NYC NOW - In Conversation: How NYC’s Housing Crisis Is Squeezing Tenants and Small Homeowners

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Recorded live at HANAC Harmony JVL Older Adult Center in Astoria, this installment of In Conversation: The Affordability Series examines New York City’s small two and three family homes, where an owner may live in one unit and rent out another. The conversation explores rising costs, limited tenant protections, basement apartment legalization, home flipping and what it would take to keep more New Yorkers in their homes.   -Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] Photo: Carla Wills/WNYC Guests: Andrea Jerves, Director of Social Service Programs, Grants Administration and Compliance at HANAC Doreen Mohammed, member of the Astoria Tenants Union James Carr, member of the Astoria Tenants Union Oudit Beharry, homeowner Scott Kohanowski, General Counsel at the Center for NYC Neighborhoods Annetta Seecharran, Executive Director of Chhaya Community Development Corporation Troy Kingston, content creator known as Scourge Bliss Brad Greenburg, Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center Sylvia Morse, Director of Research and Policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development State Senator Julia Salazar   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. Last week, we were in Astoria Queens. For the second event in WNYC's new series, looking at how the rising cost of living is hitting New Yorkers across the five boroughs. The series is called In Conversation, and this one focused on housing, specifically the small two-and-three-family homes where an owner lives on one floor and rents out another.

It's not the most common housing arrangement, in New York City, but it gives us a way to examine the pressures facing both tenants and small homeowners and what those pressures tell us about the city's broader housing crisis. Like I said, the event took place in Astoria Queens, and there we see every housing type, including high rises and smaller two-family homes. The positives of this arrangement are pretty clear. The tenants get something affordable, and the owner gets help paying the mortgage. But when it breaks down, both the tenant and the landlord can be left exposed. In this episode, we hear from tenants, a homeowner, advocates, policy experts, and a state senator about how this arrangement works, where it fails, and what it

would take to keep everyone housed. My colleague David Brand, who covers housing for WNYC and Gothamist, is with us throughout the event. Here's the conversation. I'd like to introduce you to my colleague, WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter, David Brand, and also, Andrea Hara Vez, Director of Social Service Programs, Grants, Administration, and Compliance here at Hanuk, who's hosting us tonight. Come on up, you two. So, Hanuk was founded in 1972 and has provided affordable housing, social services, and a whole lot more to over a million people. What great work you're doing. Thank you so much.

I'd like to start with you, Andrea. How are housing affordability issues impacting tenants and landlords differently? I think that we need to see the situation in both sides of the coin. I think that in the one hand, tenants are suffering increases in utilities, cost of living, transportation, food, for older adults, a huge amount of goes to medication. In the other hand, the landlords are also suffering increases in property taxes. they have just last year, the insurance went double. So both sides of the coin are suffering similar issues.

So I don't think that the conversation is tenants versus landlords. I think the conversation is to find unified support to protect both parties. And what's the key to addressing this housing crisis that not enough people are talking about? I think that the conversation should be in being proactive. to protect the tenants, being able to have majors to avoid evictions. Because once a family member or an individual lose the house, the problem becomes bigger. Then they don't just need permanent housing, but they need other social services, projects that is not cost effective.

So the priority will be to give them house and to help them to age in place. So David, like I said, we're focusing on owner-occupied rental homes. When you think about that, like even the fact that a homeowner has to rent out a floor in order to afford their mortgage, what does this arrangement tell us about the current housing market? When I think of owner-occupied rental homes, a landlord living on the first floor and has a tenant on the second or the third floor or living in the basement, this is such a crucial. part of our housing market. You know, there are hundreds of thousands of these two and three family homes all around this city, hundreds of thousands of tenants living in these apartments, and so it is so important. But I think it gets overshadowed in housing conversations. We tend to think about maybe a more Manhattan-centric or maybe western Brooklyn-centric

considerations about housing high-rises and large buildings. But, you know, it's a lot of, you know, why is that? Because I think where these are located, they're not captured in real estate industry reports when we think of median rents and we see median rent in Manhattan has reached $5,000. That doesn't tell us what's going on in Outerboro, Lower Density, Owner Occupied Units. And these aren't always the kinds of places you find on street, easy. I'm wondering, like, what can happen to the tenant or the homeowner or the neighborhood when an arrangement like that falls apart? Yeah, well, these arrangements, I think, are, symbiotic. And so it could be a more affordable apartment for a tenant, family living in one of these

homes. Their rent helps to cover mortgages, property taxes, utilities. And so the owner and the tenant depend on one another. And when it breaks down, whether that's the owner is raising the rent by some egregious amount or sells the home. And a new owner is interested in just evicting the tenant or not renewing their lease and raising the rent for a new tenant or demolishing the building or taking over the entire building, then that has such a profound effect on the tenant. Conversely, if the tenant isn't paying rent consistently and the owner depends on that for their own bills and own payments, and then that can really financially hurt the landlord. And then on a neighborhood level, as you ask, how does this affect whole communities? I mean, as we've seen, communities become

