NYC Council passes bill giving nonprofits first dibs on buying distressed apartment buildings
Photo courtesy of Alex Krales/NYC Council Media Unit on Flickr
The New York City Council on Thursday passed a bill that gives nonprofit groups first dibs on buying certain distressed properties, six years after the original legislation was introduced. Lawmakers voted to approve the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), which gives qualified nonprofit organizations, including community land trusts, the first opportunity ahead of for-profit developers to bid on troubled apartment buildings, which supporters say will preserve affordable housing.
COPA gives qualified housing preservation groups or nonprofits 20 days to submit a statement of interest when a building goes up for sale, and another 70 days to submit an offer before the building hits the market. Qualified entities would have a right of first refusal if an owner receives an offer from a person other than a qualified entity.
Thursday’s vote marked the second time within a year the Council approved COPA. In December 2025, lawmakers approved a similar version of the legislation, but former Mayor Eric Adams vetoed it, along with 18 other bills, on his last day in office.
The first version of the bill was introduced in 2020 to preserve existing affordable buildings that were being bought by private equity firms and turned into market-rate housing or sold.
Council Member Sandy Nurse, who sponsored the latest version of COPA, said she had to “really start over again” and make several changes to the original bill to make it workable.
The bill gained support from Council Speaker Julie Menin and others after a “targeted universe” of eligible properties was narrowed from 10,000 buildings to between 2,000 and 3,400 buildings. The revised bill applies to buildings that meet a higher threshold of housing code violations.
“Buying and preserving some of the housing we already have is the most immediate way to stop displacement. That’s what COPA does,” Nurse said during a press conference ahead of Thursday’s vote.
“It lets trusted housing providers buy certain buildings, work with those tenants, fix the units up, and put those tenants back in those same units and keep them there at permanently affordable rents. It gives eligible landlords a pool of community-oriented buyers who know this work, and it brings those buildings into a form of public oversight.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he intends to sign the bill.
“COPA puts the power in the hands of tenants and community organizations, and we’re building on that power with a historic investment in affordable housing preservation,” Mamdani said in a statement to The Real Deal. “I look forward to signing this bill into law and continuing the fight to make New York a city for the many, not the few.”
Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY), said COPA will devalue buildings and will “illegally take private property.”
“Giving the right-of-first-refusal to nonprofits shuts out conventional buyers who have the financial wherewithal to immediately improve and rehabilitate a failing building,” Korchak said in a statement.
“On the front end, government policies like rent freezes set up small owners for failure and thrust them into economic distress. Now, on the back end, government has created a devious housing scheme—COPA—under the guise of addressing problems they created in the first place, so they can illegally take private property.”
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