Assembly Majority has been waging for a long time.

With the crisis growing more severe every day, we need to set the politics aside and take action before economic conditions worsen.

We have a strong partner in Governor David Paterson.

Now, we need to build a coalition that is committed to ensuring that our tenants do not lose their homes and to ensure that working men and women are not priced out of Metropolitan New York.

We need the Mayor and we need the Senate Majority to recognize the simple truth that our working families are as critical to the economy of the City - and to its future - as any project or program.

So, I urge them to join us in passing and supporting this legislative agenda.

The security of our communities and our tenants - that which makes the City of New York so great - depends upon our cooperation and more important, our action.

Good, decent, affordable homes are the foundation of strong communities. Strong communities are the building blocks of great cities.

It is time for this state to do the necessary work to keep our foundation strong.