In last month’s historic election, New Yorkers turned out in record numbers to demand an affordable city. The next mayor and City Council will face enormous pressure to deliver, and the scale of the city’s affordability crisis will require new tools and bold action from day one.
The current City Council can give them a running start by passing the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), a proven tool for preserving long-term affordability in neighborhoods where unchecked real-estate speculation is pushing working-class and Black New Yorkers out of the city.
COPA gives mission-driven nonprofit developers — and for-profit developers partnering with them — the first opportunity to purchase multifamily buildings when owners sell. These qualified preservation buyers have a short window to make a fair-market offer, which the owner can take or leave before placing the building on the open market.
Mission-driven developers like Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC) have spent decades making exactly these kinds of deals work — and COPA gives us a powerful new tool to preserve affordable housing before speculators swoop in and drive rents out of reach for everyday New Yorkers.
With COPA, we will be able to identify and evaluate potential preservation opportunities much more quickly — and match the speed of today’s market. COPA creates a clear, time-limited process that alerts qualified nonprofits when an eligible building is for sale, allowing us to assess in a matter of days whether we have capacity to bid on a project. Just as important, COPA includes clear off-ramps: if a nonprofit cannot make a viable offer within the short window, the owner is free to proceed to the open market.
We know COPA works. San Francisco adopted its own version in 2019, in response to the same speculator-driven displacement pressures New York faces today. Already, San Francisco’s COPA has preserved 463 homes for more than 1,000 residents, in buildings that would otherwise have been flipped for profit. In mixed-use buildings, nonprofit purchasers have also preserved dozens of storefronts for small businesses acquired through COPA. Today, COPA accounts for a significant share of all preserved affordable units in the city.
COPA works because it gives vetted nonprofits — like community development corporations and community land trusts — a short, structured window to evaluate a property, engage with tenants, and assemble a competitive fair market offer. That is nearly impossible in today’s lightning-fast private market. It also complements existing preservation tools, helping the city’s housing agency and qualified preservation buyers work together to keep buildings affordable for the long-term.
COPA has strengthened San Francisco’s housing market without harming building owners: sellers still choose their price and can move to the open market if a nonprofit cannot proceed. The result is a practical, market-based policy that stems displacement, increases transparency, improves housing quality, and helps communities keep control of their housing.
New York’s housing market is increasingly dominated by private equity firms, all-cash buyers, and speculative investors who can acquire buildings within days. These sales often result in sharp rent increases, building neglect, or pressures on tenants to vacate. In many neighborhoods of color, the loss of even a handful of affordable buildings can accelerate gentrification and displacement, altering communities that residents have spent generations building and turning New York into a city they can no longer afford.
Pairing COPA with tenant organizing, quick access to acquisition financing, expanded housing preservation funding and meaningful investment in nonprofit capacity will maximize the policy’s impact. COPA will not solve the housing crisis on its own, but it will give mission-driven organizations — and the communities they serve — a fighting chance to compete in an investor-dominated market while ensuring real stability for New Yorkers and their neighborhoods.
In recent weeks, the Council has refined COPA in response to input from property owners, developers, and tenants. The amended bill shortens the timeframes in which nonprofits must act; and significantly narrows the universe of buildings covered by COPA — excluding smaller owner-occupied buildings entirely, and focusing on buildings where tenants and affordability protections are at greatest risk.
Under this framework, COPA would have covered a few hundred buildings over the last year, according to an analysis by New Economy Project — a small but strategic share of the market that includes at-risk buildings in greatest need of preservation.
New Yorkers want an affordable city and COPA can help deliver. The Council must pass COPA — and show that they’re listening.
de la Uz is the executive director of Fifth Avenue Committee, a 47-year old nonprofit community development corporation.
