Tenants & Neighbors Home

About Tenants & Neighbors

Tenants & Neighbors is a grassroots organization that harnesses tenant power to preserve at-risk affordable housing and strengthen tenants' rights in New York.

Through organizing, education, leadership development, and grassroots mobilization, Tenants & Neighbors is building a strong and unified tenant movement that has the knowledge and power to effect real change.

Tenants & Neighbors is comprised of two affiliate organizations, New York State Tenants & Neighbors Information Service, which does grassroots tenant organizing and education, and New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition, a membership group which spearheads legislative system change campaigns.

New York State Tenants & Neighbors
Coalition

Join us for a Party to Celebrate the Start of a New Year!

On Friday, January 20th from 5:30-7:30 PM, join us at a party at the Tenants & Neighbors office, 236 West 27th Street, 4th floor, to celebrate all we accomplished in 2011 and all we hope to accomplish in 2012. This will be a great opportunity for members, staff members, Board members, and allies to all get together and toast to the year ahead. Please RSVP to Katie Goldstein, 212-608-4320 ext. 400 or kgoldstein@tandn.org. Click here to see the flyer for the event.

T&N's 2012 State Level Legislative Priorities

Tenants & Neighbors has identified our state level legislative priorities for the 2012 session. For a PDF of our legislative platform, click here.

If you are a tenant member of Tenants & Neighbors and would like to join our Rent Stabilization or Rent Control Leadership Committees, which provide input into what our state level legislative priorties should be and spearhead our campaigns to achieve our legislative goals, please contact us. Rent controlled tenants should email kgoldstein@tandn.org and rent stabilized tenants should email sstein@tandn.org.

"Rents Are Out of Control: Legislative Solutions for Rent Controlled Tenants"

Tenants & Neighbors and Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal have issued a white paper about the affordability crisis faced by many rent controlled tenants, and about our legislative platform for addressing that crisis. This document is designed to support our campaign to pass A1892, which would eliminate the MBR system and instead have the Rent Guidelines Board determine rent adjustments for those rent controlled tenants whose owners are entitled to collect increases.

T&N to Staff the R3 Campaign in 2012

Tenants & Neighbors will again provide staff support to the Real Rent Reform Campaign in 2012. The R3 Campaign is a coalition of over fifty organizations that does organizing and advocacy at the state level for stronger rent laws. To stay up to date with the efforts of that campaign, you can join its Facebook group, or email sstein@tandn.org to be added to the email list.

New York State Tenants & Neighbors Information Service

Statement re: Daily News Article

Tenants & Neighbors Executive Director Maggie Russell-Ciardi has issued the following statement regarding the New York Daily News' article, "Upper West Side Landlord Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Free Him from New York City's Rent-Stabilization Laws":

"Rent stabilization is not a 'subsidy.' It is a program designed to protect tenants from landlords who would seek to take advantage of the severe housing shortage we face by imposing speculative, unwarranted, and abnormal increases in rents. And rent stabilized tenants are generally not wealthy enough to pay market rate rents; their median income is only about $36,000 per year.

And no one forces owners of rent stabilized housing to 'take strangers into their home.' If you buy a rent regulated building- which Mr. Harmon’s grandparents appear to have done- you should know what you’re doing. You should be planning to own and operate rent regulated rental housing, and to charge your tenants no more than the legal regulated rent, plain and simple.

Lastly, Mr. Harmon doesn’t actually get to decide when 'enough is enough.' Rent stabilization will cease to exist when New York no longer faces a housing emergency, which will be when the percentage of apartments that are vacant and available for rent is over five percent. Right now it’s only about three percent."

Action Alert

Please call your Assemblymember and State Senator and urge them to ask the Governor and the HCR what the status of the promulgation of the rules and regulations regarding enforcement of the rent laws is. For more information about this issue, read about our ENFORCE! Campaign (below). Click here to see a PDF of our action alert, which you are welcome to print and disseminate in your building.

HCR ENFORCE! Campaign

Tenants & Neighbors has launched an administrative campaign, in conjunction with allied organizations, to get New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) to do more proactive and targeted enforcement of the rent laws so unscrupulous landlords can't continue to violate the laws as part of a strategy to displace low and moderate income tenants, raise rents, and deregulate apartments. This campaign gained significant momentum when the state legislature, at the end of the 2011 session, passed a law that requires the HCR to promulgate rules and regulations regarding the enforcement of the rent laws. Now we are working to push for the strongest possible rules and regulations. Click here to see a list of some of the reform recommendations we have developed, and click here for our most recent action alert. To get involved in the HCR ENFORCE! campaign, email kgoldstein@tandn.org.

Need Help Organizing a Tenant Association?

Tenants & Neighbors helps tenants who live in affordable housing form strong, democratic, and effective tenant associations. If you are interested in forming a tenant association and would like organizing support, email kgoldstein@tandn.org.