After a months-long campaign of pressure from housing advocates to pass “Good Cause Eviction” tenant protections, Syracuse’s Common Council publicly dove into the bill’s nuances for the first time Thursday. The council brought in two experts from CNY Fair Housing for a public hearing on the legislation to speak about the bill’s effectiveness in curbing evictions. After Thursday’s meeting, councilors said questions still remain about its implementation and effects on landlords who own fewer units of housing.The bill was included in the state budget in April after first being proposed five years ago. The state law gives local municipalities the chance to opt in. Under the bill, tenants:Would be provided a reason for their eviction Could contest at eviction hearings rent increases above 10% of the yearly rent or the inflation index, whichever is lowerCouncilors introduced the “good cause” legislation in the last month but have tabled the item, saying they’d like to plan a public information campaign across the city. As of last week, councilors say there are no set plans to hold information meetings. Before bringing the legislation, councilors in interviews with Central Current repeatedly said they did not know enough about the bill. Thursday’s meeting saw a chamber packed with landlords and advocates from the Syracuse Tenants Union. CNY Fair Housing’s Sally Santangelo and Alex Lawson fielded questions from councilors who sought clarification on how the bill would work and how it fits in the city’s vision to alleviate housing issues. Common Council president pro tempore Pat Hogan has been the law’s most vocal detractor on the council. Hogan believes “good cause” could complicate the eviction process for landlords and deter potential developers from investing in housing in the city. Hogan added he’d like to wait a year to see how “good cause” affects the housing market in cities like Albany and Ithaca, where they’ve already adopted “good cause.”“I mean, why rush into this thing?” Hogan said in an interview after the meeting.Santangelo, the executive director of CNY Fair Housing, said the city doesn’t have time to wait a year.“We have a homelessness crisis right now,” Santangelo said.The meeting was full of questions from councilors that ranged from earnest attempts at understanding the bill, to unrelated items about how evictions work in New York state, and questions about who a good tenant is and who isn’t. It was also a forum for landlords to air out their grievances through Hogan, who continuously said landlords in his district often charge “good tenants” below market-rate rent. He argued that New York state’s eviction moratorium, instituted during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, to landlords because tenants were unable to pay rent. The moratorium was a pause on evictions at courts throughout the state. For some landlords in attendance, the policy is mostly seen as a measure that would prevent them from raising rent if they felt it was necessary.Santangelo, CNY Fair Housing’s executive director, and Lawson, CNY Fair Housing’s policy manager, said “good cause” could help tenants remain in their homes and stave off displacement at a time when the region’s social safety net programs are mostly at capacity. The bill, Santangelo said, could help streamline eviction proceedings in court, as it outlines the reasons why tenants can be evicted. It also can help reduce the number of evictions through a non-renewal of a lease.Santangelo said her organization fields hundreds of calls a year from tenants whose lease is not renewed because they have sought remedies to poor housing conditions like calling the city’s code enforcement.“Or they are afraid to call codes because they know they will be ‘non-renewed,’” Santangelo said. “Landlords often keep tenants on month to month leases just so they can end a tenancy at any time and remove them without the hassle of following the regular eviction procedures.”Hogan pressed Santangelo and CNY Fair Housing’s housing policy manager Alex Lawson for data on the number of eviction cases where landlords don’t renew a tenants’ lease for calling code enforcement. He suggested a lack of data showed councilors were expected to vote on “good cause” based on speculation.Jocelyn Richards, a member of the Syracuse Tenants Union, said that informal evictions also contribute to a lack of data. Some tenants also “self-evict” in these circumstances, Richards said. “These are real cases,” Lawson said. “The problem is that there is not enough evidence and there is no evidence because non-renewal cases don’t require landlords to provide a reason for a non-renewal.”Hogan and landlords say they are also concerned the bill would regulate landlords’ ability to raise the rent. He argued that landlords put their “blood, sweat and tears” into the properties. “They’re the ones that pay our taxes, right?” Hogan said. “It’s their property.”David Lochow, of the village of Phoenix in Oswego County, owns 12 housing units in the city. He said the bill could protect tenants against “bad landlords,” but that he opposes it because he feels “good cause” infringes on his ability to set rent for his properties.“It ruins my rights to be able to raise the rent if I want to,” Lochow added. “Let’s say the taxes went up, the water went up, and a tenant’s kids are racking up garbage disposal tickets … now it costs me an extra couple of dollars a month. Well, I’d like to just pass that onto the tenant.”Karin Thomas, the treasurer of the CNY Landlords Association, said she has raised rents at her properties because of the potential that ‘good cause’ could pass in Syracuse.Thomas believes she needed to raise rent before the law is enacted because she is concerned that its passage would limit her ability to do so. “Good cause” would not prevent landlords from raising rent. It does allow tenants to challenge increases above 10% of the yearly rent or the inflation index, whichever is lower. Ultimately, under ‘good cause,’ significant rent increases challenged by tenants would be decided on by a judge, who has the discretion to allow the increase. In Syracuse, about two-thirds of eviction filings end with an eviction warrant being issued, according to data published by New York State. “‘Good cause’ allows landlords to increase the rent as much as they need to to account for added costs like taxes,” Richards said. “It will just be up to the judge to determine that.”Ultimately, Hogan said he sees the bill as detrimental to the city’s goals of increasing its housing inventory. He noted that the city has a long-term housing strategy that will require private investment to be fulfilled. “If we pass this, this is going to disturb the idea of investing in Syracuse quite a bit,” he said. Buildings built after 2009 have been exempted from the law, said Lawson. “Even in a case of non-new construction, there’s an avenue for landlords to say ‘I put a lot of money into this, I need to raise the rent to recoup my costs,’” Lawson said. “You can still do that, you just have to make the argument.”The post Syracuse lawmakers take first public step toward learning about ‘good cause’ eviction protections appeared first on Central Current.First published by Central Current.