On March 13th, the Mayor sent the Council a resolution to renew the City's two-year contract with Flock Safety for the Police Department's use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) — just six days before the Finance Committee meeting at which we were asked to vote on it, and only 18 days before the contract's March 31st renewal date. We immediately discovered that the contract automatically renews unless either party provides notice of non-renewal 30 days prior to that date. In other words, by the time the Council first saw this contract, it had already effectively renewed.
ALPRs are camera-based surveillance devices that capture images of all passing vehicles, recording each vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, timestamp, and location. That data is cross-referenced against police hotlists nationwide to assist in solving crimes. Troy's Police Department credits the cameras with helping solve homicides, robberies, stolen vehicle cases, and missing persons investigations. However, the same technology can also be used to reconstruct the movements and travel patterns of any vehicle — and by extension its owner — without a warrant, probable cause, or any suspicion of wrongdoing.
That dual-use capability has made ALPRs deeply controversial, primarily over privacy concerns and their potential use in federal immigration enforcement. Troy residents began raising these concerns at the Council's March 5th meeting, and by Thursday night's Finance Committee meeting the response had grown dramatically — over 100 people appeared, most calling for the contract to be canceled. The meeting ran until midnight.
The Council's role is to safeguard taxpayer dollars, which requires us to thoroughly review, question, and approve all contractual agreements entered into by the City. We expressed serious frustration with the Mantello administration for withholding the contract until it had already taken effect, then presenting it for a vote as though meaningful oversight were still possible. We also took strong exception to the Mayor's efforts — through media and social platforms — to reframe legitimate public concerns about constitutional privacy rights as an effort to defund the police.
We put direct questions to the Mayor, Chief DeWolf, and Deputy Chief Barker regarding the Department's ALPR policy, accessibility, security, controls, and oversight. Finding too many unknowns to vote responsibly, the Council tabled the resolution to gain more time to get the answers and to fully review the terms of Flock Safety's contract.
I can be reached by phone at 518-285-0650 or by email: Noreen.mckee@troyny.gov.
Items to Note
Neighborhood Improvement Program
The Troy City Council is currently accepting applications for the annual Neighborhood Improvement Program(NIP), awarding up to $1500 to projects which enhance Troy's public spaces through painting, pubic art, signage, maintenance of parks and trails, paintings, or other improvements.
Budgets must be included with project proposals, which must be emailed to the city clerk for consideration by the Council's NIP subcommittee no later than Apr 3 at 4:30 pm. More information on the NIP program can be found here. If you have any questions, please contact the City Clerk.
Office Hours
Fostering dialogue with constituents and exchanging ideas is one of the most important ways I can best represent my district. This month, I will be hosting office hours at Naughter's (1809 Fifth Ave ) on Friday, 3/27 from 1-3pm.
Please stop by to share your ideas, concerns, or just introduce yourself. I look forward to seeing you there.
Getting Ready for Good Cause
Nic Rangel, executive director of Legal Aid Services of Northeastern New York provides legal insight to some of the finer points of Good Cause legislation.
Current economic conditions and market scarcity have created a challenging environment for renters in Troy and across the nation. Among the myriad issues facing residents are quality of housing stock and the specter of rent increases which might price a family out of their home and community.
To address these issues, Troy City Council recently passed Local Law #1, allowing Troy to opt into Good Cause protections, limitng rent increases for qualifying units and protecting tenants from being evicted from their homes without appropriate cause, enabling them to more confidently address maitenance or code enforcement issues.
Nic Rangel certainly has experience with Good Cause Eviction protections; as deputy counsel to the NYS Senate Majority, Rangel was instrumental in the passage of Article 6-A of New York's Real Property Law, creating an opt-in mechanism for municipalities outside of NYC.
As executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern NY, Rangel, along with her team, have years of experience helping individuals and families navigate housing courts throughout the Capital Region, and has seen firsthand the impact of Good Cause Protections on communities.
Rangel was kind enough to share her experiences below.
NM: What exactly are Good Cause eviction protections?
