State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on Wednesday expressed confidence about reaching a state budget deal that contains the “principles” of controversial “Good Cause Eviction” tenant protections, as negotiations over the spending plan roll on.
The majority leader made the comments a little over a week before the April 1 deadline, when she, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie must reach an agreement on the Fiscal Year 2025 spending plan. But after the budget was late the last two years, including by over a month in 2023, it is unclear if things will be settled by April Fool’s Day.
Stewart-Cousins, during an unrelated Albany news conference on March 20, said her chamber wants a “holistic” housing package that includes both measures to boost housing supply and protect tenants. The Senate made those priorities clear by including them in its own budget proposal earlier this month.
“This is a conversation that we are having, I don’t have any lines in the sand, except that we have to have tenant protections, and we need to build more housing and we need to find a way to do that,” the majority leader told reporters. “We’re approaching this I think in a way that hopefully, we will emerge with a holistic housing deal that does have tenant protections, which do align with the principles of Good Cause.”
The Good Cause legislation would cap rent increases across the state and limit the reasons for which landlords can evict tenants. The controversial bill has been a priority of Albany’s most left-leaning lawmakers as well as housing advocates for the last few years, but has never made it over the finish line due to fierce opposition from the real estate industry.
However, Albany’s upper chamber stands alone in its specific inclusion of Good Cause, with neither Hochul nor the Assembly so far signaling support for the measure.
Stewart-Cousins also did not rule out the possibility that raising personal income taxes on New York’s wealthiest residents and the corporate tax rate could make it into the final budget deal, even though Hochul last week called the proposal a “non-starter.”
“The perspective again at this point is that nothing is off the table, it’s still on the table as far as we’re concerned,” she said.
Lawmakers are pitching personal income tax increases from 10.3% to 10.8% for those making between $5 million and $25 million annually, and from 10.9% to 11.4% for filers earning over $25 million a year between tax years 2024 and 2027.
“I just want to make sure that people understand that we are talking about a half a percent on the 1% of the 1%,” she said. “So, we are thinking that there are so many priorities that we have and there is an opportunity to make sure that there is revenue for those things.”
