L.L. 2015/083

Enactment date: 9/3/2015

Int. No. 757-A

By the Speaker (Council Member Mark-Viverito) and Council Members Arroyo, Chin, Dromm, Gentile, Johnson, Lander, Levine, Richards, Rose, Rodriguez, Rosenthal, Menchaca, Williams, Barron, Kallos and Wills

A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to amending the definition of harassment to include certain buyout offers

Be it enacted by the Council as follows:

Section 1. Declaration of legislative intent and findings.

   a.   The council finds and declares that:

      1.   Although there are legitimate reasons for building owners to make buyout offers to tenants by offering money or other valuable consideration to vacate their apartments, in recent years, and due in part to rapidly increasing rents, the use of repeated buyout offers, particularly where a tenant has rejected such an offer and expressed a desire to receive no further offers, has become a form of harassment; and

      2.   The city has a substantial interest in balancing the rights of building owners to make these buyout offers with the rights of tenants to negotiate or reject such offers and to be free from harassment in the form of repeated, unwanted buyout offers.

   b.   The council finds that it is necessary and appropriate to place limited, short-term restrictions on the making of these buyout offers in order to protect tenants from harassment while still allowing owners and tenants to engage in negotiations over such offers.

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[Consolidated provisions are not included in this Appendix A]

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§ 4. This local law takes effect 90 days after it becomes law.