very hot, owners realize they can raise rent significantly and attract new tenants or sell their buildings. We see a lot of speculators buying these two and three family homes, getting rid of the tenants who are living there, and it can really have a dramatic effect on an entire neighborhood. Yeah. So, Ms. Hervis, I want to bring you back in the conversation as we wrap things up here. How do you, in the work that you do here at HANIC, how do you help these tenants who end up falling, I don't know, out of their home situation? So what we do in HANAC and we specialize is providing social services and providing any kind of need for any individual who needs assistance with housing.

We help them with Housing Connect, which is affordable housing. We help them to apply. We start the process with creating an email address to applying for them and to follow up to help them to get a unit. However, besides the social services, we also provide, whether it's a, program that is an estate program that helps them with affordable repairs, boiler, refrigerators, windows repairs, cause that the tenants can not afford. So we have different social service programs, but overall we are always trying to provide also legal help where they can not afford.

So we make sure that they can age in place. Very important work you're doing. Very important work. Thank you so much. Andrea, Director of Social Service Programs, Grants Administration, and Compliance here at Hanek. Andrea Hervez and David Brand described small rental homes as an overlooked but essential part of the city's housing market. But what does that relationship feel like from the tenant side? Next, voices from the Astoria Tenants Union. Say you have a very small building that's only six units and the landlord lives on the street. Like if you're a slumlord, you're never there.

You don't know the tenants, but landlords that live on the same street who like hate tenants if they're racist or homophobic or whatever, they just want to displace them for whatever reason. So that level of harassment is something that small tenants deal with it. I just don't think anyone else deals with it that lives in a big building. I think we need to go beyond a rent rollback. But if there's a way we can actually make housing affordable in a human right where how much you pay in rent depends on your income, again, still think there shouldn't be rent, period. but if there's going to be for now, it should be like the NYCHA model where like you lose your job, you're not going to lose your housing. Yeah. Joining us now is Doreen Muhammad and James Carr, members of the Astoria Tenants Union.

Hello. Hello. Doreen, I'd like to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about your housing story and what it was like living in small properties here in Queens? Sure. So I'm first generation. My parents are from Bangladesh. and I had undocumented parents, so I have that lived experience.

So that was the only option, were basement and or the small kind of under the table housing situations. And they were not good, right? I remember my basement apartment, like a spider coming out of the ceiling, like a really big one. I remember mice crawling on the walls and really horrendous living conditions that no one deserves. and we've seen this issue even in big buildings, you know, so the size doesn't really matter. Yeah. But that was definitely my experience. James, what can you tell us about your housing situation?

It's so, so. I mean, it's a small building, too. I'm lucky because it's not horrible. There's roaches and stuff falling apart, but it's not, so technically that's not habitable, but it's like habitable enough. It's fun. You know what I mean? Isn't it crazy?

Like the things we just take and accept as New Yorkers. It's like, oh, it's not horrible. There are roaches. It's not horrible, though. It's great. How did you find this place? My siblings. Okay.

Yeah. They helped me up. Doreen, what's been your go-to to find small properties? So actually, and just of what people are aware, in New York City, most people are not living in small properties, right? Like large landlords, corporate land or. to make a majority of it. Like, just to use a stat before I get into my story,

landlord's earning 10 or fewer units is only 13 to 15% of the city's total rental market. And you've expanded a definition to like one to five buildings on the street, kind of what James mentioned in the video. That's only 28 to 30% of the city's residential stock. So I just want to put that out there for context. If you're living in a smaller property, six units or less, etc., often you have less tenant protections and the law and et cetera.

And that was my leg's experience growing up. So I do not, and I refuse to live in those type of conditions anymore. It's unacceptable, whether it's basement apartments, someone's house. I've had landlords watch who goes in in our home, you name it. So how I've had to find apartments was through street easy, paying broker fees, because that was before, you know, the law was passed. And I've had to live in, like, mid-sized buildings with predatory messed up, you know, what do you call them?

