Thank you, Chair Sanchez and members of the Committee on Housing and Buildings,
for holding today’s hearing and for the opportunity to testify. My name is Will Spisak,
Senior Policy Strategist at New Economy Project, a citywide organization that works
with community groups to build a just economy based on cooperation, equity, social and
racial justice, and ecological sustainability. For 30 years, we have worked with
community groups to challenge corporations that harm communities and perpetuate
inequality and poverty, and to advance cooperative and community-led development
through public banking, community land trusts, worker and financial cooperatives, and
other democratically-controlled initiatives.
New Economy Project co-founded and coordinates the NYC Community Land Initiative
(NYCCLI), a citywide coalition that has fostered the growth of 20+ community land trusts
(CLTs) working to secure deeply- and permanently-affordable housing and equitable,
neighborhood-led development. We are pleased that the administration’s housing plan,
Block by Block, centers CLTs and other forms of community and tenant ownership – a
direct result of years of organizing by NYCCLI and housing justice groups across the
city. My testimony today focuses on the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act
(COPA), one of two policies highlighted in the plan, which will dramatically expand
opportunities to take housing off the market and into stable community control.
We commend Council Member Sandy Nurse and the 27 additional co-sponsors
who have championed COPA for years, and we urge the Council to pass the bill
immediately.
COPA (Int. 905) is a proven, sound policy that will give vetted, mission-driven
developers including CLTs a first opportunity to make competitive offers on certain
at-risk multifamily buildings, when an owner chooses to sell. New York City’s COPA
policy has been carefully crafted over more than five years of deliberation with public
and private stakeholders, careful legal review, and learning from cities like San
Francisco that have successfully implemented COPA and similar
opportunity-to-purchase policies. The bill focuses squarely on buildings in greatest need
of preservation, due to persistent physical distress or expiring affordability restrictions.
COPA will give communities a powerful tool to stabilize housing for thousands of New
Yorkers — curbing displacement and expanding the supply of permanently affordable,
community-controlled housing.
New York City needs every available tool to address our unprecedented affordable
housing crisis. Over one-third of all New Yorkers, and half of rent-stabilized tenants, are
rent-burdened. The worsening affordability crisis has hit Black, brown, and immigrant
working class communities the hardest. Between 2000 and 2020, New York City saw an
exodus of 200,000 Black residents, about 9% of the city’s Black population. Growing
numbers of tenants face deteriorating living conditions, skyrocketing rents, and fewer
prospects to stay in the City and in the communities they call home.
Even the most ambitious targets for new affordable housing construction will fail to
address the crisis unless there is also a robust preservation strategy. COPA provides a
powerful new tool to preserve the affordable housing New Yorkers desperately need,
and a clear pathway to expand community ownership and dignified housing that every
New Yorker deserves.
COPA restores balance to a housing market under extreme speculative pressure.
COPA gives qualified nonprofit preservation buyers—and nonprofit-led development
teams—a brief window to express interest (20 days) and to submit competitive offers
(70 days), when owners of covered properties choose to sell. Currently, investors and
speculators often snatch up buildings before responsible buyers and event tenants
know buildings are up for sale. COPA gives tenants and community groups a
meaningful chance to organize and secure ownership over buildings before they are put
on the open market.
Organizations like the East New York CLT and UHAB have successfully negotiated
recent purchases of multifamily buildings, including 248 Arlington Avenue in Brooklyn
and 700 E. 134th Street in the Bronx, in partnership with tenants, in order to stabilize
buildings, make needed repairs, and move toward co-op conversion. COPA will facilitate similar acquisitions by ensuring qualified buyers are notified when buildings go up for
sale and providing timelines and a process for interested purchasers.
New York City is home to a robust network of nonprofit affordable housing
organizations, from community development corporations and supportive housing
providers to CLTs, as well as mission-aligned for-profit developers and M/WBEs that will
be eligible to participate in COPA purchases. Preservation buyers can work with tenants
to determine the futures of their buildings, including preserving them as deeply
affordable rentals or converting them to limited equity cooperatives – creating affordable
homeownership in communities historically locked out of wealth building opportunities.
COPA stabilizes multifamily buildings in the greatest need of preservation. Int. 905
applies to a relatively small but strategic subset of buildings, and only when owners
choose to sell. COPA covers the sales of multi-family buildings with four or more units
with expiring affordability restrictions or hazardous building conditions. COPA does not
apply to owner-occupied homes with fewer than 6 units or to sales between family
members, among other exemptions. NYCCLI estimates approximately 2,000 buildings
with up to 50,000 apartments would have met COPA criteria in 2025; of these, fewer
than 300 buildings were sold that year.
For families living in COPA-eligible buildings, COPA would have a potentially
transformative impact, giving them a say in the future of their homes when their
buildings change hands. Hundreds of tenants have joined the campaign to pass COPA
and are actively working with CDCs and CLTs to secure collective ownership of their
buildings. Without COPA, buildings are often sold out from under them, even when
qualified buyers are negotiating in good faith with owners. Here is but one example
shared by NYCCLI coalition member Our Bronx:
- Our Bronx and the Bronx CLT have organized tenants at 2076 Creston Avenue for over a decade. The building has 41 units and has racked up over 2,000 violations – including an entire apartment line that had a vacate order issued in2014. That year, the landlord flipped the building for $2.4 million to another negligent landlord while conditions continued to deteriorate. Two years later, the landlord sold the property out from under the tenants again, this time for $5.6 million. The tenants organized and advocated for better conditions, but the improvements never came. In 2020, the new landlord sold it once again for $8.2 million. Another windfall profit for a speculative slumlord while living conditions continued to deteriorate for the tenants.
Each of these transactions represents a missed opportunity moment when tenants
could have collaborated with a qualified preservation buyer to preserve their building
and improve their living conditions. Instead, one speculative buyer after another flipped
the property for a profit.
COPA is a broadly supported policy with proven impact. Int. 905 is backed by a
strikingly broad coalition that includes hundreds of tenant associations and
homeownership advocates; community land trusts and CDCs; nonprofit and
mission-aligned for-profit housing developers; organized labor; community development
financial institutions and credit unions; youth and senior advocates; and many others —
ready to ensure COPA’s effective implementation. Cities like San Francisco, which
enacted COPA in 2019, have created or preserved thousands of permanently affordable
homes, leveraged public and private funding to finance acquisitions and rehabilitation,
and facilitated long-term community and tenant ownership. (See attached COPA FAQ.)
The City Council has a momentous opportunity to pass COPA after years of careful
deliberation and broad public input. COPA has the City Council votes; the backing of
New York’s housing movement; and a Mayor ready to sign it into law. We urge the City
Council to pass COPA and help keep working class New Yorkers in New York City.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.