Selected Housing Bills Before the NYS Legislature: 1997
updated to April 13, 1997

Tenant Protection laws, like any law, go through an arduous process beginning in either the NYS Assembly or NYS Senate. After approval, the governor must sign it. See How a Bill Becomes Law. Almost every legislative session, thousands of bill are introduced which realistically have no chance of becoming law. Politicians do this to cater (or pander) to their consitutents (or to special interests) and often have no serious intent of seeing the bill(s) through. However, every session, there are usually "hot" bills which various interests identify as being important. Below are some of those "hot" bills. But in this year, because the rent laws expire on June 15th, much of this doesn't matter. Even though there are bills in both houses now to extend the rent laws (in various degrees), most insiders expect whatever the final solution will be, it will be written in the wee hours of a June or July night after arriving at a backroom political deal. Such is New York. It will be a political solution having virtually nothing to do with the substance of the issue. In particular, earlier this spring, Assembly Speaker Silver with Housing Chair Vito Lopez tagging behind, introduced Assembly Bill No. 2 touting it as a "basis for negotiation." No one was fooled. Although this bill did extend the rent laws and did contain a few items beneficial to tenants, it was sloppily prepared, contained many loopholes and did not substantively deal with abuse by landlords or DHCR. More over getting a bill like this through, if possible, would mean tenants would be stuck with the same corrupt DHCR for another ten years. Tenant leaders saw this secretly prepared bill as a "poison pill", a bill put up for show knowing it had no chance, so as to allow Silver, Lopez and other Democrats to claim they were really trying to protect tenants. This bill was effectively killed when Senate Minority Leader Martin Connor pushed for (and lost) a straight extender bill on April 7, 1997. Even so, Democrats are still touting this bill in their commercials attacking Pataki and Bruno. Rather than take the responsibility for renewing the rent laws in a serious manner, Democrats continue the farce of attacking the political opposition (of course there's no excuse for Bruno & Co. either) and tenants remain a political football in limbo.

Bill No.	Body	Sponsor	Good For:	Description
Rent Laws Extender Bills
S.3281 Memo Full Text	Senate	Connor	Tenants	Provides for the extension of rent control, rent stabilization and conversion of rental residential property to cooperatives or condominiums until June 15, 2001
A.2 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Silver/ Lopez	Questionable	Assembly Omnibus Rent Bill On the surface good for tenants, but shoddily constructed with many loopholes, and introduced in secret without tenant support. This bill is seen merely as a political "poison pill" -- they knew it would fail and that would allow politicians to falsely claim they made a serious effort. This bill passed the Assembly, but without a wide margin. It and its Senate counterparts (S.3921 and S.4003) were effectively made irrelevant when the Connor Senate Bill (S.3281), a straight extender bill and arguably less offensive to landlords than A.2, was defeated in a motion to discharge it from comittee on April 7, 1997.
S.3921 Memo Full Text	Senate	Markowitz	Questionable	Senate version of A.2. Enacts the omnibus cooperative and condominium conversion and rent control reform of 1997; makes various rent control provisions permanent; provides for the establishment of transitional guidelines, annual rent adjustments and sets forth rights and obligations of landlords and tenants with respect to leases and rental rates; provides for the repeal of various provisions relating to rent control and cooperative and condominium conversion.
S.4033 Memo Full Text	Senate	Goodman/ Padavan	Questionable	Another Senate version of A.2. Enacts the omnibus cooperative and condominium conversion and rent control reform of 1997; makes various rent control provisions permanent; provides for the establishment of transitional guidelines, annual rent adjustments and sets forth rights and obligations of landlords and tenants with respect to leases and rental rates; provides for the repeal of various provisions relating to rent control and cooperative and condominium conversion.
A.5308 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Lopez	Tenants	Authorizes the continuation of the current system of rent regulation, as well as the current cooperative and condominium apartment protection laws; removes the June 15, 1997 expiration date and makes these provisions permanent.
Bills Good for Tenants
A.5901 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Stringer	Tenants	Requires hearing by the division of housing and community renewal prior to order of decontrol for failure to respond to income certification material relating to high income rent decontrol; provides that failure to appear at the hearing will result in an order of decontrol.
A.6532 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Lopez	Tenants	Removes provisions allowing cities of one million or more from strengthening rent regulation laws to provide more comprehensive coverage than state laws.
Bills Good for Landlords
A.3963 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Ferrara	Landlords	Establishes a minimum base rent of $450 a month for rent controlled buildings with 20 units or less.
A.3966 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Ferrara	Landlords	Provides that housing accommodations becoming vacant after the effective date of this act and containing twenty units or less shall be exempt from the city rent and rehabilitation law and the rent stabilization law of 1969.
A.3992 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Perry	Landlords	Requires a tenant to pay the court all rent due in proceedings between an owner or owners of a building with six rental units or less or an owner occupied three unit or less building which is the owner`s primary residence and a tenant and the court shall place such amount in an interest bearing account with interest earned being used for the administration of such accounts.
A.5631 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Reynolds	Landlords	Provides that no court shall have jurisdiction to consider any affirmative legal or equitable defense interposed in any summary proceeding brought to recover possession of real property unless a deposit of the full amount of the rent when due is made with the court.
A.6831 Memo Full Text	Assembly	Dinowitz	Landlords	Provides for the mandatory deposit of rent payments into the court upon the granting of a stay in certain actions and proceedings involving rent due or for recovery of possession between landlord and tenant; provides for the administration of this requirement and monitoring of compliance by the office of court administration; funding therefor to be derived from interest on such deposits; interest in excess of the needs thereof to be deposited into the IOLA fund; applies to cities having a population of one million or more.