#NYC Council eyes ban on landlords conducting criminal background checks

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Councilman Stephen Levin, the bill’s chief sponsor.
Rashid Umar Abbasi

Landlords are up in arms about proposed City Council legislation that would bar them from examining the criminal records of prospective tenants, which they claim could let drug dealers and other criminals into buildings.

“There is an obligation on the part of owners to provide a safe home for tenants,” said Joe Strasburg, who runs the landlord industry group, the Rent Stabilization Association.

“If this bill passes, you won’t know who’s living next to you — whether it’s a drug dealer or a pedophile,” Strasburg argued. “They have a right and an expectation to feel safe in their homes.”

State laws that bar many sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds and other facilities used by children would still apply.

The bill’s chief sponsor defended the measure as a way to ensure that those with rap sheets get an opportunity to find housing and avoid the city’s notorious shelter system as they try to restart their lives.

“When someone comes out of prison, they’ve paid their debt to society and they deserve to be able to live in a home just like anyone else,” said Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn).

“A lot of the people who have criminal records have criminal records because of minor drug convictions,” he added. “Someone with a minor drug conviction in their younger days — sent to prison because of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws that we’ve reversed — should not be forced to live in a shelter for the rest of their lives.”

The background check ban would be in addition to an existing 2008 city law that bars landlords from examining how tenants can pay their rent, which housing advocates long complained that landlords had to block lower-income New Yorkers with housing vouchers from their buildings.

The bill is slated for a Council committee hearing on Tuesday along with a package of bills aimed at expanding the Big Apple’s housing voucher program for New Yorkers who are in shelters or at risk of eviction, known as City FHEPS.