Tenants Speak out Against Bill that Favors Rights of Ex-Cons Over those of Law-Abiding Citizens

By Yehudit Garmaise

Will the progressive City Council soon prevent NYC landlords from running criminal background checks on prospective tenants: who may have been convicted of murder and other violent crimes?

At least 30 of the council’s 51 members have voiced their support for the bill that puts the rights of ex-cons ahead of the rights of law-abiding citizens. 

City Councilman Keith Powers, who co-sponsored the bill with Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said that the city should “believe in second chances.” 

While Councilman Kalman Yeger agrees that there could be some people in society who might be deserving of "second chances," this bill takes away property owners' right to decide whethter they wish to rent to dangerous criminals. 

"Criminal behavior is not a class deserving of a protected status," said Councilman Yeger. “If someone committed a crime, the property owner has to [be able] decide [whether to risk renting to prospective tenants],” Yeger told Hamodia. 

People who committed minor offenses 20 years ago are different than prospective tenants who recently committed more violent crimes, Yeger said. 

“The responsibility to maintain the safety of a property falls on the landlord,” Boro Park’s councilman said. “Taking away a tool from the landlords is not just dangerous, but unfair if we are to expect that they are going to abide by their obligations to keep their buildings safe.” 

Last Wednesday night, Council member Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn), who said, “the safety of your families is at stake,” urged New Yorkers to contact their local Council members and demand they reject the bill that means that convicted criminals could easily move in next door.

“Murdered someone?” Vernikov asked. “Beat up your girlfriend? Robbed? Stabbed your neighbor? No problem. Come live among us! Tell the @NYCCouncil to vote NO!

“We are urging all of you to send a message to your Councilmember and ask them to vote NO on Intro 632, as well as sign up to testify at the committee hearing on Dec. 8,” when the NYC Council’s Committee on Civil Rights will hold a public hearing to consider the bill. 

The council’s bill, “will allow individuals with violent criminal histories and long rap sheets to live next door to you and your families,” Vernikov said in a video she posted on Twitter.

Mayor Eric Adams has signaled that he supports the bill. 

“No one should be denied housing because they were once engaged with the criminal justice system, plain and simple,” Mayor Eric Adams spokesman Charles Lutvack told the New York Post.

When the council considered a similar bill last year, landlord advocacy groups, such as the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA) objected.

In the last few weeks of last year's Council session, several members, including Yeger, were able to persuade outgoing Speaker Corey Johnson to pull the bill from the Council's agenda, where it had been scheduled for a vote in the last meeting of the Council session.

The bill died because the session ended, Yeger told BoroPark24.

Powers reintroduced the bill earlier this year for the Council to reconsider, and once again, pointed out Vito Signorile, an RSA spokesman, NYC renters are fearfully and angrily calling their landlords to speak out.

Photo credit: Flickr