Legislation that would establish Good Cause eviction protections will go to vote before City Council this month, with the most encompassing protections allowed under state law.
Good Cause primarily does two things: caps rental increases at 10% or 5% above inflation, whichever is lower, and ensures tenants in good standing have a right to renew their lease. The protections were signed into law in April by Gov. Kathy Hochul, but cities must opt into them.
Rochester would be the largest city in New York to opt into the Good Cause eviction laws, following on the heels of several smaller cities, including Ithaca, Kingston, and Albany. They opted into the protections over the summer.
City Council first introduced a bill to opt into Good Cause eviction laws in June. That legislation was a verbatim copy of the state law, which applied only to landlords who owned more than 10 units, and whose properties were less than 245% of fair market rent. For scope, the Department of Housing and Urban Development projects fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment at $1,149 and $1,427 for a two-bedroom apartment for the 2025 fiscal year in the Rochester metropolitan area.
City Council held a series of public forums were held over the summer in which tenants and rental owners provided input on Good Cause eviction laws. Council President Miguel Meléndez issued a report on those forums in early November, calling for the number of exempt units to be changed to one.
“Earlier this month, I released a report calling for City Council to pass the Good Cause Eviction legislation and I appreciate all of the related feedback I have received from members of the community and my Council colleagues,” Meléndez said in a statement in late November. “This is important legislation which deserves time, care and due diligence for consideration.”
State law allows local governments to alter only two aspects of Good Cause eviction protections: the threshold for which the laws apply to a landlord and the rent ceiling for which the laws apply. Rochester officials plan to keep the ceiling set out in state law, which means any unit that rents for more than 245% of fair market rent or higher will be exempt.
City Council plans to set the ownership threshold at one unit instead of 10, which is what most of the municipalities that have opted into Good Cause have done. A WXXI analysis of Rochester property data found that move would drop the number of exempt units from 60% to 17%. The city, meanwhile, had projected a shift from 36% exempt to 9%.
Council members expect to amend the bill and vote on it during their Dec. 17 meeting. They'll discuss the amendments in committee meetings ahead of that vote.
Good Cause had been a longstanding demand of housing advocates. The Rochester City-Wide Tenant Union called the planned amendments to the bill a victory.
“Rochester tenants never gave because we know what’s at stake: the stability of our families and our neighbors,” organizer Lisle Coleman said, in a statement. “Now, City Council must follow through and pass the strongest possible version of Good Cause Eviction Protections in December so that no renter has to struggle to stay in their home.”
In addition, Council will be voting on three other bills related to Good Cause. Those would create an implementation task force to oversee the law’s rollout, start a campaign to educate tenants on their rights, and authorize the issuance of a request for qualifications for an organization to evaluate whether the law is “functioning as intended based on empirical evidence.”
All three bills were introduced by Meléndez.
