Housing advocates and local elected officials are making a last-ditch campaign to strengthen the state’s rent laws, which expired on Wednesday. Governor Andrew Cuomo has vowed to keep legislators in Albany until an agreement is reached.

On Monday, dozens of protesters—among them Bronx Assemblyman Jose Rivera and Harlem State Sen. Bill Perkins—were arrested for blocking the entrance to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office during a rowdy rally to draw attention to the law’s approaching expiration date.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos extended the deadline slightly to this Friday, June 17. The Emergency Tenant Protection Act guarantees rent-stabilized status for over a million apartments across the city, and hundred of thousands in the Bronx.

For months, pro-tenant groups and local politicians have been rallying to see that the law is not only renewed, which is likely to happen, but also strengthened—including the repeal of vacancy decontrol, the provision which deregulates apartments once they are vacated if the rent exceeds $2,000 a month.

“I would consider a straight renewal a defeat,” said Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, in a phone interview from Albany. At stake, says Dinowitz and others, is the future of affordable housing in a city where it’s become increasingly rare, and where living costs are becoming largely unsustainable for the working class.

“When everyone else fled our borough, these residents stayed, and they deserve to stay,” said Bronx Assemblywoman Vanessa Gibson at a rally last Thursday. “Do not price us out of our communities.”

Since vacancy decontrol was established in 1993, housing groups say that some 300,000 affordable apartments have been deregulated in the city and its neighboring counties, a loss that’s been coupled in recent years with the expiration of Mitchell-Lama housing and a freeze on section 8 subsidies.

“All we have left are rent stabilized apartments,” Gibson said.

Gibson and a group of other local elected officials held a vigil last Thursday on the steps of the Bronx County Courthouse, holding signs and speaking passionately before a group of reporters, as dark clouds of an afternoon thunderstorm approached and strong winds whipped up clouds of dust.

“We stand here tonight, in the heat, because we know this is a matter of life and death,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., told the crowd, calling the rent debate in Albany “political ping-pong.”

This week, as the state legislature enters its final session of the year before adjourning until January, the Senate and Assembly have several other high-profile issues to tackle, including same-sex marriage legislation and a property tax cap.
Housing advocates had previously hoped Cuomo would include some rent provisions in his budget deal back in April, their best hope in passing pro-tenant legislation this year, as Republicans control the Senate. Cuomo did not, despite stating that he supports stronger rent laws.

A housing bill that’s favored by advocacy groups—which repeals vacancy decontrol, brings former Mitchell Lama and Section 8 apartments under regulation and raises the rent threshold for destabilization, among other provisions—has already been passed by the Assembly. But Skelos has indicated he’d prefer just extending existing laws.

“The Senate Republicans are hoping we get so desperate, we’ll say yes to anything,” Bronx Assemblyman Nelson Castro said last week.

Ed. note: This story has been updated from the original version published in the Norwood News print edition.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.