Buffalo, NY (WBEN) A bill that could be part of the New York State budget proposal is being met with opposition from landlords and one area state lawmaker.
The Good Cause Eviction bill, they say, will make getting rid of troublesome tenants tougher. The bill would establish automatic lease renewals for renters, unless a landlord had a good reason not to renew, such as failure to pay rent.
The bills would also limit evictions, and that, says Chris Kausner, will force him and other landlords to screen potential clients more closely. "When you look down the road, anybody that potentially isn't going to pay you rent or be a difficult tenant, you really have no recourse once they're in your apartment, to do anything to get them out," says Kausner. He says that also hurts a lot of prospective tenants. "You look at their credit history, you look at their background check if there's anything that looks like maybe something about this doesn't look good, you can't take a risk to rent to them, even if you want to," he explains. Kausner adds it's not landlord vs. tenant, but tenant vs. tenant in many of these matters.
Kausner adds this isn't helping the housing shortage. "if you have tenants that aren't aren't paying, or they're in some other way, bad tenants that you would want to get out. They are consuming, they're using up available units. And that means that there's some other tenant that might be a good tenant that's looking and can't find a place," says Kausner. He adds that shortage is part of what's driving the prices up and causing every good tenant to pay more than they would.
Assemblymember Monica Wallace says she has concerns over the bill as well. "I feel as though it is fundamentally shifting the ownership rights and property from the landlord, more in favor of the tenant, at the end of the day, it's the landlord's property," says Wallace. She says the bill will cause more harm than good for landlords.
Wallace believes the bill restricts the ability of the landlord to raise the rents by a certain amount. "My concern with that is, housing is, in the end of the day, a law of supply and demand. And the best way to bring down rent and make sure that people have more affordable housing is to increase supply, nothing in this bill does this," believes Wallace. She calls this a game of musical chairs. "It says, if you have a place, it's going to be really hard for a landlord to get rid of you. So there will be less places for new people to come and move into. So unless you increase supply, you're really not going to solve the housing problem," notes Wallace.
Wallace says housing markets differ across the state. "The housing market in Buffalo is maybe different than the housing market in Alden, maybe different than the housing market, in the Finger Lakes area, certainly very different than the housing market in Suffolk County, and New York City. So I think that trying to craft a policy that would apply for all these different markets, is not really going to be effective," says Wallace.
Wallace believes she and her colleagues should focus on the housing shortage, and this bill will not resolve that.
