{"id":152137,"date":"2025-12-03T23:30:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/?p=152137"},"modified":"2025-12-03T23:30:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:30:24","slug":"new-bill-could-help-nonprofits-save-affordable-apartments-in-this-major-metro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/?p=152137","title":{"rendered":"New Bill Could Help Nonprofits Save Affordable Apartments in This Major Metro"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Yorkers<\/a> sent a powerful message in November\u2019s mayoral election<\/a>: Rent<\/a> is too high. And now, an emboldened City Council has revamped a 5-year-old bill to tackle the issue from an untraditional angle: helping nonprofits buy distressed apartment buildings before they hit the market.<\/p>\n

The new and improved Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) is expected to pass the City Council by the end of the year, City Limits<\/a> reports, giving organizations dedicated to preserving affordability the first opportunity to purchase a building when it goes up for sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOPA gives qualified nonprofit organizations and community land trusts a real opportunity to take land and housing off the speculative market and bring them into permanently affordable community control,\u201d\u00a0 Deyanira Del Rio<\/strong>, executive director of the New Economy Project, explained in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But landlords and small-property owners are raising the alarm, saying that the bill adds a layer of confusion to an already confounding system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is government-engineered interference in private free-market transactions that eliminates negotiation and clearly gives a right-of-first-refusal advantage to a select list of city-sanctioned nonprofits,\u201d says Ann Korchak<\/strong>, board president of Small Property Owners of New York<\/a>, an organization of small-housing providers.<\/p>\n

If passed, New York would join the likes of Washington, DC,<\/a> and San Francisco<\/a>, both of which have similar laws on the books. Also, the law could become another tool Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani<\/strong> could use to fight housing affordability struggles in the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

What NYC\u2019s COPA bill would do<\/h2>\n

Under the bill, owners of covered properties would have to notify the city and a list of pre-qualified nonprofit buyers before they formally list a building. Those groups would then have a short window, about 45 days, to signal interest and put together an offer before the property hits the open market.<\/p>\n

Proponents say this kind of \u201cfirst shot\u201d is essential if the city wants to preserve at-risk affordable housing instead of watching it flow to speculative buyers who may redevelop such units and hike up the rent.<\/p>\n

Already, the city is facing dire vacancy rates, sitting at 1.4% citywide. But for the most affordable units\u2014those priced at $1,100 or less\u2014that number drops to just 0.7%, according to the most recent Housing and Vacancy Survey<\/a>, signaling just how hard it is to find these types of housing units.<\/p>\n

Since 2020, New York has seen a steady outflow of residents, many of them working- and middle-class renters squeezed by rising rents and stagnant wages. Supporters argue that COPA could help keep more of those families in place by making it easier for nonprofits to acquire and stabilize vulnerable buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t the millionaires and billionaires who are leaving New York City\u2014it\u2019s working class families who are being pushed out by skyrocketing rents, greedy landlords, and a housing market that prioritizes profits above people\u2019s needs,\u201d COPA\u2019s lead sponsor, Council Member Sandy Nurse<\/strong>, said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s time for us to put power back in the hands of our communities and fight back against speculators by passing the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOPA will level the playing field so we can have a fighting chance to preserve at-risk affordable housing and keep working class families in New York City,\u201d Nurse added.<\/p>\n

But critics of the bill say it\u2019s not a realistic solution, and instead call for more targeted reforms of existing problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cA real housing solution would be creating an income means\u2013tested rent increase exemption initiative modeled after the already existing programs for seniors and disabled tenants,\u201d says Korchak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City Council can also immediately get tens of thousands of empty rent-stabilized apartments back on the market by pressing state lawmakers to amend aspects of the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act<\/a> that would lift the financial restrictions preventing small owners from upgrading and bringing apartments to code when a longtime tenant moves,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

What community opportunity laws have done in other cities<\/h2>\n

In Washington, DC, where Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA)\u2014a similar law to COPA\u2014was first enacted more than 40 years ago, only about 1 in 5 apartments is now truly market rate, according to research from the Wilkes Initiative for Housing Policy and the D.C. Policy Center<\/a>. The rest sit under some form of intervention\u2014rent control, public ownership, rent subsidies, or inclusionary zoning requirements\u2014creating a thick layer of protections that has helped preserve affordability even as demand for housing has surged.<\/p>\n

