Soon after Pedro Espada, Jr. toppled indicted incumbent Efrain Gonzalez to take over as the state senator in the Bronx’s 33rd District in the fall of 2008, he began negotiating an appointment to chair one of the state’s most coveted committees, the Housing Committee. 

That fall, Democrats in the Senate had wrested power — albeit by a slight 32-30 margin — from Republicans for the first time in more than 40 years. Malcolm Smith, the Senate’s highest ranking Democrat, was poised to take over as majority leader and president. At the same time, pro-tenant housing groups were anticipating a positive sea change in the Senate’s attitude toward their favorite pieces of housing legislation, which had gone nowhere during the Republicans’ reign. 

Espada, however, threatened to withhold his support for Smith unless he received some kind of leadership role in exchange. Espada began negotiating this deal with the help of Stanley Schlein, a lawyer with deep political roots in the Bronx, who is also a registered lobbyist for the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA), the two most powerful pro-landlord groups in the city.

Before appointing Espada chair of the Housing Committee, Smith called Michael McKee, the head of an umbrella organization of pro-tenant housing groups called the Real Rent Reform Campaign, which had pushed hard over the previous eight election cycles to put Democrats back into the majority.

McKee says he told Smith at the time, “You’ll be very sorry you dealt with this man.”

During the first half of 2009, Real Rent Reform Campaign, which includes the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a large local grassroots organizing group, held Espada’s feet to the fire. They protested at a Manhattan luncheon sponsored by pro-landlord groups that Espada attended. They pestered him in Albany and demanded he take action on tenant protection bills.

Finally, in early June of last year, Espada put a series of tenant protection bills — including the repeal of vacancy decontrol, which McKee says would preserve 300,000 affordable housing units in New York City and which landlord groups are adamantly opposed to — on a Housing Committee agenda for Monday, June 8.

Before that Monday, Espada rescheduled the meeting for Tuesday, June 9. But on Monday, the senate announced that all upcoming meetings were cancelled. Espada and fellow Democrat Hiram Monserrate had suddenly decided to side with Republicans and vote in new senate leadership. Democrats immediately cried foul and the senate was effectively shut down for more than a month.

“That’s Espada,” McKee said.
Espada eventually returned to the Democrats, with a new title: Senate Majority Leader.

Last November, at a rally held by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition at St. Nicholas of Tolentine School in University Heights, Espada told 500-plus people he would support the repeal of vacancy decontrol during the upcoming legislative session.

As chair of the housing committee, Espada enjoys complete control over what gets introduced, debated and voted on during meetings.

This year, Espada held nine Housing Committee meetings that lasted an average of 3 minutes and 45 seconds each, according to senate records. (The shortest meeting was 2 minutes, 27 seconds; the longest: 10 minutes, 10 seconds. By comparison, the Education Committee met 10 times for an average of a little more than 31 minutes per meeting.)

Instead of offering up any of the tenant protection and affordable housing bills favored by pro-tenant groups, which have easily passed the heavily Democratic Assembly on an annual basis, Espada created a new bill that he said would freeze the rent for 600,000 low-income tenants for five years. It was his primary, almost singular, focus this year in the Housing Committee.

The landlord lobby, including the RSA and REBNY, blessed the bill. Pro-tenant groups blasted it for being a pro-landlord bill in disguise because, as part of the legislation, landlords could pay back capital improvement tax breaks they received in exchange for allowing them to de-regulate the improved apartments. (Last year, a court ruled that landlords receiving tax breaks for capital improvements could not de-regulate the improved apartments they received tax breaks for. In essence, Espada’s bill gave landlords a loophole to get around the ruling. In the past two years, landlords and other real estate groups have contributed more than $178,000 to Espada’s campaign committee.)

“[Espada] knows it’s a phony bill, it’s never going to go anywhere,” McKee said. “It’s basically a de-control bill in disguise.”

The RSA and REBNY did not return calls seeking comment. Curt Tucker, Espada’s legislative director, also did not return calls seeking comment.

Political leaders, including Vito Lopez, the head of the Assembly’s housing committee, and the mayor’s office, said the bill was entirely unrealistic and fiscally irresponsible. An analysis of the bill by the Community Service Society said the legislation would cost taxpayers $1.8 billion over the next five years.

Still, Espada’s bill passed through the committee, 6-2, on June 1. Three Republicans and two Bronx Democrats, Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Ruben Diaz, Sr., voted for the bill, while two Democrats, Liz Krueger and Daniel Squadron, voted against it. It’s now languishing in the Finance Committee.

Hassell-Thompson did not address why she voted for the rent freeze bill, but lamented the committee’s general failure to act this year. “There are substantial bills that the Housing Committee has not yet taken up,” she said in an e-mail in late June. She added that although she was optimistic that something might still happen, “I am doubtful.” (None of the other members of the Housing Committee returned calls seeking comment for this article.)

McKee and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition continue to protest Espada’s inaction, but will no longer deal with him directly. “We refuse to do it,” McKee said. “It’s like dealing with the landlord lobby.”