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Rochester City Council is moving forward with the implementation of a Good Cause task force, the first step in three accessory pieces of legislation passed alongside sweeping tenant protections last December.
These protections require landlords to provide evidence of “good cause” in court when evicting a tenant or failing to renew a lease, including nonpayment of rent or a lease violation. The legislation represented the culmination of longstanding efforts by housing advocates who sought stronger tenant protections as a means of curbing evictions across the city.
“It’s already been a game changer,” says Ryan Acuff, tenant organizer for the City-Wide Tenant Union. “Many of our members that were having pending issues with their landlords (in terms of) retaliatory evictions, those disappeared.”
Acuff points to a current environment where tenants can now advocate more freely for their rights without fear of losing housing. Landlords are prevented from terminating a lease in retaliation, he says.
“(Before Good Cause) the biggest thing in the back of people’s minds is, ‘I’m not going to call code enforcement even though I’m living in horrible conditions for my family,’” Acuff adds. “There (was) a fear that they could just terminate tenancy.”
Eviction filings and warrants—including holdover evictions, which landlords pursue for reasons other than nonpayment—this year continue at a pace that mirrors Rochester’s longstanding eviction rate excluding the eviction moratorium in effect statewide during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some opponents of the legislation had claimed Good Cause would create an influx of contested cases in eviction proceedings, hampering landlords’ ability to evict an unwanted tenant.
“Six months later, we definitely have not seen a steady influx. The reason is because it actually creates a higher standard to do an eviction. A landlord has to have a reason (and) evidence.” Acuff says. “We don’t see how Good Cause could drive more evictions, because it’s more tenant protections. It could only lower the eviction rates.”
The No. 1 reason for the rate of evictions, he says, is rent. Data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development indicates the fair market rent for one- and two-bedroom apartments in the Rochester area has risen nearly 40 percent in the last five years.
More work needs to be done in educating tenants about their rights under Good Cause, advocates say.
“We have to get out there and do more advocacy and more education around Good Cause,” says Oscar Brewer, housing advocate and founder of Rochester Alliance for Housing Accountability. “If we do not advocate and do proper, adequate education, my fear is we’re going to lose Good Cause eviction.”
Legislation for Good Cause was passed alongside bills that would conduct a citywide education campaign, evidence-based study, and an implementation task force. The task force declares the Council’s intention to monitor the implementation and execution of Good Cause once it is passed. City Council President Miguel Meléndez will preside over the task force.
Brewer and others are concerned that the body will be filled with landlords. Those concerns were brought to the July 17 Speak to Council session. Meléndez says the makeup of the task force has not been discussed.
“We haven’t put together a table yet, but we’ll have representatives from the city administration, from City Council, from people in the community on both the tenant and landlord side just to make sure that we’re having a robust conversation,” he says.
Referencing meetings with City Court judges, Meléndez understands the rate of evictions seen after Good Cause to be primarily from nonpayment of rent—a factor, he says, that does not change with additional legislation. With the task force still in its early stages, the Council is continuing to evaluate a citywide education campaign, as well as an updated study of the rental housing market, first recommended in a November report preceding the legislation.
“I think the housing challenges we have are very real,” adds Meléndez. “We’ve seen an increase in the rent overall in the last several years. … Also, the availability of housing in general; it’s very hard to purchase a house right now in this community given the market.”
For City Council, one point of interest is promoting available stock through the Rochester Land Bank Corporation, tapping underutilized or empty properties throughout the city.
“There’s no reason why the city of Rochester or the land bank in and of itself couldn’t be more in the property management space,” says Meléndez, “in terms of not letting these properties just go to anyone with the highest bid, but being more thoughtful about, ‘Could some of these properties intentionally be put into different programs and services for first-time homebuyers?'”
The Good Cause task force is expected to hold its first meetings this fall.
Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort.
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