Brad Hoylman Wants To Help Tenants Avoid Eviction: New Plan

LOWER MANHATTAN, NY — Lower Manhattan and West Village State Senator Brad Hoylman announced a new plan Monday in his bid for the Manhattan Borough President's Office — and it has to do with tenant's rights and their ability to organize in the face of eviction.

The state senator's plan revolves around the creation of different "Manhattan Tenants Unions," which would organize tenants who rent from the same landlord and help them avoid eviction by connecting the group with the landlord and negotiating ways to reduce rent or set up payment plans.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of households are struggling to pay rent and will continue to do so despite the local eviction moratorium getting extended to May 1.

“We all know that power lies in groups, not individuals," Hoylman said in a news release. "The Borough President’s office has an ideal combination of street-level presence among renters and tenant advocacy groups; connections to landlords; links to volunteer mediation and legal services organizations; and a bully pulpit to successfully facilitate mediated, negotiated compromises between groups of tenants and landlords to avoid mass evictions and court cases."

Here are the six steps Hoylman identifies as being crucial to his "Tenant Union Rent Negotiation Service."

• Develop an online portal and telephone intake system for tenants seeking to negotiate rent reductions and/or payment plans, and leverage the City’s current tenant hotlines;
• Identify, connect and organize tenants from multiple buildings renting from the same landlord or holding company into “tenant unions” that can fairly negotiate with landlords;
• Locate and invite landlords to negotiate with these tenant unions as an efficient and cost-effective way to avoid mass evictions and litigation;
• Utilize neutral government and volunteer mediators to conduct the negotiations;
• Work to create “templates” of accepted rent reduction and payment plans that can be replicated for similar buildings and for similar groups of tenants borough-wide and city-wide; and
• Assist tenants in setting up one-on-one negotiations with the City’s new Landlord-Tenant Mediation Project if no tenant union can be formed in a given situation.

You can find out more about Hoylman's bid for Manhattan Borough President here.