NR: Good Cause Eviction protections are a set of tenant safeguards established under New York State's Article 6-A of the Real Property Law, passed in April 2024. At their core, they do two things: they require a landlord to have a legitimate reason — a "good cause" — to evict a tenant or decline to renew a lease, and they protect tenants from rent increases that are unreasonably large.
Under the law, acceptable reasons for eviction include non-payment of rent, violation of a lease term, use of the property for illegal purposes, creating a nuisance, or the landlord's desire to reclaim the unit for personal or family use. Rent increases are considered unreasonable if they exceed the lower of 10% or the local Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus 5%, unless a landlord can demonstrate that a larger increase is justified by specific cost factors.
Importantly, Good Cause does not make it impossible to remove a tenant — it simply ensures the process is fair and transparent, and that landlords do not evade court procedures by extreme rent hikes that drive tenants out of the unit. Tenants who pay their rent, abide by their lease, and maintain their unit retain the right to stay in their homes. Those who do not fulfill their obligations remain subject to eviction through the normal legal process.
NM: How can someone tell if their home or property is subject to the proposed law?
NR: Whether a property is covered depends on a combination of state law criteria and any local exemptions adopted by the municipality.
At the state level, Good Cause applies to most residential rental units in NYC that are not already covered by rent stabilization or rent control. There are, however, several categorical exemptions built into the law itself: owner-occupied buildings with fewer than four units, buildings constructed within the last 30 years (unless the municipality opts to include newer buildings), units that are seasonally rented, and units rented at above a certain high-rent threshold.
For Troy specifically, the City Council's adoption resolution may define additional local parameters, including how it defines "Small landlord" and how the high-rent threshold is set. Tenants who are unsure of their status can review their lease, determine when their building was constructed, and confirm whether their landlord lives on the premises. Landlords are required under the law to disclose to tenants whether the unit is subject to Good Cause protections, and to provide that information in any lease or renewal offer regardless of whether Good Cause has been adopted in that locality. If there is any ambiguity, tenants can consult with a local housing advocate organization or legal aid provider like the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York.
NM: One of the concerns of property owners is that Good Cause will make it harder to get rid of nuisance tenants. To your observation, has that been the case? What acts constitute "nuisance"? Must "nuisance" be spelled out in the lease?
NR: The law itself clearly preserves a landlord's ability to remove tenants who create a nuisance. Nuisance is one of the enumerated valid grounds for eviction. A nuisance generally refers to conduct that substantially interferes with the comfort, safety, or enjoyment of other residents or neighbors. This can include persistent excessive noise, harassment of other tenants, damage to the property beyond normal wear and tear, threats or acts of violence, or similar behavior that disrupts the reasonable use of the premises.
Critically, nuisance does not need to be itemized exhaustively in the lease. Courts evaluating nuisance claims apply a reasonableness standard based on the totality of the conduct. What matters is that the behavior is documented, persistent, intentional or negligent, unreasonable, and materially disruptive or actually harmful or damaging.
In communities that have adopted similar protections, such as Albany and Newburgh, there is no evidence that landlords have been systematically prevented from removing genuinely problematic tenants. The process still requires going through Housing Court, as it did before, but a well-documented nuisance case continues to be heard and decided on its merits. Good Cause raises the bar for no-fault or retaliatory removals, not for legitimate enforcement of tenant obligations. In other words, landlords with covered units can't simply wait out the end of a lease to remove someone who annoys them; now they have to prove a genuine nuisance.
NM: What are the enforcement mechanisms for Good Cause protections?
NR: Good Cause protections are primarily enforced through the existing Housing Court system. The law operates as a defense: if a landlord initiates an eviction proceeding or a tenant challenges an unlawful rent increase, the tenant can raise Good Cause as a legal defense in court. A judge then evaluates whether the landlord has demonstrated a valid basis for the eviction or whether the rent increase complied with the law's standards.