LLC's property management, like Tri-Hill management, which is a slumlord. Yeah. Doreen gave us some context. I wanted to know if you wanted to respond to that. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. The majority, vast majority of housing stock is owned by larger property owners. But New York City is so huge that even 10%, 20%, 30%, is still a huge number. And I remember the Furman Center had a report a couple years ago about what they called low-density community districts, these more suburban-style parts of New York City. And relatively small portion of the housing stock, I think it was the, like 30% and 50% of the people living in those units were renters. But when you think about it, that's still like over a million people. And so I think that's part of the reason why it gets

overshadowed. But from a pure volume, it is a lot of people in a lot of apartments. Yeah. Doreen, you've had so many different lived experiences when it comes to New York City housing. When the owner lives in the same property as you, I'm just wondering, like, how can that affect someone's privacy or, you know, even their ability to, push for repairs, right? Like going upstairs like, hey, my tub is stopped up. I would say it's really not good. They will regulate who's entering your house. They may go through your mail, through your packages. Harassment can happen. Like, I'm South Asian, and if you're living in the South Asian immigrant communities, there's a lot of old-fashioned traditions and

judgment. So there's those issues as well, especially as women living on our own and not subscribing to heteronormativity or gender norms, you name it. And yeah, like they all try to get you to pay in cash so that they don't have a record of you living there or being a legal tenant. Like, there really is layered attack to make it a hostile environment where you feel like you're vulnerable and you have to settle for crumbs. Like, you have to be so thankful that you have a place and pay whatever price they want you to pay and they can hike it up how much they want.

and it's not covered on a good cause or rent stabilization or rent control or like NYCHA in public housing. So yeah, it's really not great. And, you know, being in the story of tenants union, the stories we hear from tenants living in those type of conditions as well as in larger ones, which are still a significant majority, it's all basically the same. It's the same ceilings caving in, rats, roach mice, mold issues, harassment, intimidation, unwilling to renew leases. It's really the same mumbo-jumbo. James, do you just want to add to the stories that you've heard? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's like a living nightmare. Every week someone is reaching out.

We have organized buildings that are big buildings, they're big buildings, they're slum lord buildings, but there's, oh yeah, there is a fair share of small buildings, and it is like the living hell in these places. And like what goes on in these places, especially with the proximity to the owner being there. But I would say the problems that come up most often for us are just an utter neglect of the unit, lack of repairs, harassment,

in the sense where you're trying to get someone to give up their housing rights and essentially vacate the unit and displace them so that you can move someone new at a higher rate. That's what we're hearing most often from people. And then there's tons of just lease shenanigans, not like disinterest in renewing, just, yeah. If I may add to that, we've seen small landlords, whether they live on site or not,

threaten ice and used as an intimidation tactic to harm and displace our neighbors. And honestly, that is violence, right? It's just like how homelessness is violence. Like, this is what they're weaponizing is that vulnerability and the power dynamics, right? I think it's important to think about whether it's a small landlord, large landlord, or etc. When you are dependent upon another entity for a roof over your head, on top of having a job and income to pay for rent, like that puts you in a vulnerable position. It doesn't matter if it's small landlord. That's how they're paying off their mortgage. And since when

did someone's quote-unquote right, as we call in this country property right, to own a house, more important than someone to have a roof over their head, right? So I just think we need to really keep that in mind that, like, tenants and landlords are not on equal footing. I do want to go back to something Doreen said earlier talking about the tenant protections that exist. And most of those apply to people who live in larger buildings like rent stabilization or good cause eviction you mentioned, which gives tenants in larger buildings or whose landlords own a larger portfolio opportunity to challenge, I think what they call absorbent rent increases. And tenants living in smaller properties, owner occupy properties, two and three unit buildings don't have those same levels of. protection. So there is more precarity. And in an ideal situation, there's an affordable rent, tenants are paying the rent, landlords aren't raising the rent significantly year over year,

and everything's working out. They're paying their bills. But in reality, that's often not the case. And so it can be a much more precarious living situation. Thanks, David. Doreen Muhammad and James Carr are both members of the Astoria Tenants Union. Give it up for them. Thank you so much. We've heard from tenants about what happens when informal rental agreements leave them with fewer protections. After the break, the other side of the same building, a homeowner who can't make his mortgage without the rent from his basement and why bringing that apartment up to code could cost him more than he'll ever collect. This is NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. This is NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. We're in Astoria Queens, looking at two and three family homes where the owner lives on one floor and rents out another. We've heard the tenant side. Now, the owners. What are some of the challenges with rising costs that you're dealing with now with your home? The number one thing is utility bills, you know. Because I have a two-family home. I pay them.

It ranges between $2.50. You can be over $3.50 sometime, you know, because I have a tenant in the basement. Have you had to raise rent? on the tenant? Yeah, unfortunately, the biggest heart is to tell the tenant. And it's hard because I know they're struggling also as I am to raise the rent, you know. Between a year, I raised my rent $100, which I think is very high. I wish me had more communication, you know.

Yeah, but it's not happening. Joining us now are homeowner Udid Bahari, Scott Kowanowski, General Counsel at the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, which works with low-to-moderate-income homeowners, and Annette Tociran, executive director of Chaya Community Development Corporation, which has led the basement legalization campaign for 15 years. Thank you all for being here. So, Uditt, yes, show love.

