Tenants group votes dual endorsement of Morales, Wiley for mayor

New York’s tenants’ rights advocacy group on Sunday issued a dual endorsement of Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley for mayor.

Tenants PAC lobbies to strengthen rent protections for residents living in the city’s two million apartments, including one million in government-regulated units.

“These are two inspirational candidates with a strong commitment to tenants’ rights
and creative approaches to solving the city’s housing crisis,” Tenants PAC treasurer Michael McKee told The Post, referring to Morales and Wiley.

“And we think that it is high time that New York City had a woman mayor.”

Tenants PAC also interviewed former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and Shaun Donovan, who served as city housing director under former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and federal housing secretary for the Obama administration.

Mayoral candidate Dianne Morales campaigning in Manhattan.
Mayoral candidate Dianne Morales campaigning in Manhattan.
Andrew H Walker/Shutterstock

Both Garcia and Donovan said they opposed re-regulating 300,000 apartments that went to market upon vacancy over 27 years, before the state Legislature strengthened tenant protections in 2019 by repealing the vacancy decontrol law, McKee said.

Since then, rent-stabilized apartments must remain so when they become vacant.

But the new law did not retroactively put the 300,000 deregulated units back under rent stabilization, or government rent protections.

McKee said the answers from Garcia and Donovan on the 300,000 deregulated units knocked them out of contention for an endorsement.

By comparison, Morales and Wiley said they would push Albany to pass a law to re-regulate those apartments, McKee said. Morales is a former not-for-profit executive and Wiley served as legal counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Another mayoral candidate, city Comptroller Scott Stringer, submitted a questionnaire, but never agreed to a time for an interview, McKee said.

Despite repeated requests, mayoral candidates Eric Adams, Ray McGuire and
Andrew Yang failed to submit questionnaires, a prerequisite for an interview, McKee added.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*