Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, Brooklyn! So, over these past weeks, countless Americans across all 50 states have participated in something larger than any single person, something transformative, something that has sent shock waves across our nation. We stood in lines that in some places circled the block. We waited early in the morning and long after the sun had set. And while we may have walked through the doors alone, we witnessed greatness together.
From Brownsville, Brooklyn, to Brownsville, Texas, Brunswick, Maine, to Talkeetna, Alaska, Americans set aside three hours to go to the movies and see Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's unparalleled new film, You Can See Everything.
And as we gather together today to sign the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, into law, I cannot help but feel like we are empowering tenants to do exactly what Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans claim to have devoted themselves to doing for one another: build monuments of love.
Now, I want to acknowledge we have a number of leaders both inside and outside of city government who are here with us today. We have our Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, Leila Bozorg, who is here. We have our Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants Director, Cea Weaver, who's here. Our HPD Commissioner, Dina Levy, who is here with us. Member of the Knicks starting five, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. State Senator Julia Salazar, welcoming us to her district. Assembly Member-elect Illapa Sairitupac. We want to acknowledge Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation for hosting us, Michael G. Johnson. We want to acknowledge the New York City Community Land Initiative, which has been led by Deyanira Del Río of the New Economy Project, with tireless advocates from more than 30 member organizations. And we also want to acknowledge Debra Ack, East New York Community Land Trust, for being here.
Now, while we acknowledge and appreciate all who are here, I especially want to thank Council Member Sandy Nurse. I want to thank Sandy for her leadership. I want to thank her for her tenacity, and I want to thank her for her commitment in shepherding this bill, because we would not be here today without you.
Now, across the five boroughs of our city, countless buildings have been allowed to become the opposites of monuments to love. They have become monuments to profit. New Yorkers reckon with the consequences when the buildings they call home are sold to for-profit buyers who are just looking to flip the properties or to extract as much rent as possible without making repairs.
While many buyers are decent, careful stewards of the properties they buy, too many others treat their new assets only as something from which value exists to be extracted, the well-being of their tenants simply a secondary concern. The repercussions of this have been stark. Tenants have been pushed out of affordable homes. Hazardous building conditions have piled up. Neglect and mistreatment have become all too common. And the affordability crisis, of which we know housing is the single largest driver, has only grown worse.
In May, when we announced our landmark housing plan, Block by Block, we made a promise to New Yorkers: that we would deliver some of the strongest and most expansive tenant protections anywhere in the United States, and that we would preserve 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
Within that promise was a commitment to expand opportunities to transfer ownership of many buildings to responsible stewards, like community land trusts, nonprofits and even the tenants themselves.
Now, unlike Theranos, City Hall believes in keeping the promises we make. That is why I am so proud today to sign COPA into law, a historic piece of legislation that will provide vetted community organizations with the right of first opportunity to make an offer on eligible buildings before they go to the open market.
And I am so grateful to Council Member Nurse, not only for her tireless work to bring us to this moment, but for crafting this bill by listening to the perspectives of New Yorkers who have had to endure year after year of neglect and of suffering.
This law will give New Yorkers a tool to keep their homes out of the hands of predatory investors seeking to make a quick and easy buck.
Here's how it will work: When the owner of an eligible building decides to put their building up for sale, qualified entities will be notified first. They will have 20 days to notify both the owner and HPD if they have an intent to purchase, and 70 days to make a competitive offer. If no qualified entity makes an offer within those 20 days, or if every offer is rejected by the end of that 70-day period, the property can be listed on the open market.
The buildings that will be eligible under COPA are not just any buildings. They are multifamily buildings that have long been victims of pernicious cycles of speculation, those which have been bought and resold by corporate owners to squeeze every dollar of value out of them.
That is not a victimless process. The tenants are the ones squeezed. And too many New Yorkers have reckoned with that squeeze when their homes go unrepaired, when their requests for maintenance go unanswered month after month, when absentee landlords leave their properties in perpetual disrepair.
New Yorkers are tired of asking bad landlords why they own properties and abandon them. Tired of when they say that repairs are imminent and yet they never come. They are tired of seeing their lies to tenants again and again before hearing them have the gall to ask, "Why would I deceive you?"
Today, we take the power out of the hands of those who have abused it for far too long and place it in the responsible trust of those who care about their fellow New Yorkers because they are our fellow New Yorkers.
So, once again, I want to just thank every single elected official, organizer and advocate for making this day possible. Because progress, yes, it is something that we celebrate, and also we know that it is not inevitable. It has to be won. And were it not for the people here, led by this council member, this would not have been won. We would not have been able to celebrate, and New Yorkers would have been robbed of a tool to keep their affordable housing affordable.
And with that, I will pass it over to our Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants Director, Cea Weaver.
Cea Weaver, Director, Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants: Thank you, Mayor. And I also have heard that we have a few birthdays in the house. So happy birthday to Day, Will, Alexis, Jen and Brian. A lot of Scorpio COPA fans in the house. Happy birthday.
What a great way to celebrate. This event has really been a long time coming. And it's especially great to be here at Cypress Hills LDC's Chestnut Commons, which is showing just how beautiful affordable housing that is managed by community stewards can really be. It's very beautiful. It's beautiful to be here.
For six years, organizers with UHAB and so many others across the city have been fighting to pass COPA here in New York. You all have persevered through multiple mayors and even a veto to finally reach this day. Congratulations, and I'm so proud that it was never a question of whether our mayor, this mayor, would veto this bill, because in our administration, we're so proud to stand firmly with tenants who are fighting to preserve their homes.
Every day since we took office, you can see how we have stood on the side of organized tenants against negligent landlords. We have taken the historic step of intervening in court proceedings to support tenants facing bankruptcy. We have won HPD's largest-ever civil penalty in the Bronx at Robert Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers. We are launching the Critical Repairs Initiative to address important repairs and speed up wait times for tenants who live in our public housing. And we have held NYCHA in Your Neighborhood events and Ren