Advocacy groups Housing Justice for All and JustFix launched an online tool this week where tenants can enter their address and answer a series of short questions to help determine if their apartments are likely to qualify for protections under the ‘Good Cause’ law.
A rental building in Brooklyn. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)
It’s been just more than a year since New York adopted “Good Cause” protections, giving eligible renters extra defense against eviction without cause, as well as a chance to challenge rent hikes over a certain threshold.
But that’s only if they’re actually covered by the law. The final version of Good Cause, adopted as part of last year’s state budget negotiations, included a number of carveouts, excluding tenants based on how many units their landlord owns or when the property was built, among other conditions.
That can make it hard for renters to tell if their units fall under the protections—though a new website is trying to help.
Advocacy groups Housing Justice for All and JustFix launched an online tool this week where tenants can enter their address and answer a series of short questions to help determine if their apartments meet the Good Cause criteria.
“Good Cause Eviction is a powerful tool to prevent evictions and price-gouging, but only if tenants know they have rights,” Joel Stillman, director of JustFix, said in a statement announcing the website Monday. “This tool uses public data gathered from multiple sources to sort through the law’s overlapping exemptions that make Good Cause hard to use, giving tenants the confidence that they have rights to stay in their homes.”
The site uses city building records as well as information supplied by the tenant to determine possible eligibility. Good Cause only applies to unregulated apartments (since rent stabilized units and other subsidized housing programs, like NYCHA, come with their own set of tenant protections) and those built after 2009. It exempts high-priced units renting for more than $6,005 a month, as well as smaller landlord-occupied buildings.
But perhaps the most difficult-to-determine criteria is portfolio size: the law only applies to tenants whose landlords own more than 10 apartments. This can be hard to gauge, since many owners register their properties under generically-named limited liability companies (LLCs). The Good Cause NYC tool advises renters to check the city’s property records database as well as search their landlord’s name on Who Owns What, another site created by JustFix which seeks out other properties an owner may be associated with.
Since going into effect in New York City, Good Cause enforcement has primarily played out in housing court. It’s generally on tenants to seek legal recourse if they’re covered by the law and facing eviction without sufficient reason, or subject to a rent increase higher than Good Cause allows.
“Good Cause Eviction is a historic expansion of tenants rights—but only informed and organized tenants are able to use it to defend their homes,” Cea Weaver, director of Housing Justice for All said in a statement.
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