This means the burden shifts, in an important sense, to the landlord to affirmatively demonstrate they have good cause to evict someone. A landlord who cannot provide a lawful reason for eviction — or who is seeking to evict in retaliation for a tenant's complaints about housing conditions are less likely to prevail.
Additionally, landlords are required to include a disclosure in leases informing tenants whether Good Cause protections apply to their unit. If a landlord misrepresents coverage or attempts to waive the protections in the lease terms, those provisions are void and unenforceable.
While the law does not create a new enforcement agency or regulatory body, tenants who face retaliatory eviction attempts or unlawful rent increases have a meaningful legal remedy in court and can seek legal assistance through organizations like the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York or local housing advocacy groups.
NM: In Troy, which rental properties are exempt from the Good Cause Eviction law?
NR: Under Article 6 of the NYS law, new construction built after January 1, 2009 are exempt for 30 years; owner-occupied buildings with 10 or fewer units if its the owner's primary residence; units already regulated by other laws or programs, condos and coops, mobile homes (they are covered in another section of law), and short term housing like college dorms and seasonal use dwellings; special housing assisted living facilities; and employment based housing.
Troy's law defines a "small landlord" as someone owning no more than one unit anywhere in New York State. This is significantly stricter than the state's default exemption for landlords owning 10 or fewer units. Properties with a monthly rent greater than 345% of the local Fair Market Rent (FMR) are exempt. This is significantly higher than the standard 245% used in many other cities.
NM: Will landlords be able to raise rents? How would landlords calculate rent increases to recoup increases in taxes, insurance, non-routine maintenance costs and capital expenditures?
NR: Landlords can still raise rent at the start of any new lease with proper notice, Good Cause does not change that. Under Good Cause, a large rent increase is presumptively unreasonable if it exceeds the lower of 10% over the previous lease rent, or 5% plus the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the local region. In April 2025, the allowable increase was 8.38% for upstate municipalities. In this case, an 8.38% increase would be the lesser threshold. The NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) must publish the updated inflation rates every year by August 1st.
Landlords can justify a rent increase above that threshold by proving to a judge that they invested in major improvements to the building such as electrical or plumbing infrastructure as long as the repairs were not due to a basic failure to maintain the building. Significant increases to operating costs such as dramatic increases to property taxes, insurance premiums or utility expenses can also justify a large rent increase.
The purpose of the unreasonableness presumption is to disallow a landlord who does not have good cause to evict someone, to use, instead, an unreasonable rent increase to drive a tenant out of the unit.
NM: Troy is not the first municipality in New York State to adopt Good Cause. How has the enactment of such protections affected the housing market in other communities? Are conditions better for tenants and those seeking housing?
NR: Several New York municipalities, including Albany, Newburgh, and others adopted Good Cause protections prior to the 2024 statewide opt-in law, and Good Cause has been the law in many localities across the country for decades. New Jersey has had statewide Good Cause laws for 50 years, along with San Francisco and Oakland since the '70's and '80's. California adopted it statewide in 2019.
The evidence from those early-adopting communities generally suggests that Good Cause does not produce the negative effects its critics feared. It has not driven landlords out of the market en masse, caused a collapse in rental housing availability, or made it systematically harder to remove problem tenants, though it may contribute to higher rents. At the same time, tenants in those communities report greater security in their housing situations, reduced fear of retaliation when raising maintenance complaints, and greater stability for families and households that had previously faced year-to-year uncertainty.
It is worth noting that Good Cause is not a panacea for all housing affordability challenges. It does not, by itself, produce new housing supply or address the structural factors like zoning, construction costs, and financing that drive housing scarcity. Communities with tight housing markets will still experience pressure on rents and availability. What Good Cause does is ensure that within the existing rental stock, the rules governing the landlord-tenant relationship are more balanced and transparent. The consensus from housing advocates and researchers who have studied local adoptions is that the protections have meaningfully reduced unjust evictions and provided tenants with a fairer footing without the dire market consequences that were predicted.
NM: For a tenant who is afraid to complain too much to their landlord about problems in an apartment because they fear eviction or non-renewal, how would Good Cause help enforce a landlord's obligations?