Udett, we just heard from you on the video here. How does the rent you receive fit into the monthly cost of keeping your home? The rent is very important, you know. if I don't get my rent I cannot pay my mortgage and basically his landlord we depend on the basement

and it's not legalized and every day you know if the department of billing is going to knock on the door I hope someday that the city would legalize this and make it secure for both myself

and the tenant and safety for everybody You know, and I wish the city would know more about this. Yeah, safety is definitely key. You talked a lot about utility costs, just breaking your back. If I can be a little nosy, Udit, when it comes to the lease agreement that you have with your tenant, is your tenant paying utilities or is it all on you? Well, I have two tenants.

I have the second floor, which they're about moving. in the 1st of September. So they're going to pay their own utility bill. But as for the basement, the landlord consumed that

bill. So it's a large amount of bill because you don't know what utility they have in them. I mean, it's privacy and I cannot ask them whatever they have. So I have to

absorb whatever bill come from the basement, I have to take it. But as I said, if everything legalized but then it would transform in a more placid way for everybody else. Scott, you know, Uditt's experience brings us to a broader misconception about small property

owners, right? People think they're balling out of control, you know, have the money to pay for the first round and maybe another. But from your work, how financially different is a low-to-moder income homeowner who lives in a two- or three-family home like Ududit? It's all very similar. So much of the work that we do and the work that we fund with legal services and housing counselors like Chaya, it's really just about working with very low to moderate income homeowners who are living month to month. And they come to us when they're in foreclosure, they're facing foreclosure. There's some distress. And they face a real threat to the viability of their health. housing. And, you know, one month or two months or three months of missed rent can completely put them behind and they cannot catch up. That's what I was going to ask. Like, how can a missed

month put an owner-occupied landlord at risk of foreclosure? Yeah, because, you know, a lot of the people that we work with, the homeowners that we work with, they might have a middle-income job, but they have, you know, New York City, the real estate market, the values in homes are extremely. And with that are really, really high mortgage payments and also inequitable property taxes and, you know, disproportionate taxes and the outer boroughs and, you know, the inner boroughs. And we know that the outer boroughs, a lot of the second and third rental units and the owner occupied homes, that's where, you know, you get the extra income to support all the other expenses. But then you have property taxes that are disproportionate and you have very high mortgage payments. And yeah. And, you know, everything, what Doreen was saying just resonates with me so much. And, you know, housing is a human right. And it goes both ways. And we see it both on the renter's side, but we see it also on the homeowner side. And, you know, you miss one or two or three months of rent, then that's displacement. That's the road to losing your home. And you cannot, it's almost impossible to recover that lost rent from a non-paying tenant.

Annetta, your focus is on basement apartment. Can you explain what makes a basement apartment legal or illegal in practical terms for us? Yeah. So really, the difference between an illegal unit, we refrain from using that term, by the way, versus a legal unit comes down to two things. Okay. One, it's about code, whether the unit meets a certain code requirements, and the code, the existing code requirements are not designed for small, modest homes. The second one is, is the unit officially part of the certificate of occupancy of the building?

So those are the two main sort of technical, sort of defining characteristics of whether a unit is legal or illegal. Okay. What I want to say, though, is that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, David mentioned that earlier. We think it's approximately 500,000 New Yorkers who are living below grade. I can assure you that thousands of people are struggling right now with bailing out their basements or we are hoping that there's been no catastrophes. But this is like a very, like this is an issue that is a struggle for folks every day. Yeah. And again, both tenants and homeowners. Like that's the thing. And we know

that tenants and homeowners can depend on the same property in different ways, right? But these buildings may not meet existing code requirements that you put me up on. What problems does that create for the tenants living in those apartments and the homeowners renting them out? Well, let's start with the tenants. As Doreen actually said, the tenants are vulnerable, right? They often don't have a lease, which means they have no legal standing. they are often, their relationships are often sort of, well, they're often informal, and there's,

you know, usually some community relationship and maybe a relative, it may be somebody from your village back home. Or your little cousin? You're a little cousin. There's some sort of a relationship. I'll say that actually it's very much based on trust, right? But that puts the tenant in a difficult position. Because if there's an issue and they raise a concern, they risk losing their home.

