Good Cause Eviction law

[Carini Rochester]

Here a quote from a news article dated yesterday. I have apartments in the City of Rochester. It sounds like the tenant retains the right to leave at the end of a lease, but the landlord doesn't have the right to end the lease. The lease will renew if the tenant wants it to. What do you think of this proposed law?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — A bill was introduced by the Rochester City Council to adopt the state’s Good Cause Eviction law.

The bill would restrict landlords from evicting tenants without good reason and would curtail the denial of lease renewals. City council says the bill would not be considered until after the council meeting this month.

Rochester’s Housing Quality Task Force expands focus to homeowners

In order to evict a tenant or deny a renewal, landlords would have to prove the tenant did not pay rent and that it did not result from an unreasonable increase in rent, the tenant violated an obligation of the lease, is being a nuisance or doing illegal activity, or unreasonably refusing to give a landlord access, among others.

[Lorna LeBlanc]

Quote from @Melanie P.:

There are enough reasons on the good cause list to end a lease when you really need to. We offer renewals unless there is a serious issue anyway. The idea is to discourage the small-landlord's practice of nonrenewing leases due to personality conflicts, whether you find the tenant likeable enough, etc.

I disagree.  If you have a nuisance tenant (ex. tenant who pays rent but late every month, tenant who complains about things like "I saw A wasp or I'm getting the wrong mail in my mailbox,"  but fails to report legitimate issues in a timely manner, tenant who fails to get along with the neighbors), you won't be able to get that nuisance tenant out and all your good tenants will leave because of it.  GCE is designed to protect poorly performing tenants thus, as a side effect will de-house good tenants.

We all know that tenants who pay their rent on time and in full every month, tenants who get along with their neighbors and tenants who don't tear up the property but report legitimate issues DON'T get evicted for "no reason."  

GCE encourages poor behavior in tenants and punishes good tenants that are following the rules.  I believe that is GCE's end game anyway-- to drive mom and pop landlords out of business.