The Bill That Could Seize Buildings from The Worst Landlords in NYC

By Michael Gonik

Zohran Mamdani‘s war on negligent landlords is heating up.

A few weeks back, the newly elected mayor launched his “Rental Ripoff” hearings to provide a forum for aggrieved tenants to air their most traumatic experiences as renters and direct them towards the appropriate city officials. But he isn’t waiting for the dust to settle to fire his next shot. Mamdani, who campaigned on holding bad landlords accountable and protecting the rights of tenants, may just get the opportunity if a new bill gets the approval of City Council.

The proposed legislation, dubbed the Safer Homes Act, would allow the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to seize property from landlords with unaddressed housing code violations and unpaid fines. A City Council hearing for the bill, a reworked version of a “third-party transfer” proposal that was killed in 2019, was held earlier this week, according to Gothamist. It would be “hyperfocused on the worst of the worst” landlords, says Pierina Sanchez, a councilmember from the Bronx, an outspoken sponsor of the bill. “If you are a chronically negligent actor who has your tenants living in dangerous conditions, you do not deserve to be in ownership and you, after a fair process, will have your property taken from you,” Sanchez told Gothamist. Sanchez’s proposal would apply specifically to landlords with fines or taxes due equal to 25% of their property’s value, or 15% of its value if it also has an average of five or more violations per unit and $1,000 or more in emergency repairs subsidized by the city.

And while the Safer Homes Act would provide the mayor with a legal means of stripping property from landlords who refuse to hold up their end of the lease, it likely faces a tough road to passing City Council’s smell test. Despite support from 34 of 51 councilmembers and even some actors in the city’s real estate industry, it has yet to get the green light from City Council speaker Julie Menin, a longtime buddy to local developers, who refused to support a previous version of Sanchez’s bill in 2024 and has repeatedly stood in the way of housing reform efforts.

The silver lining here is that, though Menin will be a tough sell, this iteration of the bill appears to have the support of another influential force in city development, the Real Estate Board of New York. “REBNY supports the goal of ensuring that distressed properties are rehabilitated and that tenants live in safe, well-maintained housing,” said Maddie DeCerbo, the director of urban planning, in a written statement read during this week’s hearing. “The program can serve as an important enforcement tool in truly extreme cases where long-term neglect of properties threaten residents and neighborhoods.”