The Legislative Committee of the Oneonta Common Council wants to hear from the city’s landlords and renters following receipt of a petition supporting a Good Cause Eviction law.
Council members Carolyn Marks, D-Seventh Ward, and Shannon McHugh, D-Third Ward, discussed the legislation at the committee’s Monday, July 13 meeting. Chairperson Len Carson, R-Fifth Ward, was absent.
“I definitely think it’s going to be an active conversation for a bit,” McHugh said of Good Cause Eviction during the meeting. “I feel like it’s going to be a few meeting discussions at the very least, hearing from each side,” she added.
The 2024 state law requires municipalities to opt into it and can be amended at the local level. Under the law, covered landlords are required to provide a reason for refusing to renew a tenant’s lease, which must be a reason outlined in the law. It also prohibits “unreasonable” rent increases, generally deemed greater than 5% over the prior lease, plus the annual change in consumer price index.
Sai Maurice, of Reclaim Oneonta and Oneonta Tenants Movement, presented about 120 petition signatures in support of the law to Mayor Dan Buttermann and the Common Council July 8.
The petition also called for four local amendments to the law: reducing the threshold for meeting “small landlord” status exempting them from the law from 10 rental units owned to one; changing the cutoff year of a building’s certificate of occupancy eligible for exemption from the law from 2009 to 2025; reducing the number of years needed for a new building to become covered by the law from 30 years to 5 years; and requiring landlords with exemptions to provide written notice to tenants.
Buttermann said July 9 that he and the council would look at the law and make a decision whether it would be good for the city. He said that he had not heard directly from any opponents of the law.
The suggested amendments to the law would increase substantially the number of landlords and properties covered by Good Cause Eviction’s provisions.
“Only true single unit landlords would be exempt, and almost all landlords in Oneonta would be covered,” Marks said during the committee meeting. Considering the change of certificate of occupancy to piece to 2025, Marks said, “that’s pretty much all housing stock.”
Marks said she was approaching the issue “from the tenants’ concern that, you know, housing scarcity is an issue, and I think the other driver is short-term rentals.”
Both Marks and McHugh expressed interest in hearing from landlords, property managers and renters about how the changes may impact them.
McHugh was skeptical of the efficacy of a Good Cause Eviction law.
“There are already some of these things in place,” McHugh said, adding that landlords are required to provide documentation in eviction processes.
“The bad actors are going to stay the bad actors,” McHugh said. She added that landlords might say they are taking the rental off the market, but then still rent it.
Under the Good Cause Eviction law, that would be illegal. If a landlord does not renew a lease citing the good cause of taking the unit off the market, but instead returns the unit to the market, the original tenant has the right to sue. Without the city opting in, the tenant does not have grounds to sue under the law’s provisions.
Marks said she did not know how the law would impact the city’s rental population, specifying short-term rentals and student housing.
“Do we have any data about this that would help us one way or the other to really reflect what the conditions are within the city of Oneonta?” Marks asked.
After the meeting, Marks said she thought a public forum and direct outreach could be ways of soliciting the public’s views on the matter.
City Administrator Greg Mattice previously said the city has “approximately 500 multi-family residential buildings.”