L.L. 2018/001

Enactment date: 12/31/2017  

Int. No. 152-C

By Council Members Lander, Chin, Johnson, Reynoso, Rosenthal, Mendez, Menchaca, Rose, Williams, King, Levin, Rodriguez, Cornegy, Levine, Torres, Van Bramer, Gibson, Richards and Kallos (by request of the Manhattan Borough President)

A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring a certification of no harassment prior to approval of construction documents or issuance of permits for demolition or renovation of certain buildings

Be it enacted by the Council as follows:

Section 1. Legislative findings. The Council has found and is concerned with the association between various characteristics of building distress, and the likelihood of suspected or reported harassment against tenants, and has an interest in finding ways to protect tenants at risk of displacement due to landlord harassment. Current Certification of No Harassment ("CONH") requirements apply only to single room occupancy buildings and to all buildings in select special purpose zoning districts under the Zoning Resolution. In general, the program requires an investigation into whether harassment has occurred during a prescribed time period, and is triggered when an owner makes a permit application to the Department of Buildings for a material alteration of a building.

The Council finds that outside of these single room occupancy buildings and the buildings in special zoning districts, buildings with high rates of physical distress or ownership changes are typically associated with suspected or known harassment patterns. Areas targeted for rezoning see an increased rate of change in ownership. The effects of such rezonings stretch beyond the rezoned blocks into surrounding neighborhoods. Because community districts are drawn specifically to capture communities of shared interest, they provide readily administrable boundaries for delineating where a rezoning in one part of a neighborhood is most likely to have effects outside the rezoning area. A limited pilot expansion of the CONH program to include buildings potentially at risk of harassment in particular neighborhoods where buildings with the highest rates of physical distress or ownership changes are located, or in city-sponsored neighborhood wide rezoned areas where heightened protection against harassment is essential to equitable development, would enable the Council to determine if expanding the CONH program could reduce the risk of harassment for tenants in such buildings and provide valuable feedback on its effect on tenant protection and housing conditions. The purpose of this local law is to provide for the implementation of such a program as a geographically targeted and time-limited pilot program to allow an evaluation of the program's accuracy and efficacy in targeting and addressing harassment in particular buildings.

The current Administrative Code provisions that apply to single room occupancy multiple dwellings consider incidents of harassment that occurred within three years of an application for development as indicative that such harassment was motivated by the redevelopment. The Council is concerned that redevelopment-motivated harassment may occur even earlier than three years before a redevelopment occurs. Thus, the pilot program proposes to lengthen this period to five years The current Administrative Code provisions also require that once a CONH has been denied, no development is allowed at the site for a specified period of time. The pilot seeks to determine the impact on a legislative CONH program of allowing owners of buildings where a CONH is denied to proceed with development if they agree to construct floor area of low income housing within the building or within any new building within the same community district, similar to what is allowed under zoning resolution CONH requirements. In accordance with the Council's goal of equitable development, priority in allocating such units would be given to qualified tenants who resided in the building during the time the acts of harassment occurred.

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[Consolidated provisions are not included in this Appendix A]

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§ 4. The department, with the advice and assistance that may be provided by any community group described in paragraph (4) of subdivision d of section 27-2093.1 of the administrative code of the city of New York, as added by section two of this local law, shall conduct a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in reducing harassment of tenants in the areas described in paragraph (1) of subdivision b of section 27-2093.1 of the administrative code of the city of New York, as added by section two of this local law. Such study shall be completed and a report shall be submitted to the Speaker no later than 6 months prior to the expiration of this local law. Such report shall contain the following information:

   1.   the number of covered buildings where the owner applied for a certificate of no harassment disaggregated by whether the department issued a certificate of no harassment, a cure agreement was reached, or a waiver of a certificate of no harassment;

   2.   the location of buildings where the department determined that harassment had occurred, disaggregated by community board and council district disaggregated by whether such building was subject to a cure agreement;

   3.   metrics which the department determines appropriate to determine the preventive impacts of such program;

   4.   a determination, using such metrics, as to whether such program resulted in preventive impacts;

   5.   estimated costs of the program to the city; and

   6.   recommendations for improving the efficacy of such program if the pilot program continues.

§ 5. This local law takes effect 270 days after it becomes a law except that the departments of housing preservation and development and the department of buildings may promulgate rules or take other administrative action for the implementation of this local law prior to such date. This local law shall remain in effect for 36 months, after which it is deemed repealed. Notwithstanding the repeal of this local law, the provisions of this local law shall remain in effect for any pilot program building which submits an application for construction document approval pursuant to section 28-505.4 of the administrative code of the city of New York, as added by section three of this local law, prior to the repeal of such section. This local law shall not apply to work relating to applications for construction document approval filed with the department of buildings prior to the inclusion of a building on the pilot program list pursuant to subdivision b of section 27-2093.1 of the administrative code of the city of New York, as added by section two of this local law.