The Ithaca Tenants Union has revived its push for Ithaca to opt into the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, a piece of legislation that stabilizes rent in certain housing units.
The ETPA — which was passed in 1974 — stabilizes rent prices in buildings built before 1974 with six or more units. Although the act originally included only New York City and surrounding counties, other municipalities in New York State, including Kingston, NY and Newburgh, NY have since opted into the ETPA. Since its founding in March 2020, The ITU has been advocating for greater tenants’ protections in Ithaca, through advocating both for Ithaca to opt into the ETPA and for both Ithaca and New York State to adopt Good Cause Legislation — which would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants without lease violations.
“There was a campaign a couple of years ago to get opt into ETPA, and it kind of fizzled because people decided that other things were more important, that we could build new housing, we were going to have new affordable housing and that we didn’t need to do ETPA,” said ITU Co-Chair Katie Sims ’20.
However, as Ithacans face rising rents, Sims said opting into the ETPA would be a crucial step toward permanently affordable housing in Ithaca.
Drawing from the example of New York City, where almost half of all apartments are rent stabilized, which protects tenants against unreasonable rent increases, Sims said that rent stabilization would prove to be essential to maintaining Ithaca’s supply of housing affordable to the working class.
“If we opted into ETPA, then about 15 percent of units in the city would become permanently rent-stabilized, and that would keep them permanently affordable,” Sims said.
Sims also praised ETPA as a means of checking the power of landlords in setting rents.
“We do think it’s politically important that not all price setting is done in the hands of people who are trying to make a profit from rents,” Sims said. “The ETPA achieves this because there is a board that sets the rent increases and it’s made of tenants, property owners and experts in the community. So it’s a more holistic process in setting rent increases.”
Sims was optimistic about potential increased support for Ithaca’s opting into the ETPA following major changes to the Common Council following November’s elections. Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo grad agreed that political support for opting into ETPA exists on the Common Council.
Cantelmo, who has publicly supported Ithaca’s opting into the ETPA in the past, said that opting in could be one part of a larger strategy to address Ithaca’s housing concerns.
“[Opting into the ETPA] would have some modest impact,” Cantelmo said. “There are of course some limitations in its effectiveness just given the size and the building requirements that would be covered under it, but I think [a] housing solution for our community is an ‘all of the above’ approach. We need to take every lever that we have to try and promote affordability and slow the rate of significant cost-of-living increases.”
Cantelmo argued that the long-term solution to the affordability crisis is pairing stabilization efforts with an increase in the supply of housing.
“The number one thing that’s gonna address the affordability problem is the City reexamining its land use and needing to move to a direction where it revises its zoning code to promote more feasibility for the construction of middle housing,” Cantelmo said.
However, Kayla Lane, a member of the Landlords Association of Tompkins County board of directors, criticized the effect opting into the ETPA would have on the structure of the housing market.
“I believe [that] in a housing market — just like most markets — there [is] natural supply and demand that needs to take place. I know everybody locally feels that the housing market supply needs to improve as far as affordability,” Lane said. “I’m not sure if opting into [the ETPA] will really get to the root of the problem. I can see it creating further problems that will [have] a trickle effect.”
Lane argued that instead of opting into the ETPA, making changes to zoning regulations would better address the lack of affordable housing supply in Ithaca.
“A lot of people will tell you … that allowing for the development of certain variations of zoning could help [improve affordability],” Lane said. “People can add an Accessory Dwelling Unit to a home in the City of Ithaca or turn a home into a duplex. Making those changes to zoning and allowing for things like [ADUs] could help.”
Lane also criticized the ITU as an avenue for addressing tenants’ concerns rather than landlords’, citing the increased animosity she perceived between landlords and tenants.
“The few times that a tenant has enacted [ITU’s] services, I find that the responses that we receive are muddied with copy-and-paste of the law. All of a sudden, we’ve gone from a conversation to a defense. It seems like [the ITU] is aggressive in their approach,” Lane said.
Regardless of which legislative avenues Ithaca pursues, Lane hopes to have a “meeting of the minds” between tenants and landlords to reach a consensus on housing-related decisions.
“Ultimately, it would be nice to come to that common ground, and it starts by understanding that we don’t know the other side,” Lane said. “Hopefully, we can get to the point of common understanding so that it’s not assumptions, and it’s not one side out to get the other.”
Taehee Oh ’27 is a Sun contributor and can be reached at [email protected].