The Third Party Transfer program has been on ice for years, a casualty of its own worst impulses. Now a Bronx councilmember wants to bring it back, stripped of the provisions that made it a wrecking ball aimed at Black and Brown homeowners.
Councilmember Pierina Sanchez introduced legislation Monday that would revive and reform the program, which was created in 1996 to pry derelict buildings away from negligent landlords. The proposal, called the SAFER Act, short for “Stability, Accountability, Fair Enforcement for Residents,” drew a City Hall rally and a committee hearing where housing officials signaled broad support.
The original program had teeth. It allowed the city’s Department of Finance and Department of Housing Preservation and Development to seize properties from landlords who had fallen behind on taxes or water bills and accumulated serious housing violations. Those buildings were then transferred to nonprofit entities tasked with stabilizing them as affordable housing.
But the program became a cautionary tale. One particularly damaging provision allowed the city to sweep up every property on a block if even one qualified for transfer. That meant homeowners in neighborhoods like East New York, Brownsville, and parts of the Bronx lost property they had owned for generations, not because they were negligent landlords but because they happened to share a block with one. The damage to generational wealth in majority Black and Brown communities was severe enough to halt the program entirely.
Sanchez, who represents parts of the Bronx, says the new version targets a fundamentally different population. She wants the program to go after what she called “the worst of the worst” offenders, owners of badly deteriorated buildings who owe years of back taxes and fees and have let their properties fall into serious disrepair.
The SAFER Act would eliminate the block-wide seizure provision, which Sanchez described as “disastrous.” It would also give property owners and tenants more advance notice before a transfer occurs, require that repairs actually be made as a condition for exiting the program, and create pathways for owners to avoid transfer in some circumstances.
City housing officials largely backed the overhaul at Monday’s hearing. HPD Chief of Staff Rosa Kelly said the reformed program would focus on “a narrow subset of severely distressed properties where other enforcement, outreach or preservation tools have not resolved the underlying instability.” Kelly added that reforming Third Party Transfer would allow the city to “ensure that this powerful program focuses on properties with the most delinquent debt and recent violations, so that the buildings can be stabilized and improve housing quality for residents.”
According to city officials, fewer than two percent of the city’s housing stock carries both extensive tax delinquency and serious housing violations, meaning only a small number of properties would actually be eligible under the revised program.
The bill has 32 council sponsors, two short of the number needed to override a mayoral veto. That near-supermajority is significant political momentum, but a notable gap remains. Council Speaker Julie Menin is not among the sponsors and has not taken a position on the legislation, according to a spokesperson.
The absence of Menin’s support means the bill faces a less certain path than its sponsor count suggests. A mayor skeptical of the program could still block it, and Menin’s neutrality gives the administration room to maneuver.
What drove the original program off the rails was not its central premise. The idea that a city should have tools to intervene when landlords abandon their buildings and their tenants is sound policy. What went wrong was the execution, specifically the way the program was implemented in neighborhoods where residents already had every reason to be suspicious of city enforcement actions.
Sanchez is trying to thread a real needle here. She needs to demonstrate that the reformed program can target the predatory operators who let buildings crumble while collecting rent, without once again becoming a mechanism that strips working-class homeowners of property their families spent decades building. The hearing Monday suggests the city’s housing apparatus believes she can pull it off.
Whether the Council speaker and the administration agree is another question entirely, and one that will shape whether this bill moves from a committee room to law.
