A invoice barring New York Metropolis landlords from forcing tenants to pay dealer charges cleared a last hurdle Tuesday as Mayor Adams confirmed he received’t veto the measure regardless of holding reservations about it.
“The broker bill is going to be law because they have a veto-proof majority, and so I’m not vetoing the bill,” Adams informed reporters at Metropolis Corridor on Tuesday afternoon, referring to the margin by which the Metropolis Council handed the laws final month.
Nonetheless, Adams reiterated he believes the invoice may have unintended penalties. Particularly, Adams has raised alarm in regards to the risk that landlords will merely bake the price of dealer charges into the lease as soon as they’ll’t saddle tenants with the levies up entrance anymore.
The mayor — who has had three vetoes overridden by the Metropolis Council since taking workplace in 2022 — mentioned he opted in opposition to vetoing the dealer price invoice as a result of he doesn’t wish to “put New Yorkers through distress and strife.”
“I’m just not in that space of just these headlines of dispute … We need to be in a better, calm place, and so I won’t veto the bill,” he mentioned. “I shared what my concerns are, and life will determine if I was accurate in my concerns.”
Mayor Eric Adams holds an in-person media availability at Metropolis Corridor on Monday, December 3, 2024. (Ed Reed / Mayoral Pictures Workplace)
With the veto situation out of the way in which, the dealer price invoice’s set to turn out to be regulation 180 days after its enactment. The invoice will routinely be enacted on Dec. 13 until Adams indicators it earlier than then, which he declined to say Tuesday whether or not he’ll.
“I’m not going to veto the bill. The question is if I’m going to sign it or not,” he mentioned.
At present, landlords can — and sometimes do — require tenants to pay the price actual property brokers cost to facilitate an residence rental. Such charges can vary within the hundreds of {dollars}, exacerbating move-in prices for tenants in a metropolis the place surging rents are already a widespread drawback.
Underneath the Council invoice, which was launched by Brooklyn Councilman Chi Osse, the get together who hires a dealer could be liable for paying their charges. Since landlords are nearly all the time the hiring get together in such contexts, they might turn out to be liable for overlaying dealer charges below the brand new regime.
Osse, a progressive Democrat, and different supporters of his invoice have hailed it as a standard sense measure that can assist alleviate some monetary burden on working class New Yorkers in an more and more costly metropolis. Invoice supporters have additionally disputed the mayor’s arguments in opposition to it, noting that lease hikes are capped by regulation on tons of of hundreds of flats within the metropolis because of stabilization legal guidelines.
Initially Revealed: December 3, 2024 at 5:31 PM EST
