In New York State, the newly Democratic-controlled City Council just announced that it will implement evictions for cause.
“It’s clear this is something the voters wanted,” said Council President Sue Steele Times Union. “They made it very clear in the results of the last election.”
One thing I’ve learned from my years of covering politics is that no one knows exactly why people vote the way they do. The reasons vary greatly from voter to voter. Rarely do they boil down to one issue – or even issues in general.
The idea that Troy Democrats won the November election because they favored eviction for cause is nonsense. Democrats last year (en last week in Texas) won races across the country in places where expulsion for cause has never been heard of.
The tailwind that Democratic candidates now enjoy — especially a base energized by Trump’s presidency — certainly played a role in those results.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Troy voters elected Democrats for the express purpose of approving good causes for deportation. Should they implement the policy automatically? This is a democracy after all.
The United States is actually a republic. It is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. The leaders we elect are supposed to make decisions based on what is best for society. “This is what voters want” is not a reason to do anything.
Expulsion for good reasons must be assessed on its merits. Like any policy, it has pros and cons, as I detailed in a 2022 column. Two years later, NYU’s Furman Center outlined the unintended consequences that would likely result from a drastic version of the charity proposed for New York.
That bill, after furious lobbying by the real estate industry and a two-year statewide campaign implemented on behalf of landlords by George Springswas watered down by Governor Kathy Hochul and passed in April 2024. It benefited most multifamily buildings in New York City and gave places outside the city the opportunity to implement it. That’s what Troy is thinking about now.
Albany was the first city to support the cause and was followed by Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Ithaca, Beacon, Hudson, Rochester, Newburgh and Binghamton, the town of Fishkill and the villages of Nyack, Catskill, Croton-on-Hudson and New Paltz. If the Troy bill passes, the Republican mayor will likely veto it, but she may be overridden.
If a tenant is not in rent arrears, the landlord must, on good grounds, offer a lease extension – and if the rent is increased by more than 5 percent plus inflation (or more than 10 percent), he may be forced to justify the increase in court. The current threshold is 8.79 percent. Luxury rental properties are exempt.
Hochul pushed the percentages up enough to avoid throttling rents, as her predecessor Andrew Cuomo did by signing the 2019 rent stabilization overhaul.
But landlords still hate the idea that they could be forced to renew a tenant’s lease. This means that eviction – a long, expensive and uncertain process – is the only way to get rid of a disruptive tenant. This can also be bad news for the good tenants of a building. And it makes it difficult to gut a building and then completely renovate it.
Regulations such as the charity also prevent developers from renting out buildings, resulting in scarcity of housing and higher rents.
The debate in Troy appears to center on whether tenants need the protection of cause to report potential housing violations to law enforcement without fear of retaliation. But as noted, this is just one of many factors to consider.
One factor we should not take into account is the November election results, in which much larger forces were at play. Donald Trump has been busy on many fronts, but deportations for good causes are not one of them.
Read more
How Hochul played the ‘deportation for a good cause’ game and won
‘Good Cause’ Crowd Attacks Homeownership Plan
The benefits and costs of deportation for a ‘good cause’
#Trumps #backlash #leads #expulsion