The impending shift centers on the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, widely known as COPA. The New York City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee is scheduled to hold a crucial vote on the legislation on Thursday, followed immediately by a full Council meeting later the same day. With 33 formal sponsors already attached to the latest iteration of the bill, passage is widely expected by lawmakers, housing advocates, and real estate observers alike.
This legislative push follows earlier efforts by city lawmakers who revived COPA after an initial version stalled in previous legislative sessions. Recognizing the political and economic sensitivities surrounding the proposal, lawmakers made strategic revisions. The latest text narrows the scope of buildings that would be directly affected by the policy and shortens various timelines within the purchasing process to address some of the friction raised by property owners.
Council Member Sandy Nurse, the lead sponsor of the legislation, explained that the revised bill was shaped by an extensive and rigorous consultation process. According to Nurse, the final framework came together only after dozens of conversations with various stakeholders representing both sides of the debate, balancing the urgent need for tenant protections against the operational concerns of private property owners.
"The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act will make our city more affordable for working class New Yorkers who are being squeezed by the housing affordability crisis," Nurse said following a well-attended City Hall hearing in September. "COPA is just one tool to preserve our existing affordable housing stock and help stop the brutal cycle of displacement in our neighborhoods."
A Narrower Bill Still Described as a ‘Disaster’ by Owners
The legislation has earned the strong backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose administration has championed the measure as an essential safeguard for vulnerable renters. City officials have framed COPA as an extra layer of protection designed to shield tenants from the twin threats of sudden displacement and deteriorating living conditions in neglected properties.
"Tenants and community organizations across New York have spent years watching their neighborhoods be priced out from under them while speculators reap the rewards," Mamdani said in a statement when the revised legislation was formally introduced earlier this year in May.
Mamdani’s broader "Block by Block" housing plan explicitly includes COPA as a foundational tool for preserving affordable housing and stabilizing tenants residing in distressed buildings. However, despite being narrowed from earlier drafts, the bill remains a subject of fierce contention.
Under the current text, the legislation targets only a small fraction of New York City’s vast apartment inventory. It applies exclusively to residential buildings with four or more housing units that meet specific, objective measures of distress, foreclosure actions, ongoing major repair disputes, or properties plagued by persistent, unresolved hazardous housing code violations. Notably, owner-occupied buildings consisting of five or fewer units remain entirely exempt from the mandate.
During a Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) briefing in September, agency officials estimated that approximately 2,100 properties across the five boroughs would currently qualify under the law’s strict criteria. Furthermore, historical tracking suggested that roughly 300 buildings sold during the previous year would have crossed the threshold and triggered the COPA process.
Under the mechanics of the bill, when an eligible property is listed for sale, the owner would be legally required to notify HPD and qualified nonprofit buyers. Upon notification, these mission-driven groups would be granted an initial window of 20 days to formally express interest in the property, followed by a subsequent 70-day window to draft and submit an initial purchase offer.
The property owner would retain the ultimate right to reject the nonprofit’s offer. However, if the owner subsequently decides to sell the property to a different, conventional buyer on the open market, a qualified nonprofit would maintain the right of first refusal to match that buyer’s price and contractual terms.
Supporters argue that this structured timeline addresses a fundamental structural flaw in the current real estate market: community-based organizations and tenant groups frequently discover that a building is available only after a conventional private investor has already moved aggressively and locked down a contract.
Jenny Dubnau, board co-chair of the Western Queens Community Land Trust, highlighted this familiar frustration. She noted that tenants have repeatedly approached her organization seeking assistance to purchase their buildings, only to watch helplessly as properties were "sold out from under us in the open market before we could make an offer."
Conversely, private property owners and landlord associations view the mandated delays and matching rights through an entirely different lens. They argue that inserting municipal and nonprofit bureaucratic checkpoints into private transactions will severely damage the health of the housing market.
"Any version of COPA is a disaster for affordable housing, renters, and owners," said Ann Korchak, board president of the Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY), in a strongly worded statement.
Korchak contends that the regulatory uncertainty and extended timelines will actively discourage conventional private buyers who possess the immediate financial capital necessary to acquire and swiftly rehabilitate failing, mismanaged properties.
"This would alienate and discourage conventional purchasers who have the financial wherewithal to immediately purchase and rehabilitate a failing property," Korchak explained. "It also gives an unfair advantage to the city and nonprofits, which would be free to make purchase offers without the burdensome restrictions faced by conventional buyers."
A First Shot Still Doesn’t Guarantee a Sale
While New York prepares to debate the domestic and economic impacts of its local legislation, urban planners and policymakers can look to existing models in other major American cities for clues about how an opportunity-to-purchase policy functions in practice. Experience from cities like Washington, D.C., and San Francisco demonstrates that granting mission-driven entities more time and legal standing can successfully preserve affordable housing, but only when paired with robust financing mechanisms and technical support.
Washington, D.C., operates under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA, which differs structurally from New York’s model by granting purchase rights directly to tenants rather than third-party nonprofits. Despite these differences, an extensive analysis published by the Urban Institute revealed that TOPA helped create or successfully preserve 16,224 affordable housing units across the District between 2006 and 2020. Additionally, the analysis linked the policy to significant renovations, structural upgrades, and critical repairs carried out across roughly 12% of the city’s overall housing stock.
However, the researchers also underscored a critical caveat that could heavily influence New York’s rollout: statutory purchase rights alone are not a silver bullet. They must work in tandem with accessible capital, public financing programs, and dedicated technical assistance rather than replacing them.
On a smaller scale, San Francisco offers another blueprint through its own municipal COPA framework. City housing and finance records indicate that local nonprofits have utilized the legislation to acquire individual multifamily residential properties, locking in long-term affordability covenants spanning decades. For instance, public records show that an eight-unit residential building purchased via COPA in 2022 secured municipal financial backing and was subsequently deed-restricted to guarantee affordable housing for a minimum of 75 years.
These precedents set the stage for New York City’s upcoming legislative test. If the City Council passes the bill as expected, nonprofit housing organizations will step forward with newfound legal leverage and breathing room when distressed apartment buildings hit the market. However, whether that newly acquired statutory opportunity successfully translates into thousands of preserved, stable apartments for working-class New Yorkers will ultimately depend on the complex financial ecosystem that backs them up once they reach the front of the line.
