Catherine Mursak of Samamkaya Yoga urges commercial rent stabilization

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify online today.

I really appreciate the council's efforts and the bills being discussed today, but New York needs commercial.

commercial rent stabilization so that small businesses can survive, not just open.

My name is Catherine Mursak, and I'm a worker owner at Samamkaya Yoga Back Care and Scoliosis Collective, a worker-owned cooperative yoga studio providing therapeutic classes online and in Chelsea.

In my cooperative business, we invested in a studio space for people with differently shaped bodies and abilities.

As a democratic workplace, our teachers all have a vote in important decisions about the business.

We negotiated a 10-year lease on our space, which we have specially built out for our needs with the yoga rope walls and storage shelves and took out a lot of loans to do that.

But rising rent still leaves our future uncertain.

Our small studio space has limits to how many students we can host and how much we can ask our students to pay.

A long lease is not security if we cannot afford to stay.

The Storefront Business Bill of Rights offers really useful protections, but temporary extensions cannot replace lasting affordability.

Grants for legacy businesses should secure affordable rent, not merely a lease term.

And a private right of action is only useful to business owners who can actually afford that.

Every year, countless well-loved and viable businesses are forced to close or move out of their community because landlords jack up their rent as soon as they see that the business is doing well or that the neighborhood is gentrifying.

And I disagree with the alleged claim that commercial rents overall remain below pre-pandemic levels, and I would really like to see the data that backs up that claim.

Please advance a city commercial rent stabilization bill to introduction, a hearing and passage, carrying forward Fair Rent NYC's recommendations.

Please note we're referring to this as commercial rent stabilization, not control, to promote reasonable rent increases and prevent the kind of doubling and tripling of rent that was raised by Councilmember Brewer.

We're not asking for commercial rent freezes, as the name commercial rent control would suggest.

Time expired.

Okay, I just wanted to say that there's another Catherine Mursik, and that's my colleague, Olympia Kazi.

She didn't receive a link.

So if you could call her as well, I'd appreciate it.

And I will submit a written testimony for the rest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Laura Soule.

You may begin.