A select group of nonprofit organizations will be given the first chance to buy certain distressed residential buildings in New York City under a contentious bill set to pass the City Council on Thursday.
The bill, known as the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, is intended to keep housing out of the hands of predatory investors, supporters say. Nonprofit owners, they argue, are more likely to keep housing affordable and take care of tenants.
The bill is part of a nationwide response to high housing costs, with cities and states trying to assert more control over corporate landlords and the housing market.
The bill has 32 sponsors in the 51-member Council, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he supports it. Opponents, including prominent real estate industry groups, call it an example of government overreach that will bog down the housing market.
Here’s what to know.
What does the bill do?
The bill, modeled after one passed in San Francisco in 2019, directs the city’s housing department to come up with a list of nonprofit buyers with the “legal and financial capacity” to buy and sell housing. Their housing preservation track record and other factors are also considered.
The bill applies to properties that have at least four units and are in some sort of financial or physical distress, like cockroach infestations or leaky ceilings, and buildings with fewer than 100 units where affordable housing mandates are expiring.
The owner of one of these properties must notify the housing department and the list of “qualified” buyers if it wants to sell.
That starts a prescribed timeline: Buyers have 20 days to submit a statement of interest; the seller then has five days to give buyers more information; buyers have 70 days to make an offer; and the seller has 10 days to counter.
Buyers on the “qualified” list would have a chance to match any competing offers from those not on the list — essentially, a right of first refusal. If a sale is not finalized during that timeline, the law would no longer apply.
Wasn’t the same bill passed before?
Last year, Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a version of it. The Council speaker, Julie Menin, opted not to bring it forth for a veto-override vote because it did not have a supermajority of support.
The first version of the bill, introduced five years ago, covered sales of nearly all residential buildings with three or more units. The latest bill covers only specific types of properties and speeds up the timeline; the first bill gave qualified buyers up to 180 days to submit an offer.
James Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, an influential lobbying group, said conversations with Council members had “resulted in a more targeted and practical bill.”
Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, the bill’s lead sponsor, rejected the idea that the changes had been made at the behest of the real estate industry. But she said years of vetting, and recent support from the Mamdani administration, had helped make the bill “operationally sound.”
“It’s a bulletproof bill now because it has gone through the fire,” she said.
What could COPA achieve?
Supporters say it will slow gentrification by preventing profit-driven, predatory investors from buying distressed buildings and then pushing residents out for higher-paying tenants or selling the buildings.
“It’s a small window of opportunity for our prequalified housing organizations to compete in the hottest real estate market in the country,” Ms. Nurse said.
At a September hearing, the housing commissioner, Dina Levy, estimated that some 2,100 residential buildings could be covered by COPA.
What are the challenges?
Real estate groups have questioned whether nonprofit groups would fare any better than for-profit firms at maintaining buildings, and why they would want to buy distressed housing in the first place.
A March paper from New York University’s Furman Center, which researches housing issues, said that the city would need to devote money to help nonprofit groups buy and rehabilitate many of the buildings that would fall under COPA — which could be too expensive for a city with immense housing needs.
The paper also said programs like COPA could turn investors away from neighborhoods that need revitalization.
Ann Korchak, the president of the board of the Small Property Owners of New York, said the bill “would alienate and discourage conventional purchasers who have the financial wherewithal to immediately purchase and rehabilitate a failing property.”
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