With evictions of business tenants on the rise across the city, particularly in the Bronx, City Council members looked toward solutions during a meeting of the Committee on Small Business on March 18.

And the benefits could be felt in Kingsbridge Heights’ financially squeezed business corridor.

In a preliminary budget hearing, the committee discussed some bills aiming to protect commercial tenants by passing laws similar to those protecting residential tenants. Other proposals focused on information-gathering, such as a proposal for a database tracking empty storefronts.

“These businesses are key to the ability to start a new life and eventually enter the middle class. But this is under threat,” Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, one of the authors of a package of bills aimed at strengthening the small business sector, said in a statement ahead of the hearing.

In a city that’s gotten even more expensive, City Council members have sought to add greater protections to the small business sector. One law on the books currently protects business tenants: a 2016 law that defines and prohibits commercial tenant harassment. But adding to that law is urgent, according to Christian Ramos, president of the Kingsbridge Road Merchants Association.

“Thank God we have one law, but that’s a little baby thing,” Ramos told the Norwood News in a previous interview. “It’s baby steps. We need a lot more.”

Several Kingsbridge Heights merchants currently have no leases from their building owner.

The bills come as the number of commercial evictions since January 2017 inches toward 4,000, even as residential evictions are down overall, according to city data. The Bronx averaged four evictions per 100 businesses–a rate twice as high as Brooklyn and Queens, which were the next most-affected boroughs–according to Norwood News analysis of city and U.S. Census data.

Rosenthal’s bill, which would require the city Department of Small Business Services (SBS) to create and maintain a database of empty storefronts, follows years of complaints by advocates that vacancies are a blight on commercial thoroughfares.

Manhattan Councilman Mark Levine introduced a bill for free legal representation for small business tenants facing eviction–a measure similar to the Universal Access Program, which, in the neighborhoods where it has been implemented so far (in the Bronx, the 10457, 10462, 10467 and 10468 zip codes), guarantees free legal counsel to any tenant in housing court.

SBS Commissioner Gregg Bishop highlighted at the hearing the difference legal services can make, saying, “The conversation changes when a lawyer is present.” The city currently of- fers free legal services to small businesses, but only to the point before the parties go to court. Small business owners who are already in court cannot use these city services.

While bills introduced in committees are just drafts and not finalized, Levine’s bill currently covers lessees, or commercial tenants with a signed lease–a crucial source of power that small businesses all over the city lack, especially in some parts of the Bronx like the

Kingsbridge Road and Jerome Avenue corridors.

“A lease is the biggest deterrent to harassment or displacement,” Gregg said. “If a landlord doesn’t want to issue a lease, under state law there’s nothing we can do to make them.”

Councilwoman Vanessa Gibson, who represents the Concourse, Highbridge, Morris Heights, Morrisania, and other areas affected by the Jerome Avenue rezoning plan in 2018, said that tenants without leases need protection too. She argued the city should stop tenant harassment before legal action such as eviction takes place. “There’s a whole village of businesses that have been known to be harassed by their owners,” Gibson said at the committee.

To that end, Gibson introduced a “certification of no harassment” bill, which would require commercial landlords to prove they have not harassed their tenants in order to get permits from the city Department of Buildings for major construction work. A pilot program for a similar measure for housing launched earlier this year, on Jerome Avenue.