home, right? Overnight, they could be on the street. So tenants are without question in a vulnerable position. As you've heard from Mr. Bihari, the homeowners are also in a vulnerable position, right? Because there's often no lease agreement, they can't collect rent, right? The tenant can decide to not pay rent. And we know from nearly 25 years of doing this work at Chaya, we know that the vast majority of folks who rent out their units, actually nobody wants to rent out their unit. They rent out their units because they need to rent out their units. They are desperate for the income to pay their mortgages, to, you know, pay for basic living expenses. And so the vulnerability for what we know to be low to moderate income, often immigrant,

homeowners is that they risk losing their homes. And we've seen that over and over again. We saw that in the 2008 foreclosure crisis that really hit our communities particularly hard. So I think it's one of these places in the housing sort of conversation where homeowners and tenants are sort of in it together. I mentioned that Shaya has led the campaign to legalize basement apartments for the last 15 years. what would a workable legalization process need to provide for both the tenant and the homeowner? Okay. Let me first say that I want to acknowledge that while Chaya has been in the forefront, we could not have done this work without many of our partners,

and some of them are in the room, and you'll hear from them later. But what a workable program would look like, first of all, money, right? As we know, the city has a program. however, without the state support and the state, currently the state pilot allows for legalization in 15 community districts, only one in Queens. And we know that 40% of the homes basement units or cellar units are in Queens. So that's very, very problematic. So we need a citywide program. We need funding to upgrade a unit.

to meet code requirements takes anywhere from at best 100,000, but most likely up to 300,000, right? So real investment from the city. Homeowners need to be assured that they're not gonna be fined. There needs to be an amnesty so that they are protected from past penalties and from any risk of future penalties. And there needs to be real protections for tenants in this process. Tenants need to be able to return to the units.

The units need to be guaranteed to be affordable if the city supports the conversion of the units. But I would say really what it comes down to is a real commitment and investment from the city along with the state laws to allow for legalization across the city. You heard from Mr. Bihari that in his neighborhood, he's not able to legalize a unit, right?

We know tonight, Hollis Queens, one of the most heavily impacted neighborhoods during the Ida storm, that is not a neighborhood that is part of the pilot. This neighborhood, Astoria, is not part of the pilot. So that's really problematic. Yeah, and David, we were just talking about Ida and that impact. Do you want to add anything about basement apartments? You know, talking about the challenges to legalization.

I know the city did a pilot program in East New York, encouraging people to try to bring their basements up to code so they could run them out legally. And I think one person ended up going through with that and then they dropped out too because the cost was in the six figures. And without some type of city support or state support, then even an owner that does go through that process and takes out loans to spend potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring a basement up to code will then probably try to offset that or maybe be forced to offset that by raising the rent. And so it doesn't become affordable housing. And so this is a very challenging situation.

Yeah. Udid, I looked over and you were agreeing with nearly everything, Annette was saying. What can the city do for you? Well, to bring the basement to legalize it, the city should help homeowners with a loan, free interest loan, because, as David said, you know, there's a lot of money to do the coding. In the way, nobody back should be turned against each other. It would be the city, the tenant, the landlord. They should give homeowners credit, like a monetary reward for doing this. And as I said, a loan of free interest or a low-cost interest.

Because I know it's going to be a lot of money to do it. I hope the city will listen to us because one family is too much to be on the street. You know? Yeah. That's Udid Bahari. Scott Kowmanowski is General Counsel at the Center for NYC Neighborhoods and Annetta Situran, Executive Director of Chaya Community Development Corporation. Thank you all so much.

Thank you. We just heard how one or two missed months of rent can put a small homeowner on the road to foreclosure and how expensive it can be for a homeowner to make their basement apartment legal. Next, a friend of the show, Troy King. known online as Scourge Bliss shares what navigating New York City's affordable housing system has looked like for him. Please welcome Troy Kingston. Hello, hello. How's everybody doing today?

Okay. So for a long time, finding an affordable apartment in New York City, it almost felt like a second job. Except it was a job where I could do everything right and still get rejected. It took me five years to get a little. apartment after being kicked out young. I actually got rejected multiple times before I landed a place. I'm 24 and I acquired my rent-stabilized apartment in March and it's been a major blessing for me. Beforehand, I was constantly checking Housing Connect, applying the lotteries, looking at income requirements, gathering documents, and waiting and waiting. I applied to any and every waiting list

you could think of, old and new. Sometimes I would apply to be on a waiting list and they'd actually asked me, how did you even find this? I mean, sometimes you'd finally hear back only to find out you made a little too much, you made a little too little, or there was some other requirement you didn't meet. And I think that's something a lot of us can relate to. We hear all the time that there's affordable housing out there, but actually finding it can feel like you're searching for a needle in a haystack. Then you actually find the needle and somebody comes out of the woodwork saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, actually, we have to actually make sure this is like legit. We have to look at your tax returns before you even touch the needle. And I feel like that's extremely dystopian.

