Dozens of Queens tenants boarded two buses before dawn Tuesday, embarking on an early journey to Albany to advocate for greater tenant protections.
“As this affordability and housing crisis continues, people don’t have the safety nets that they need or the programs or help from the government that they need to be able to survive during this crisis,” Leslie Ariza, a media associate for Make the Road New York, said.
Tenant advocates and hundreds of renters across the state are convening in the capital on Tuesday, rallying in support of two legislative bills.
One of them is Good Cause Eviction, which advocates say will protect tenants from unreasonable rent hikes and retaliatory or discriminatory evictions. Under the proposed bill, if rent is raised more than 3%, and a tenant is unable to pay the increase, they can cite “Good Cause” as a defense in an eviction case, leaving it up to a judge to determine if the rent hike is justified.