In March, the Mamdani administration released its SPEED report — a set of reforms to accelerate affordable housing timelines that were based on more than 100 roundtables with developers, advocates, and industry groups.
The city brought the people who run buildings into the process before the policy was written, not after, and the result was a set of reforms the industry actually supports and can result in immediate progress. That’s a model worth applying to tenant engagement standards. Unfortunately, it’s an important step that the July Rental Ripoff Hearing Report did not incorporate.
The New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH) represents mission-driven owners and developers — nonprofit and for-profit alike — who took on 40-year affordability covenants when it would have been more profitable to walk away. Members like RiseBoro Community Partnership have spent years absorbing rising costs with nowhere left to cut.
Owners of regulated affordable housing already operate under some of the deepest reporting and monitoring requirements in residential real estate, and many of the transparency goals behind this proposal are ones NYSAFAH members already meet in practice.
At RiseBoro, resident engagement isn’t treated as a box to check. We are in the business of developing and maintaining dignified, affordable homes, which is only possible through robust tenant engagement. It’s why in my first year as CEO, I met with tenants at each of our 147 affordable housing buildings, who now all have my cell phone and call day or night. We don’t want to treat engagement as a legal obligation to be documented, but rather a relationship to be built.
Much in the Rental Ripoff Report deserves support. Pursuing repeat offenders through inspections, enforcement and litigation aims at the right target. So does requiring listings to disclose AI-altered images, ending surprise fees, and protecting tenants from harassment over immigration status. Those cost a responsible owner nothing, because we do not do them. However, the report risks saddling responsible owners with more paperwork and litigation exposure while doing nothing about the buildings run by owners who actively neglect their tenants.
The Community Preservation Corp. and Enterprise Community Partners have documented what many nonprofits already know from their own books: insurance costs on rent-stabilized portfolios are up more than 60% since 2020, operating expenses statewide have climbed roughly 40% over the past decade, and many affordable buildings are in the red.
Rent is still the only revenue line most of these properties have, and it is capped by regulation. A mandate with no funding attached doesn’t come out of profit margins that don’t exist anymore. Instead, it comes out of maintenance budget and reserves — the same reserves that keep a building from falling into the disrepair this administration is trying to prevent.
A better version approach is available, and the city doesn’t have to invent it from scratch: apply the SPEED approach going forward. Bring owners, tenant advocates, and the agencies that already collect violation and complaint data into the room and build a standard that targets enforcement at actual bad actors instead of burying good ones in new paperwork. Pair any new tenant protection with the resources necessary to implement it.
New York doesn’t have a shortage of good ideas about tenant engagement; it has a shortage of policy that is the result of collaboration. Organizations and operators like us share the goal of safe, well-maintained, genuinely affordable housing for every tenant. We are asking for our partners in government to approach this vital work with the same process that got SPEED right.
Harrington is CEO of RiseBoro Community Partnership. Rivera is president and CEO of NYSAFAH.