For me, that experience became part of the reason why I actually started talking about housing online. It felt frustrating. Affordable housing exists, but it feels like it's not easy to obtain or understand at all. A lot of my content now is about how housing lotteries work, things people don't know about affordable housing in general, development, tenant issues, and property management. Now that I'm actually a property manager, I became a property manager two months ago. Congrats. Thank you.

I also talk about deed theft and trying, you know, and I try to explain things to New Yorkers so they can actually understand what's going on. And the more I've learned about housing, I've realized that New Yorkers don't just need the information. They need to be able to access and understand it. Because how can we tell somebody to think about homeownership when they don't even have

a stable housing foundation to build from? And that foundation can look different for everybody. Sometimes it's a two-family home where somebody rents out the other unit. Sometimes it's a homeowner renting out a basement apartment. Sometimes it's a small property only where only one or two tenants. And on the other side, it's a New Yorker who might depend on one of those apartments because that's what they can actually afford. I actually used to rent out a room and a basement apartment in Flatlands, Brooklyn, for $1,050 a month.

And it helped me tremendously. It wasn't the best apartment. The landlord constantly went downstairs. Sometimes he would go, he had a backyard area. He would go to his backyard without telling me. and I had a moment where he actually put a bird in my kitchen. It was very disturbing. But on the other hand, it did help me tremendously.

So when I talk about the housing crisis, I think that it's a point that we talk about that part of the market too, because ultimately behind the numbers, pictures, lotteries, and arguments about housing are regular New Yorkers who are just trying to find a place they can live. And I know what that's like firsthand. And as somebody who hopes to one day own a home in New York, it's a big part of the reason why I talk about housing today.

Thank you. Our final panel widens the lens to the policies and market forces behind these experiences, how New York defines small landlords, how home clipping affects homeowners and tenants, and whether Housing Corps can better protect both. Joining us are Brad Greenberg of the NYU Furman Center, Sylvia Morse of the Pratt Center for Community Development, and State Senator Julia Salazar. Thanks so much for being here.

All right, Brad, I'd like to start with you. Your team studies property ownership trends and the impact city, state, and federal policy, the impact of that on state, city, and federal policy on landlords. And both tenants also alike, what differences are you seeing between smaller and larger landlords when it comes to rents, housing violations, and eviction filings? Sure. So, first of all, it's very hard to define what a small landlord is. So we do our best to kind of follow the way they do it in various regulatory schemes.

So the good cause bill, which was mentioned earlier, is a portfolio of 10 or more units, makes you subject to the good cause rules. If you're below that at a portfolio level, you're not. Rent stabilization is six or more units at a building level. Property tax schemes will usually say four units are more. It makes you part of class two, which is multifamily. So everybody has a different rule for what a small landlord is. What we do at the firm center is we track.

at the portfolio and the building level, usually. The portfolio level is really hard. We have really great data scientists and they try to pull the portfolio information, but it's not so easy. You're kind of like pulling business addresses and officers from LLCs and pulling together who owns what. When we do that portfolio analysis,

usually we'll find that smaller landlords have a lower eviction filing rate on a per unit basis than other portfolio sizes. We also see them having lower violations rate that are Class C violations, which are hazardous violations, but sometimes higher violation rates that are Class A or B violations, which is traditionally more paperwork. What I'll say about data when you look at it this way is some of that might be what Arlene alluded to earlier, where the tenants who live in smaller properties are afraid to call HPD, afraid to call 311 and have an inspector come out because they're living in an illegal unit, so you'll have fewer violations.

some of the explanation for some of the eviction filing differences could be because you have informal evictions or other ways of getting tenants out in those units and you can't file for a formal eviction. So the data is always a little imperfect. The last thing I'll say on rents is that we do typically see corporate landlords or entity landlords charging higher rents, especially when they're buying the property immediately than a non-corporate landlord. And we do usually see small landlords, at least at the asking rent level, asking for less rent. But they also turn over less often in smaller buildings. And so part of it is small landlords not maybe even knowing the market because they have fewer units that they're renting and it's turning over less often.

So the data can be very interesting at an aggregate level and difficult to parse. Yeah, yeah. And thank you for defining small landlords for us because what? That's a lot. Walking out here. Right? Seriously, especially you. But I'm wondering, Brad, what does policy makers consider?

when deciding which owners count as small landlords? You know, I think honestly when we look at the Good Cause Bill and other things that a lot of, there's also a new rule around housing court elements for small landlords that uses a similar approach. I would say legislators should look more at outcomes and less to try to define who is what and what bands and what categories. And what I mean by that is like, do people have an affordable place to live, whether it's a small landlord or a big landlord, is it affordable? Is the quality good? Is it habit of? good, is it habitable? Are there conditions that are hazardous for people that are living there? Are there costs in the operating environment that are escalating too quickly for homeowners and

tenants who inevitably take on that cost to be able to afford to stay where they are? These are the outcomes that I think, kind of regardless of property size, policymakers need to focus on. And if they focus there, regardless of property size, you'll get better outcomes in the housing market overall. You know, size isn't the only force shaping what happens to these homes, right? Sylvia, your work examines how investors target small properties. How can home flippers and other investors take advantage of homeowners dealing with mortgage trouble or maintenance costs? Yeah, so at Pratt Center, we were a community-based research and policy organization.

