Nearly two years after the state of New York adopted a law that prohibits landlords from evicting tenants without a just cause, 19 municipalities have opted into its protections.
The state’s Good Cause Eviction Law, which went into effect in April 2024, guarantees lease renewals as long as tenants pay their rent and abide by their lease agreements. It also enables tenants to challenge rent hikes of more than 5 percent plus inflation, or 10 percent total (whichever is lower).
But the law applied only to New York City—and only for certain tenants. Municipalities in the rest of the state are required to opt in to the law to extend the same protections to their residents.
While upstate-based housing advocates and organizers lamented the law’s exclusion of tenants outside New York City, they quickly seized the opportunity to push their municipalities to adopt an even stronger version of the law by amending the two components that could be adjusted: the maximum Fair Market Rent paid by the tenant before they’re no longer eligible for eviction protections, and the definition of a small landlord.
Under state law, units owned by small landlords are exempt from coverage. In New York City, a small landlord is one with 10 or fewer residential units. Upstate, organizers have succeeded in getting every municipality that has opted in so far to bring the portfolio size down to 1 unit, which, they argue, makes it easier for tenants to understand whether they’re covered.
Albany was the first city outside New York City to opt in to the law in June 2024, setting the landlord portfolio size to 1 and the rent exemption threshold to 345 percent of area Fair Market Rent. Not all municipalities that have opted into the law have set the same Fair Market Rent threshold for coverage, but a majority have.
While upstate-based organizers celebrate that the Good Cause Eviction Law has already had a discernible impact on tenants’ lives, their fight is far from over. Many municipalities have yet to opt in, creating potholes in tenant protections across the upstate landscape. Where the law is implemented, tenants are still slipping through the cracks. The only way to fill them, organizers told Shelterforce, is by winning rent stabilization.
Good Cause in Effect
In late 2021, the city of Newburgh passed its own “good cause” eviction law, the second municipality in the state to do so. At that time, almost half of the city’s residents reported paying more than 40 percent of their income on housing costs. But that law was struck down a year later after a landlord group sued the city and a judge ruled that the state’s eviction law preempts any local laws.
When the state passed its own version, the Newburgh City Council voted unanimously to opt in. In September 2024, good cause was back in effect.
Now, over a year later, “We’re still out in the community letting folks know that they have these protections,” says Jairo Perez Vargas, a Newburgh organizer with For the Many, a grassroots organization working to advance progressive policies in New York and the Hudson Valley. “Some folks just don’t have the information for it, so it really is up to us to share this information with the public as much as we can.”
The problem with rent protections is, if you don’t know you have them, they might as well not exist for you.”
Jenna Goldstein, a community organizer at For the Many in Kingston
Organizers knew this going into the opt-in process: Many who spoke with Shelterforce after the state law was adopted raised concerns that it would only be effective if tenants were aware of and could assert these protections themselves.
“The problem with rent protections is, if you don’t know you have them, they might as well not exist for you,” says Jenna Goldstein, a community organizer at For the Many in Kingston. “They’re not self-enforcing, which means that they can only be brought up as a defense. They’re not de facto.”
Public education is then up to tenant organizers and advocates, who must also support tenants when landlords either don’t know the law or choose not to recognize it.
“We have seen landlords react with bewilderment,” says Genevieve Rand, organizing director of the statewide organization Housing Justice for All. “They are under the assumption that they should be able to push out anybody they want or raise their rent [by] however much they want at any time.”
Landlords can do neither under the Good Cause Eviction Law, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying. Rand says that Housing Justice for All has had to support tenants in New York City and upstate New York in standing their ground when their landlords resort to harassment.
“[Landlords] just write these scary, strongly worded letters over and over again to tell people to leave and/or to pay them more money, because we’ve removed the ability for them to use the court,” she says. Prior to the law, landlords could threaten to take tenants to eviction court if they didn’t agree with a rent increase or if they objected to a lease nonrenewal. The Good Cause Eviction Law defines a limited set of reasons landlords can do these things and be supported in a court of law.
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Some tenants will ignore the letters, she says, while others will respond by asserting their rights under good cause. (Rand says she encourages tenants to do so politely.) And for the most part, it’s been enough to get landlords to back down. But it’s still a game of chicken.
Other times, landlords are more experienced in using intimidation tactics, and while they may no longer be able to successfully wield the court as a threat, they still have resources in spades.
“You can’t say to the landlord, ‘I have good cause eviction protection, so you can’t raise [the rent] more than 8.43 percent,’” says Goldstein, referring to the 5 percent permissible rent increase plus the Consumer Price Index, the principal inflation indicator. “They’re going to raise it, and then you’re going to go to court and say, ‘This is why I’m not paying this.’”
Showing up in court is not an option for many of the tenants Goldstein serves in Kingston, who already work multiple jobs to pay their rents and don’t have time to be “part-time lawyers” on their own behalf, she says.
“The vast majority of landlords have an attorney,” says Allison Dentinger, a staff attorney at the Hudson Valley Justice Center. “The vast majority of tenants don’t.”
Overall, though, “It has changed a lot of people’s relationships to their homes and made us feel more ownership over the place [where] we live,” says Rand, noting a paradigm shift with the tenants she’s worked with. “It means you can fight to improve your home and be able to stay there—and do that with the full confidence that, ‘I live here. I belong here.’”
A Need for Stronger Tenant Protections
Organizers across the board agree that the Good Cause Eviction Law is a win for tenants, but none of those who spoke with Shelterforce believe protections should stop there—as much as the law’s opponents would prefer that they do.
[RELATED ARTICLE: Kingston Agreed the Rent Was Too Damn High—So It Lowered It]
“What we’ve seen is that good cause has helped a lot of folks,” says Vargas. “But we know that it can only go so far and can only help so many people.”
That’s why housing advocates want to go further by adopting rent stabilization.
“Good cause is primarily a tenure, stability, and discrimination and retaliation protection, with an anti–price gouging component. But for actual direct control over price stability, cities are realizing that we need rent stabilization to directly prevent housing from getting unaffordable,” says Rand. “Good cause has only clarified for all of us that we can keep doing this and make our housing system even more stable and affordable.”
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Need some help live on the village of Ravena NY and can’t find out officially if the village opt in or out of the Good Cause Law