Eviction Bill Draws Concern, Hochul Tweaks Pied-à-Terre Tax

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Hi there, let’s get into today’s news at the intersection of policy and real estate:

• The so-called Clean Hands Act rattles the New York Apartment Association.
• Hochul’s office is ditching notoriously unreliable assessed values as the benchmark for pied-à-terre tax eligibility.
• A new City Council bill targets New York City’s sluggish permitting process.

In this edition we mention: Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, New York Apartment Association Executive Vice President Jay Martin, Citizens Budget Commission Vice President of Research Ana Champeny, City Council member Virginia Maloney and others.

We Heard

• Bill movement: Fresh amendments and support for a state bill that would bar landlords from initiating evictions while active building violations linger has spooked the New York Apartment Association. A version of the so-called Clean Hands Act, sponsored by the politically powerful Assembly member and housing committee chair Linda Rosenthal and State Sen. Kevin Parker, has been around since 2009, but lawmakers have been busy updating the bill this spring: revising it in March and whipping up new support from policy advocates and more elected officials as sponsors. Last week, Community Service Society threw its weight behind the bill with a brief, arguing it would bolster tenant protections, curb evictions and improve public health by deterring unsafe housing conditions. Assembly members Grace Lee and MaryJane Shimsky have also recently signed on as sponsors. But Jay Martin, executive vice president of the NYAA, says that the measure as currently drafted casts too wide a net on violations and risks undermining the finances of nonprofit and rent-regulated housing. “It is very, very difficult to not get violations, in fact, impossible, I’d say,” said Martin. He added that a common frustration for building owners is trouble accessing tenants’ units and once an owner does correct a violation, it can take weeks to even months before the city certifies repairs. Rosenthal did not comment on specific provisions in the bill, but in a statement described the proposal as “a tool to protect tenants from baseless and retaliatory evictions by certain property owners who have never played by the rules.” As an alternative, NYAA has suggested a rent-escrow mechanism with court oversight and a corresponding right of access for owners to make repairs, modeled on a Maryland law. “The idea that there should be long-term punitive measures based on violations as a measurement, we think, is just a really dangerous road to go down.” Martin pointed to another violation-related bill that the NYAA is similarly anxious about: State Sen. Luis Sepúlveda’s “Anti-slumlord Act” that seeks to prevent landlords from purchasing new properties if they own buildings with outstanding hazardous violations. 
• Policy watch: Albany is still hashing out the details of a proposed pied-à-terre tax on luxury city crash pads — but Gov. Kathy Hochul’s team is backing off on one key piece: using assessed values to decide which properties get hit. The governor’s office on Monday confirmed to The Real Deal that assessed value will not be used because it often undervalues properties versus what they are actually worth. For example, under current law, the city’s Department of Finance values condos and co-ops as if they were rental buildings, benchmarking them against comparable rentals’ income and expenses. The approach drastically lowballs the value of properties compared to what buyers actually pay. Instead, the governor’s office said a proposed pied-à-terre tax would use “a model that captures properties worth over $5 million through the use of various mechanisms such as comparable sales data where applicable.” That opens a different can of worms because there isn’t an official mechanism to pin down what city properties may actually be worth on the market. “It separates the pied-à-terre from the property tax system, but you essentially would be creating a secondary valuation, which is much more time-intensive and harder to administer,” said Ana Champeny, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, and a former director of property tax analysis at the DOF. She added that there’s a question of how quickly the city could stand up such a system, if lawmakers want the tax to start generating revenue as of fiscal year 2027, which begins this July and runs through next June. In other pied-à-terre tax news, Hochul said Friday she’s not ruling out letting upstate municipalities opt in — but warned lawmakers not to expect it in the budget. “This was an objective to help the city out with this particular crisis,” Hochul said. “I’m not looking to add a whole lot more to this budget; the objective is to be closing it down.”
• Permitting relief: Developers and property owners routinely complain that securing city permits can drag on for months, even years. Even minor filings can be bounced for small errors, adding months to the process. A new bill from City Council member Virginia Maloney aims to rein that in, requiring agencies to publish approval timelines and roll out real-time tracking for applications. Under the bill, the mayor’s office would be on the hook to “implement accountability measures” for agencies that fail to meet their own timelines. The bill is likely to get a fairly positive reception from the Mamdani administration, which launched a task force earlier this year to tackle permitting delays and other bureaucratic hurdles slowing housing construction.

Have a tip or feedback? Reach me at caroline.spivack@therealdeal.com. 

Bill Tracker

The Catch-Up

Despite tremendous demand, below-market rentals in the boroughs sit vacant for an average of 142 days because of the bureaucracy and poor design of the city’s housing lottery system, writes TRD columnist Erik Enquist. 

New York City general contractors, after a strong 2025, are facing growing uncertainty in 2026 as persistent inflation, policy changes and rising costs shrink project pipelines and make new developments harder to justify, reports TRD’s Lilah Burke.

A pied-à-terre tax could actually help refill New York City’s coffers instead of just eating away at the tax base. The only problem is that the mayor has made “a political football of it,” writes economist and urban studies theorist Richard Florida for the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, courts are weighing similar tax proposals on second homes in Montana and San Francisco, reports The Wall Street Journal. 

City & State caught up with HPD Commissioner Dana Levy about SEQRA reform and other priorities for the city’s housing agency this state budget season.

The Kicker

“The governor indicated that this ‘should be a very significant week.’ But whether or not it’s an attempt at a Jedi mind trick, there’s little evidence that inspires A New Hope,” said Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra in a statement, criticizing the state budget’s tardiness in references to the “Star Wars” franchise. Monday is unofficially celebrated by fans as “May the 4th Be With You” day. State lawmakers passed their ninth budget extender today running through May 6.

Read more

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