We've been around for a little over 60 years, and our model is that we partner with community groups like child. We work with them on basement legalization and as part of the N-Toxic Home Flipping Coalition. So the research that we do is really driven by what housing organizers, advocates, service providers, and residents are seeing day to day. And that I just want to start by saying that's where this research started. It started with community organizers, including at Cypress Hills and East New York Coalition for Community Advancement, that we're seeing investors coming in, offering all cash offers. using aggressive predatory tactics.

And then they would see the home turnover very quickly, also seeing tenants losing their home in that process. And so the research we did, which also builds on research, started at Center for NYC Neighborhoods. Lots of us know each other here. So we identified that in a five-year period, just looking at 2021 to 2025, there were more than 10,000 homes flipped citywide of these one to three unit or co-op

and condo apartments. And that means they were resold within less than two years of when they were last purchase. This is often done by LLCs, and it can be very challenging to, people often want to say, well, who are the worst flippers? It's very, very challenging to identify those networks

of flippers. But, you know, we also heard mentions of deed theft, right? Like, anytime that homeowners are struggling with their mortgage payments have municipal debts, or there's a death in the family and there's unclear title to the home, These are things that people who have a business model of speculation, whether that's home flipping or other practices, they are looking for homeowners in that situation.

And one thing that we found is that, you know, in neighborhoods, again, home flipping is happening. The areas with the highest rates of home flipping are 90% people of color. The racial disparities are even greater for black New Yorkers. And home flippers are paying less than the median home flipping. value of the neighborhood for the homes they're buying, and then selling for above median home value. So they're driving up home prices and making their profits through these low ball and predatory offers. Yeah. David, you want to talk more about that? Yeah, I just think, you know, Pratt Center is like key researchers on this, and I know Senator Salazar has introduced legislation that's meant to

address this type of flipping, but it has an impact on tenants too, because if the home resells a new owner, either to make up their investment or because they want to just totally clear the building, we'll now try to get rid of the tenants who are there. So it's not only affecting owners, it's affecting the tenants and entire neighborhoods. Yeah. Okay, now to my favorite part. Let's talk about state policy. So Senator Salazar, how should state law treat owner occupants differently from large landlords without weakening protections for their tenants? Sure. So there's a lot to say here. To preface this, I was the author of the Good Cause Eviction Bill. I carried it for five and a half years before it became law. Thank you for your work. Oh, absolutely. No, of course. And I really appreciate the work of everyone here and also the experiences that have been shared, which are quite a range, including, I would say, actual small property owners, right?

The majority, I do think it's important to emphasize that the vast majority of renters in New York City, which also are the majority of New York City residents, do not live in a small property that is occupied by the owner of that property. And I also speak from the perspective of a renter. I'm a renter. I've been a renter my entire adult life and have lived in these different rental. situations, including living in a home in East New York where I lived in a unit that was created from a single family home, and the owner lived in that home. I currently live in a building that is not a large building, but the landlord is pretty small. It's like eight units. Previously lived in a building that was only two units, but doubtlessly a large landlord, because a according to public records, owns hundreds of properties.

And I mentioned that because, you know, some of the previous conversations we had, I think that there's a natural tendency to associate a smaller property with being a small landlord, but to talk about what both of my fellow panelists have mentioned and Sylvia's point about the, predatory or and toxic home flipping act, a bill that I sponsor, we are increasingly seeing predatory investors who these are not small homeowners, right? In fact, they are a threat to

people who actually want to own homes to live in, coming into neighborhoods like East New York, like Jamaica, Queens, in fact, definitely preying on black and brown residents and communities, coming in and buying single or small multifamily homes and flipping them for an enormous profit. So I think it's important to your question about how do we protect tenants and owner-occupied buildings without, while still considering the rights of these small homeowners, I think one of the most important ways that we can protect small property owners is through legislation like a flip tax, like the, and toxic home flipping act. We, again, we see these investors coming in.

They target not only black and brown communities, but But seniors, elders, people who they know may be cash poor, even though they own property. And they come in, they offer them way less than their home is worth. But because they know that they're between a rock and a hard place, they feel pressured. They might not really have a choice. They take that money for their home that they may have put their life savings into. They probably can't even afford to move in New York City. They're gone to Miami.

