City Limits: NYC Passes Bill Giving Nonprofits First Chance to Buy Certain Buildings
Five years after it was introduced, the City Council on Thursday passed a revised version of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA, which will give certain nonprofits—and for-profits, if they team up with a nonprofit—an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.
Landlord and real estate groups have criticized the legislation as government overreach. But supporters say COPA will give mission-driven groups, including community land trusts, a leg up against deep-pocketed real estate speculators in the city’s competitive housing market.
Modeled after a similar bill in San Francisco, it specifically targets buildings with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring. In those situations, lawmakers said, COPA can serve as a preservation tool, allowing a “qualified entity” to come in and, with the help of other city programs, right the ship—making repairs, maintaining affordable rents—ideally in coordination with the tenants who live there.
“We want to try to keep those units affordable. This is an opportunity to do that,” Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who sponsored the latest version of the legislation, said in a press conference Thursday. Without COPA, she said, “we potentially lose those affordable units.”