Some on Oneonta’s Common Council are unsure about a potential Good Cause Eviction law and want more information before proceeding.
In effect since 2024, the state’s Good Cause Eviction law requires municipalities to opt in. The law requires that certain landlords have cause for removing tenants at the conclusion of a lease, should a tenant wish to renew.
Good causes under the law include failure to pay rent, lease agreement violations, nuisance behavior, a landlord desiring to occupy, demolition plans or wanting to stop renting the unit, according to the state attorney general’s website. Landlords who say they are removing the unit from the market but do not actually do so can be sued by the tenant, the site stated. The law also requires that landlords covered by the law to provide language about the Good Cause law in the tenant’s rental documents.
Small landlords, defined as landlords with 10 or less units with differences depending on municipality, as well as subletters, “high rent” units and other exceptions are not covered by the law, the website stated.
The law also prohibits an “unreasonable rent increase” for covered units. Generally, the site stated, “a rent increase is unreasonable if it is greater than 5 percent of the last rent plus the annual change in the consumer price index.” The maximum is 10 percent.
“I need more time,” Len Carson, R-Fifth Ward, said of the legislation. He in part cited the limited case law on the issue and said he wanted to do more research.
“These are all like normal reasons,” Shannon McHugh, D-Third Ward, said of the eligible causes in the law. She questioned what the other reasons would be. “They just say you can’t just be like ‘goodbye,’ you have to tell them why?”
“I want to look at it more,” McHugh said.
Carolyn Marks, D-Seventh Ward, said “Our rental population is completely different” from cities like New York City, Albany, Ithaca, Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Rochester, which have opted into the law.
The following other cities have opted into the law, according to the state attorney general’s website: Newburgh, Nyack, Hudson, New Paltz, Fishkill, Catskill, Croton-on-Hudson and Binghamton.
“For me, right now, I’m not seeing a need for it, but I just want to keep researching,” Carson said.
McHugh said that she liked that the law was intended to protect vulnerable tenant populations and against people “being arbitrarily displaced.” She questioned whether it protected against retaliatory non-renewals. “Because they can just say, ‘hey, you know, I want to live there,’ or ‘I asked for access, and you didn’t let me up.’”
“I don’t know that it’s going to be preventative in that way,” she said.
According to an email from City Administrator Greg Mattice following the meeting, the city has “approximately 500 multi-family residential buildings.”