Tenants Storm Albany, Nearly Taste Small Victory

On September 10, 2009, over 150 tenants from a variety of housing and community groups from all corners of New York City and Westchester County traveled to Albany with a simple message to tell our State Senators: we have waited long enough for rent reform!!! It was starting to look like our relentless pressure this past spring was finally paying off. A week before the one-day session, we were promised votes on two of the ten rent reform bills that passed the Assembly last February. The first bill would prevent owners from taking limitless apartments out of rent regulation and evict tenants through the "owner use" loophole. The second would end the "preferential rent" loophole where landlords lure apartment seekers with a lower "preferential" rent while registering a higher legal maximum rent with the State, and then sock the tenants with increases of hundreds of dollars at lease renewals - a widespread practice that under current law is legal. We were hoping to come home with victories on these two bills, and then build the momentum to help pass the more controversial bills, including the repeal of vacancy decontrol. We were close to these two important victories. But then came Carl Kruger - conservative Democrat from south Brooklyn and ally of the real estate lobby. (Kruger has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of real estate money in the past year alone.) Democratic leaders polled their members and found that Kruger would vote against our bills if they came to a vote on September 10. At the same time, Long Island Democrat Brian Foley was not in Albany for the one-day Senate session because his father died earlier in the week. Assuming that tenants had all of the Democrats except Kruger on their side, with Foley away for the day, that left us with 30 Democratic yes votes. With only one solid Republican vote - Frank Padavan of Queens - that would have brought us to only 31 votes, when 32 votes are required for legislation to pass. The Democratic leadership decided at the very last minute to take these bills off of the agenda for the day's session rather than see them voted down. As this scenario was coming to light, tenants in the hallway outside the Senate were loud and impatient, directly confronting several Democratic Senators who have stood in the way of rent reform over the past year (whether in public or behind the scenes) including Carl Kruger, Pedro Espada (Bronx), and Jeffrey Klein (Bronx/Westchester). The echoes of our chants - some directed at individual Senators - filled the Capitol building, and the boisterous nature of our protests compelled Democratic conference leader John Sampson of Brooklyn to call a few leaders of tenant organizations into a meeting. Sampson, the new Senate Democratic leader, told the tenant representatives that he supports our legislative platform and is committed to passing our bills. He said that he understood that we are impatient and frustrated, and agreed that we had good reason to be angry, but he did not want to put bills up to a vote until they were assured of passage. He said that he is committed to finding ways to pass as much of this legislation in the coming months as possible. Importantly, Senator Sampson said that our mass mobilizations to Albany over the last few months have instilled a sense of urgency on our issues within the Senate Democratic conference. Other Senators have made the same point. Eric Schneiderman (Manhattan/Bronx) explained that normally he does not favor dragging people to Albany when nothing is going to happen, but in our case he thinks that the daily mobilizations have kept tenant issues alive. While we would like to have walked away with legislative victories on September 10, it is clear that our physical presence in Albany in the last few months has been key to the campaign as a whole, and that this will continue to be the case. Our momentum is building. We will win this fight! The Senate is rumored to return in late September (as well as the Assembly), and we must be there. Please stay posted and be prepared to return with Met Council to Albany when we find out the next date that the Senate is scheduled to meet.