A City Council bill that would give nonprofit groups a head start in buying distressed apartment buildings is getting a new push from progressive lawmakers.

Council member Sandy Nurse reintroduced the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act after it was vetoed in the last council session. The bill, known as COPA, would force owners of apartment buildings with violations to give nonprofits a first crack at purchasing them when they’re up for sale.

What You Need To Know

  • COPA would let nonprofits get first chance to buy distressed apartments

  • The bill was vetoed in the last year’s council session

  • Mayor Zohran Mamdani backs the bill

“COPA is going to give community-based organizations the opportunity to take multifamily buildings into permanently affordable, community-controlled homes,” Council member Tiffany Cabán said.

But the city getting in the middle of a property owner’s sale is controversial.

“I just believe that it should be left to the open market,” Council member Simcha Felder, who voted against it last session, told NY1.

This time, Nurse narrowed the number of buildings it would cover.

“The amended bill I am introducing today is stronger and more targeted than the one we passed in December,” she said. 

Nurse and supporters rallied before the Council meeting. She said the bill would prevent new owners from buying up distressed buildings and flipping for a profit at the expense of tenants.

“They get picked up by the private sector, the private market, venture funds, and they get gutted, they get painted over and the market and the rent goes extremely and extremely high,” Nurse said at the rally.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani backs it, saying in a statement, “Tenants and community organizations across New York have spent years watching their neighborhoods be priced out from under them while speculators reap the rewards.“

The new version defines distressed buildings as having an average of three or more open hazardous violations a year, and it shortens the time nonprofits can show interest and make an offer to at most 100 days.

“Time in real estate is death,” Deborah Riegel, an attorney at Rosenberg & Estis, which represents building owners, told NY1.

She said there are legal issues with a law that prevents property owners from selling.

“The argument is that this is essentially a regulatory taking. The city, by implementing COPA, is preventing owners from freely transferring their property and imposing regulatory burdens that prevent free alienation of property and probably also impact pricing,” she said.

And the changes in the new version don’t change that.

“It’s just that it may be a smaller universe of buildings that are now subject to this potential taking,” she said.

Council Speaker Julie Menin abstained from voting on the bill last year. A spokesperson said a hearing will be planned at some point.