City Council Revives COPA, Giving Nonprofits First Dibs on Distressed Rentals in Queens and Beyond

New legislation could upend New York’s rental housing market, testing the city’s appetite for community over commodification.

On an austere stretch of Greenpoint Avenue, the contrasts are stark: rundown walk-ups housing long-term tenants rub shoulders with neatly renovated flats hawked for eye-watering rents. It is here, with both hope and scepticism swirling in the spring air, that the City Council has dragged the controversial Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) back onto its legislative docket.

COPA would grant nonprofit entities—land trusts, housing co-operatives, community organizations—“first dibs” on purchasing distressed apartment buildings before real estate investors can. The bill is targeted only at properties beset by chronic code violations and neglect. Under COPA’s current draft, nonprofits would have priority access to apartment buildings with four or more units, three or more daily HPD code violations on average, and which are under city enforcement. Owners would be required to notify both the City and pre-approved nonprofit groups of their intent to sell, unlocking a period in which these groups could make an offer.

The proposal’s backers—chiefly Brooklyn councilmember Sandy Nurse and her coalition of housing advocates—see COPA as a long overdue lever to halt gentrification and empower tenants beleaguered by absentee or neglectful landlords. “We are simply asking the question— can we bring in nonprofit partners to deliver high-quality affordable housing we deserve?” Lincoln Restler, a co-sponsor representing Greenpoint and Williamsburg, told supporters rallying outside City Hall.

To its proponents, the measure is pragmatic, not radical: it applies solely to high-risk buildings and requires nonprofits to make offers at market price, not at a discount. Nonprofits, if interested, get 20 days to announce themselves and then 70 days to submit a bona fide offer. If no qualifying bids materialise, the property reverts to traditional market sale. Even then, should a for-profit buyer outbid nonprofits, the latter retain a right of first refusal, keeping them in the mix until ink is dry on a deal.

For New York City, COPA’s implications are twofold. First, it signals growing appetite for novel regulatory ideas as both renters and lawmakers lose patience with business as usual in building management. Second, implementation would put real estate transfer mechanics—usually the preserve of lawyers and investment funds—in the hands of grassroots groups more accustomed to running food pantries or block associations than closing multimillion-dollar property deals.

On the city’s margins, housing is a riddled tapestry. Last year, HPD reported over 44,000 active hazardous violations across the five boroughs—a puny improvement from previous cycles. Large, rent-regulated properties have seen a worrying uptick in code infractions and tenant complaints as owners, squeezed by frozen rents and rising costs, defer repairs or court city buyouts. If left unchecked, many buildings could lapse into the hands of speculators more interested in flipping than fixing.

Supporters of COPA reckon it could forestall such outcomes. By allowing local groups to intervene and anchor buildings in community ownership, advocates hope to both preserve affordability and incentivise lasting repairs. And there is tantalising precedent: similar legislation in Washington, D.C. (the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA), and select Bay Area municipalities has enabled tenants and mission-driven groups to keep thousands of units from speculative churn, though not without producing headaches of their own.

Critics, conversely, warn that COPA portends bureaucratic overreach. The Real Estate Board of New York, joined by allies of former mayor Eric Adams (who vetoed the last iteration of the bill), argue it muzzles the free market and could paralyse sales in a sector already suffering from tepid returns and daunting financing hurdles. There is valid concern, too, that the city’s preferred nonprofits may lack deep pockets; securing acquisition loans in today’s punishing interest-rate climate is not for the fainthearted.

Testing the city’s philosophy on housing

If the bill passes, the transition from well-intentioned hope to operational scale will prove no small feat. Community land trusts and nonprofit developers have established some track record, but the leap from managing small scattered sites to assuming control of large, distressed portfolios is gargantuan. Nonprofits will still need to compete with deep-pocketed for-profit bidders, sometimes far faster on the draw and less risk-averse. Philanthropic funding and public subsidies could help, but come with their own strings and delays.

Few expect COPA, on its own, to transform New York’s housing prospects. Some fear the law could merely gum up transactions, introducing delays that might allow buildings to deteriorate further before turning over to any new owner. Still, given the palpable discontent among tenants and city dwellers, inaction risks appearing more callous than bold experimentation.

Nationally, New York’s experiment may prove instructive. Pilots in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco have offered lessons both cheering and cautionary. TOPA, enacted in the capital in 1980, has preserved some affordability but has also become a byword for drawn-out sales and legal wrangling. In the end, only a fraction of transactions involve actual nonprofit takeovers; most tenants waive their rights or fail to assemble viable bids in time. New York, with higher prices and more Byzantine property structures, will find such hurdles magnified.

From a broader perspective, COPA’s resurrection speaks to a cyclical shift in urban governance. As once-buoyant real estate cycles ebb, old alliances between property interests and City Hall have lost their sheen. Voters, increasingly impatient with puny gains in affordable housing, are signalling openness to schemes that were once dismissed as utopian. Whether such policies deliver on their promise, or simply rearrange the city’s perennial housing malaise, is anyone’s guess.

We remain sceptically optimistic. COPA is no panacea, but the old market script—where under-maintained buildings simply feed the speculative gristmill—has lost too much public trust. Empowering competent, mission-driven community entities to step in, under narrowly tailored circumstances, is worth a carefully monitored trial. The city, as it so often does, will test if its restless civic imagination can outpace its inertia.

Much will depend on rigorous oversight and steady funding. If these fail, so too will COPA’s promise, relegating it to the city’s long ledger of ambitious but transient reforms. New Yorkers, for whom the stoop and the six-story walk-up are not mere backdrops, can ill afford half-measures. ■