Get involved in the movement to end discrimination against tenants! Help draft the bill to prevent landlords from using information from housing court records.
Hello New Yorkers,
You are invited to join the New York online community at nyc.legislationlab.org to co-draft the laws of the City Council. There will also be an opportunity to discuss priorities and strategies in person with Council member Ben Kallos at the next policy night on July 14th.
The focus of this month is to co-draft the bill to prevent landlords discriminating against tenants with housing court records. The so-called Anti Tenant Black Lists contain estimated hundreds of thousands of names of would-be renters, and are often used by landlords to deny future housing to potential tenants based on discriminatory information. The legislation would allow tenants to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights and fine landlords if a violation was found.
Using nyc.legislationlab.org, you can vote, comment and propose changes to every article of the bill. Your feedback will be published in real time, aggregated and analyzed to enable the council member to best serve your interests.
GovRight, the team behind Legislation Lab, has partnered with Ben Kallos to improve access to law, provide civic education, and facilitate citizen participation in the legislative process in the City of New York.
“The Anti Tenant Black List” bill is the first project of Legislation Lab at the local level. The platform is currently used for constitutional crowdsourcing in Middle East and South America. GovRight believes that it is important to adapt every initiative to the current context, yet many of the principles applied at the national level remain relevant to the local level.
GovRight team will join the policy night on Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 6:00pm.