✼ Citywide Housing Policy Priorities in 2025 ✼

1. SUPPORT TENANTS BY FIGHTING BACK AGAINST GREED & NEGLECT.

Freeze the rent:

• Eric Adams authorized 9% in rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments. We need to freeze the rent so working-class families can better afford this city.
• Many rent-stabilized buildings are owned by speculators who paid too much for them and placed too much debt on them. Our next mayor needs to create workable, tenant-focused incentives for repair and to facilitate responsible exit for owners who cannot maintain their properties.
   

Get abusive landlords out of business:

• Apartment buildings are literally crumbling, especially in Black and brown neighborhoods. Rather than respond only to tenant complaints, the city should greatly expand its Alternative Enforcement Program to proactively inspect every building in communities with high rates of maintenance issues every two years.
• Too often, landlords fail to make urgently needed repairs. The Ben-Z Law would mandate annual inspections of steam radiators in apartments where a child aged five and under resides, and in the common areas of the buildings where such apartments are located. Inspection of a steam radiator would also be required if the owner knows or has reason to know about a potential defect or damage of the radiator.
• Too many fines for maintenance violations go uncollected. The next mayor should automatically collect fines for unresolved violations, while developing processes for foreclosure among abusive and unresponsive landlords that transfer properties to community ownership through Neighborhood Restore after 9 months.
• The city is able to help tenants fight back in court when landlords cannot maintain their buildings, to have a responsible administrator appointed.  But HPD’s support for these actions, known as 7A, is underfunded. The next mayor should dramatically increase funding for 7A actions to quadruple the program’s current workload.
• Speculators use their buildings as virtual piggy-banks, taking on more and more debt on their properties while neglecting their maintenance and raising rents. The next mayor should use all their powers to crack down on financial speculation by refusing to do business with banks that do not enforce responsible underwriting practices.
• When speculators cannot pay their loans, the city should step in to acquire debt that is past due or at risk of foreclosure, and use this vehicle to create a pipeline for tenant and community ownership, in the Signature portfolio and beyond. 
   

Build community & tenant power to resist, disrupt, and sustain:

• The City Council fights every year to provide funding for the tenant and community organizing groups who help people fight for their rights. The next mayor should baseline and triple funding for these contracts.
• The community-based tenant and housing groups that build social housing are struggling after decades of underfunding. The next mayor should create a new program to provide operating support and capacity-building assistance for Community Land Trusts (CLTs), Community Development Corporations (CDCs), and tenant cooperatives, to make it easier to create the next generation of social housing.
   

Level the playing field in housing court & housing search:

• Currently, New York City’s Right to Counsel (RTC) initiative is not funded enough to meet tenant needs in housing court. Nor is the City’s Source of Income discrimination (SOI) unit equipped to investigate landlords who refuse to rent to tenants with housing vouchers or other forms of payment. The next Mayor should fully fund RTC and SOI to meet overwhelming needs.
   

Prevent & respond to homelessness:

• The City Council recently voted to expand eligibility for CityFHEPS, (the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement), a program that helps individuals and families find and keep housing. The Adams Administration fought this law in court. The next mayor should reverse course, and fully fund the program to meet the Council’s mandate.
   

2. BUILD THE JUST CITY WE DESERVE:

Create genuinely affordable social housing:

• It’s expensive to build permanently affordable for the people who need it most. The next mayor should increase the Housing Preservation and Development's (HPD) capital budget to $6 billion annually, and focus on: programs to acquire and preserve our crumbling housing stock; housing for older adults; and affordable cooperatives. 
   

Invest in NYCHA:

• NYCHA tenants have been living in unbearable conditions for too long, and NYCHA itself estimates $78 billion in capital needs. The next mayor should dramatically increase NYCHA’s capital budget.  
   

Make homes green and resilient:

• Local Law 97 is path-breaking legislation that requires large buildings to reduce pollution and upgrade to high energy efficiency, creating jobs and cutting utility bills. The next mayor should fully enforce this legislation and end loopholes and delays in its implementation.
   

Make government work for us by creating a functioning housing agency:

• Staffing cuts at HPD have made it more difficult to produce and preserve the housing we need, and to enforce the maintenance code. The next Mayor should ensure staffing increases at HPD to better serve the city. 

✼ Citywide Immigrant Justice Policy Priorities in 2025 ✼

1. SANCTUARY CITY ENFORCEMENT & NON-COMPLIANCE WITH ICE.

• Limit information-sharing between agencies so that undocumented immigrants are guaranteed access to state and city services without fear of being reported to ICE: Pass Intro 396, Intro 395, and Intro 214
• Ensure all city workers who may interact with ICE are trained in non-compliance, and enforce this policy. In particular, issue updated policies to all city-funded sites serving people experiencing homelessness, outlining what to do if ICE agenda or other law enforcement entities working on their behalf try to enter or are within 100 feet of the premises. Ensure staff are trained and there is a hotline available 24/7 to reach city legal staff for emergency situations.
• Build relationships and work with city agency heads to ensure they uphold non-compliance.
• Protection from judicial warrants.
• Enforce protections in schools, hospitals, and other sensitive locations (i.e. 2020 Protect Our Courts Act).
• Pass the Street Vendor Reform Package (Intro 431, Intro 47, Intro 408, and Intro 24) to ensure NYC's smallest businesses — many of them run by undocumented immigrants — can operate with a license and without fear of criminalization. 
   

2. END SHELTER EVICTIONS

• End the cruel practice installed by Mayor Adams of evicting new immigrants from city-run shelters after 30 days (for families) and 60 days (for single adults).
• End NYC's two-tier shelter system 
   

3. FUND SERVICES FOR IMMIGRANT NEW YORKERS, INCLUDING:

• Legal services and Right To Counsel for immigration services
• Language access
• Mental health services
• Benefits and aid access, such as education around and assistance with applications for cash assistance and rent subsidies for eligible non-citizens
   

Our work isn't done — far too many of our neighbors are still incarcerated, without the ability to socially distance or practice even the basic hygiene necessary to protect themselves.

• Resources to learn more
• Donate to the Envision Freedom Fund

Israel Adeyemi Adeniji worked as a lawyer in Nigeria, where he still has an organization that supports kids without parents to go to school. He was detained by ICE and released on bond after 190 days in 2019 and lives in Staten Island, NY with his family. We were connected through mutual aid networks and collaborated on this video, where Israel shares his experiences in detention and what it has meant to him to be free.