Sanchez speaks on making CONH program permanent and stronger

Do the stanky leg.

Okay.

Very, very excited.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you to my 30 colleagues who have signed on as co-sponsors to this legislation.

And I'm just going to take a moment of privilege to thank Ben Ratner from our team, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, who has treated this as his legislative baby.

The legislative baby will be born today after the vote.

So, look, every tenant in New York City deserves to live free of harassment, regardless of their citizenship status.

In New York City, it's already unlawful for landlords to retaliate against any tenant who's exercising their rights as a tenant.

For instance, if they're suffering from a rat infestation and they call 311, it is unlawful for that landlord to call to harass that tenant and retaliate.

However, we are seeing rising instances of harassment, and specifically we're at a time where the federal government is targeting immigrant communities, and we have to ensure that all of our neighbors are receiving the strongest possible tenant protection.

So that's why today the council is voting on 839A, legislation that will make the certification of no harassment program permanent and stronger.

The CONH program was first created in 2018 to deter owners from using construction as harassment.

And from displacing tenants from their home.

After two successful pilots, the CONH has proven itself useful for identifying high-risk buildings and deterring bad actors from bad behavior.

So today we're building on that success and codifying CONH as a permanent tool in the city's enforcement toolkit.

Specifically, the program is changing to respond to rising reports of landlords threatening to call ICE on their tenants by expanding the definition of harassment.

Second, we're going to be monitoring problematic portfolios by reviewing all buildings that have the same owner to those with a finding of harassment.

And third, we're creating stronger incentives to clear violations by allowing buildings to exit the program only if owners significantly improve building conditions for their tenants.

Finally, this bill is clarifying that basic maintenance continues to be allowed.

Y'all, basic maintenance is allowed.

The CONH program for the buildings that are within the program does not disallow basic repairs.

That has been some misinformation that has been out there.

I want to take a moment to really address it.

And then just to close, I want to thank all of my colleagues, the Coalition of Advocates, and especially ANHD, who have long championed this program.

And going forward, I'm going to be talking about the program.

I'm looking forward to working with the administration, with HPD, to steward this program to its best version possible.

Thank you, Speaker.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.