They're gone. Yeah, they're gone. Or like Long Island, which, like, you know, offense. Whatever. I'm glad you're staying in the state ideally. But regardless, like, you're not in the city anymore. That's been your home and that you probably wanted that property to be home for, you know, the generations after you. And that's not an option.

And then the person who bought your home for that low price, probably all in cash, is flipping it in a short period of time. often months later for, we're talking like, these are real cases, like 400% profit. It is crazy. Wow. And then bad for the tenants, bad for local property owners who are seeing their property taxes and other expenses increase as a result of that. It's just like making it unaffordable for people who actually live here.

That alarm wasn't for you. Yeah, no, it's okay. Good timing. Can I jump on that? So it's also a challenge for people who are prospective homebuyers as well. So they are not only competing with flippers who are coming in with these cash offers, but then they're looking at a market of flipped homes. And just to shout out another nonprofit local news, city limits, Patrick Spouser, did a great investigation on this and looked at one block in Jamaica where there were five flips just on that one block. And a homeowner told his story of buying a flipped

property, it looked good, and then they moved in and he had to put in $20,000 to $30,000 in structural improvements, right? So it's a challenge for everyone no matter where you are in your housing journey. Yeah. We talked about how ugly things can get when a renter decides not to pay rent for a month or to, Senator, what changes to Housing Court would help resolve non-payment cases before a tenant loses their housing or, you know, a vulnerable homeowner is pushed into foreclosure? Yeah, we cannot have a one-size-fits-all model for housing court the way that we currently do, in my opinion. I think it's wonderful that we technically legally have a right to counsel for tenants in housing court in New York City, universally. But that in practice is not necessarily the reality because there's been insufficient investment in that model by the city, by the state.

There really aren't enough attorneys to meet the need and the demand of indigent clients who find themselves in housing court. And certainly for truly small property owners, they may not be able to afford legal counsel. They're not these big management companies that are evicting tenants who have in-house counsel or whatever, like quite the opposite. It's really difficult for a small property owner. And so I think that policy at the city and state level needs to address that. It's not always a popular position among people who I'm otherwise aligned with on policy, but I think that it's a good policy for housing court to work more efficiently. and for people who need support to have that support, whether they are tenants or homeowners. Before I let you all go quickly, what's your favorite housing right?

I mean, I woke up and went to bed every day for years thinking about good cause of fiction. So it's my favorite housing right, yeah. I mean, rights for, and, you know, as a tenant unregulated, otherwise unregulated housing, I think it's good cause of fiction. I want everyone to learn about it. Sylvia. It's so hard to choose a favorite, but I'll go with rent stabilization because it held me down for many years and everyone should have it.

Brett? I think I'm a fan of the Housing Maintenance Code, which I know is a strange thing to say, but it's a very meaningful thing that we at least have a baseline standard of living for people in this city that we're trying to enforce. Whether we do a good job of it, I don't know. But I think people should live in beautiful. homes that are high quality. It's a very basic foundational thing people need. And at least we have

a code. Yeah. What about you, David? I don't know if I call it my favorite, but one I've definitely spent a lot of time covering in recent years is the outlong source of income discrimination where property owners, agents, brokers can't refuse housing to someone because they're using a government subsidy to pay the rent. That's actually a right in the state and in the city that's actually under siege right now. And it's at the appeals court, whether property owners can refuse to rent to someone because they have a federal Section 8 subsidy or something else. So I think there's going to be a lot more to come on that in the coming months. That's WNYC's housing reporter David Brand, Brad Greenberg, Executive Director of the NYU Furman Center, Sylvia Morse, Director

of Policy and Research. at the Pratt Center for Community Development and State Senator Julius Salazar. Thank you all so much. I'd like to thank our host, Hanek, Andreas Herves, our panelists, New York State Senator Julia Salazar, Brad Greenberg, Sylvia Morse, Ude Bahari, Scott Kawanowski, Aneta Ciccheron, Doreen Mohammed, and James Carr,

our special guest, Troy Kingston, WNYC's David Brand, Christopher Worth, Jared Marcel, Marlowe-Wills, Mariana Navarretti, Uver Eru Ekpenobi, Waintsilmeister, Rijie Vikram, and our editor-in-chief, Stephanie Clary, as well as New York Public Radio CEO, Christy Tanner. Thanks to our funders and supporters as well, and thank you to my big friend, all of you.

That was in conversation, recorded last week in Astoria Queens. Thanks to Hanna Harmony JVL Older Adult Center for hosting us and to everyone who came out. Coming up Wednesday, WNYC's Ryan Koss joins me to recap the summer, the Nix, the World Cup, the heat, the floods, the smoke, and a parasite nobody can pronounce. Stay tuned. I'm Jene Pierre. This is NYC now. See you next time.