NR: Under current law, a tenant who complains about a broken heater, a pest infestation, or a leaking roof does so at some risk. A landlord who does not want to make repairs or simply does not want a complaining tenant can decline to renew the lease at the end of the term, no explanation required. This dynamic effectively silences many tenants, who calculate that it is safer to live with substandard conditions than to risk losing their housing.
Good Cause helps to break that cycle. Because a landlord must now have a legitimate reason to decline renewal and retaliation for good-faith housing complaints is explicitly not a legitimate reason, tenants have a credible legal shield when they exercise their rights. A tenant who reports a habitability issue to the landlord, or to a city housing inspector, cannot lawfully be evicted or non-renewed in response to that complaint.
This protective function is important not just for individual tenants but for the city as a whole. When tenants feel safe reporting problems, housing conditions are more likely to be maintained. Code enforcement becomes more effective. And the responsible landlords who already maintain their properties are not disadvantaged relative to those who rely on tenant fear to avoid their maintenance obligations.
NM: Does Good Cause make it harder for a property owner to take a chance on tenants?
NR: Good Cause does not change the screening process. Landlords retain complete discretion over who they choose to rent to in the first instance. They may continue to review credit history, rental history, income verification, references, and any other lawful screening criteria. The law does not require a landlord to rent to any particular applicant, and it does not lower the bar for tenancy.
What Good Cause changes is what happens after a tenancy is established. A tenant who has demonstrated over time that they pay rent reliably, follow the lease, and maintain the property gains a meaningful right to stay. That security of tenure is, in many ways, good for landlords too. It reduces turnover, incentivizes tenants to care for their units, and supports longer-term relationships.
For a landlord who extended a lease to a tenant with an imperfect history and is now concerned about their ability to exit that arrangement if things go wrong, Good Cause still allows eviction for non-payment, lease violations, nuisance behavior, and other legitimate causes. The risk of housing a problem tenant has not substantially increased since the ability to remove a tenant who does not fulfill their obligations remains intact. What has changed is the ability to remove a tenant arbitrarily and that is the protection the law is designed to provide.
The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York provides assistance to low-income New Yorkers in six counties, including Rensselaer. For more information, please visit their website.
City Council Meeting Recaps
March 5th
Good Cause Eviction and videoconferencing laws were passed. A resolution authorizing an agreement with the Saratoga County Animal Shelter for animal sheltering services was introduced, and one authorizing a contract with Esi Employee Assistance to provide 24/7 counseling services, work-life resources, wellness resources, etc. for city employees and their families.
Council president Sue Steele gave the annual Troy City Council Legislative address where she outlined Council's agenda for the year. Public participation in the legislative process is a priority as well as housing and neighborhood stability. Videoconferencing will expand the democratic process by allowing the public to participate fully in Council meetings remotely, and Council members will also be able to participate remotely when they have emergencies that keep them from attending in person. Tenant's rights are top agenda items evidenced by the passage of the Good Cause Eviction law. Establishing a landlord registry and implementing a residential occupancy permit (ROP) program will also add to housing stability and tenant's rights.
Council is establishing a climate smart community task force to advance sustainability efforts including stormwater resiliency, expanding renewable energy and restoring Troy's urban forests, and will reinvigorate the Sustainability Task Force.
Communication is an important part of making democracy work and must be done with respect and decorum. To advance acceptable and professional standards, the Council will form a social media policy for City communications.
Another top priority is the acceleration of lead pipe replacement. Only 550 have been replaced in the last 3 years and at the current rate it will take 20 years to replace all of Troy's lead pipes.
Development of One Monument Square, the Riverwalk Park North Extension and a regional animal shelter are other important issues that require the attention of the Council and Administration.
March 19th
Aside from the Flock Safety resolution that we tabled, Council passed a resolution proclaiming April as Autism Acceptance Month; one proclaiming April 22nd as Earth Day; a resolution confirming various appointments to the Sustainability Task Force, and one establishing a Climate Smart Community Task Force.