Oneonta Mayor Dan Buttermann and the Common Council received a petition with about 120 signatures in favor of the city adopting a Good Cause Eviction law Wednesday, July 8.
“It is a response to an ongoing crisis in housing that I’m sure everyone here is familiar with,” Sai Maurice, an Oneonta tenant, said during public comment before handing the petition to Buttermann.
The council’s Legislative Committee is expected to continue discussing the law.
Municipalities must opt into the 2024 state law, which among other provisions requires certain landlords to have cause if they do not renew a tenant’s lease. Under the law, legitimate causes include failure to pay rent, nuisance behavior and other items. Further, it is illegal for landlords to refuse to renew a release without cause, but then offer the rental to another person.
“Everyone can feel the pressure of seeing residential homes and residential apartments be transformed into short-term rentals,” Maurice, a founding member of Reclaim Oneonta and the Oneonta Tenants Movement, said Thursday. He said the legislation would be one way of addressing the issue.
Municipalities may tailor aspects of the law at a local level.
The petition called for the city to opt in with four amendments: reducing the threshold for a “small landlord” exempt 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.
City officials have been discussing the legislation in recent months. Elayne Mosher Campoli, D-First Ward, has been a vocal advocate for it.
“It just seems like something that would be a great fit for the city of Oneonta,” she said after the Wednesday meeting. “We do have a housing crisis, and I think anything that we can do to help people, keep people in their homes, is going to help.”
Legislative Committee members were skeptical of the need and effectiveness of the law for Oneonta when they discussed it June 8. They said they needed more information before proceeding.
“What information do you need?” Jessie Simpauco asked during public comment Wednesday, advocating for Good Cause.
Simpauco, who is the vice president for professionals for the SUNY Oneonta United University Professions labor union, said Thursday that many young professionals at the university struggle to afford living in the city where they work.
Ethan Fox, the union’s political coordinator, recently worked with Simpauco and other members to create a housing committee to bring attention to the concerns. The two said they were working to get presentation slots for future Common Council meeting and Oneonta town board meetings.
“I think Oneonta would love to have more full-time residents than to be a transient hub for students and baseball season tourists,” Fox said.
Buttermann said in a June 30 interview that he was not in support of the legislation at that point, adding that it would have limited applicability in the city. He said it was worth looking into, however.
He said Thursday he was proud of residents for petitioning their elected officials and that the proposed modifications to the law could make it more applicable to Oneonta.
“So we’ll look at it,” Buttermann said. The petition “makes a clear signal to us of what we can do, and we’ll answer the question, the question being: is this a good law for Oneonta or not?”