Testimony: Beacon Tenants Deserve Stability
Samuel Stein
Before the Beacon City Council
On February 22, 2022
Thank you to the bill sponsors for introducing this important legislation on Good Cause eviction protections, and thank you to the Beacon City Council for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Samuel Stein. I am a senior policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit organization that seeks to address the most pressing problems facing low-income New Yorkers, including the combined and continuing crises of housing unaffordability and racial discrimination.
While we are located in New York City, the Community Service Society has a long record of researching and advocating for expanded tenant protections and affordable housing throughout the state. For example, we have testified to the state legislature in favor of Good Cause and written about the need for Good Cause in our 2019 report Rental Housing Affordability in Urban New York: A Statewide Crisis, and in our 2021 county-by-county data analysis, Why New York Needs Good Cause Eviction. In the latter publication, we found that of Dutchess County’s 33,873 renter households, approximately 68 percent – or over 23,000 households – would be covered by the version of Good Cause introduced in Albany as a statewide bill.
We at the Community Service Society believe that Good Cause eviction protections strengthen not only individual tenants, but entire communities. They provide tenants with a baseline ability to plan their lives, have some housing stability, and live secure in the knowledge that they will not be arbitrarily driven from their homes. These basic assurances should be universally enjoyed, and the legislation before the City Council helps make them a reality. It does not impair responsible landlords, and in fact prevents bad landlords from undercutting more reasonable actors.
Good Cause is ultimately a simple proposal: when a lease expires, a tenant in good standing should not have to wonder whether their landlord will force them out. Such tenants should not be evicted or displaced without cause and they should not have to worry that their rent will jump tremendously without any change to the property or its underlying finances.
The benefits to renters are clear: they have stability, security, and a legal protection against arbitrary rent hikes and displacement. But there are also many benefits to passing Good Cause that are felt by the community as a whole.
First, Good Cause will help tenants assert their legal rights to safe housing conditions and fair treatment from their landlord. If they are experiencing housing hazards – chipping lead paint, leaks, mold, or vermin, for example – they can discuss the problem with their landlord or report the problem to the authorities without fear of retaliation in the form of a no-cause eviction. This will result in better health and safety for individual tenants and stability for the community as a whole. Similarly, tenants experiencing sexual harassment, racial discrimination or any other forms of abuse from their landlord can safely report this illegal behavior without having to worry that their landlord will respond by forcing them out.
Second, establishing Good Cause eviction protections can also help stimulate civic activity among renters. Without meaningful eviction protections, a tenant who might otherwise be interested in joining with others to engage in the political system on behalf of renters – in their building, in their neighborhood, in their city, and in their state – might feel vulnerable to landlord retaliation. More broadly, by offering tenants greater stability, Good Cause lets tenants establish deeper roots in their community, allowing them to get more involved in local civic discussions without worry that, come their next lease renewal, they will have to move to another jurisdiction. Good Cause therefore serves to increase renters’ capacity to fully participate in activism and local democracy.
Third, establishing Good Cause eviction protections will reward Beacon’s responsible property owners, while disincentivizing real estate companies with ill intent from buying properties in this area. As we all know, there are real estate firms that buy properties under the assumption they can evict the current tenants, raise the rent substantially, then either sell to a new owner or pull equity out of the building through mortgage refinancing. This kind of hyper-speculative behavior is far harder to pull off in areas with Good Cause eviction protections, thus taking the market advantage away from predatory actors and placing it with more responsible landlords.
Finally, preventing evictions can have tremendous impacts on the life chances of renter households, which scale up as we think about establishing citywide protection. An eviction can throw a family’s life into chaos. It can cause ill health; it can distract from school and work, leading to further disruptions like suspensions and firings; most perniciously, it can prevent a household from finding other housing, and can therefore lead to homelessness. The costs of eviction – personal and collective, societal and governmental, emotional and financial – are tremendous. Actions like Good Cause eviction protection can create stability and upward trajectories for both the families affected and for Beacon as a whole.
Once again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The Community Service Society strongly supports the proposed Good Cause legislation and encourages the City Council to approve it.