Even so, the median asking rent for the city sits at $2,276, well above the national median of just under $1,700, according to the most recent Rent Report<\/a> from Realtor.com\u00ae<\/a>. Part of that may be from the severe lack of new construction in the district, which opponents say is a consequence of laws like COPA or TOPA that complicate reinvestment in a city\u2019s housing stock. DC recently received a C- in the State-by-State Housing Report Card<\/a> from Realtor.com, in large part because of its lack of new-construction investments like this.<\/p>\n

Even so, in San Francisco, a city increasingly burdened by rising housing costs, supporters point to COPA as an important backstop. Since the city adopted COPA in 2019, local initiatives under the law have helped preserve nearly 500 affordable homes and protect more than 1,000 residents from displacement, according to a press release from council member Nurse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While those numbers are modest compared with overall housing need, advocates argue they show how first-purchase rights can be used to stabilize vulnerable buildings and keep longtime tenants in place.<\/p>\n

Why small-property owners and landlords are worried<\/h2>\n

But small-property owners and landlord groups are less convinced, arguing that COPA would add new layers of bureaucracy, uncertainty, and delay to an already complicated sales process\u2014at a time when many buildings are financially strained.<\/p>\n

Korchak estimates that the new rules would create a delay of about 120 days or longer for buildings to hit the market, risking solvency for landlords who are already up against razor-thin margins.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery month of delay means continued mortgage payments, skyrocketing property taxes, water and sewer charges, insurance, and emergency repairs\u2014with zero relief from the city. Unlike large institutional owners, we have no cash reserves to absorb months (or years) of additional carrying costs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The latest compromise version of COPA does try to narrow the scope of the law. Very small and owner-occupied buildings would be exempt, a change meant to shield mom and pop landlords. But many \u201csmall\u201d New York owners still operate 6- to 30-unit walk-ups or mixed-use buildings\u2014exactly the kind of properties that could fall under COPA\u2019s definition of a distressed or at-risk building.<\/p>\n

Concerns about these delays in the sales process are amplified by the broader policy backdrop of the city.<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration has vowed to freeze rents, and owners of rent-controlled and rent-stabilized buildings say they won’t be able to shoulder these freezes with already limited revenue. Some fear COPA will kick in just as they\u2019re forced to sell distressed properties, giving nonprofits a special lane to buy while owners shoulder more red tape and potential delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmaller buildings are the target,\u201d says Korchak. \u201cThe nonprofits can’t afford the larger buildings. Recent reporting shows that there is tremendous financial stress in the affordable housing sector.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake for the city\u2019s renters<\/h2>\n

If it works as intended, COPA could give community land trusts and nonprofit developers a real shot at buying troubled, rent-regulated buildings before they end up in the hands of investors looking to flip or deregulate units. That could mean more stability in a time of extreme financial hardship for many of the city’s renters.<\/p>\n

But the stakes are just as high for the small owners who still make up a big chunk of the city\u2019s older rental stock. For years, these landlords have been raising the alarm that they\u2019re squeezed by rising taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs, along with tighter rent rules. For them, COPA looks less like a preservation strategy and more like an added hurdle at the exact moment they\u2019re deciding whether they can afford to hold on or need to sell.<\/p>\n

In an era of flashy housing proposals, COPA may be asking the hardest question at the center of New York\u2019s housing crisis: What is the best solution for buildings in distress? Should the system tilt toward community control or toward a faster, more conventional market sale? How the city chooses to answer may shape not just who gets to own those properties, but which New Yorkers can actually afford to live in them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Yorkers sent a powerful message in November\u2019s mayoral election: Rent is too high. And now, an emboldened City Council has revamped a 5-year-old bill to tackle the issue from an untraditional angle: helping nonprofits buy distressed apartment buildings before they hit the market. The new and improved Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/152138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billingsrealtybrokers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}