City Council Passes COPA, Giving Nonprofits First Shot at Buildings

The New York City Council on Thursday approved the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, a measure that would give qualified nonprofits a first shot at buying certain distressed apartment buildings. The vote comes six years after the original legislation was introduced.

Under the bill, qualified housing preservation groups and nonprofits, including community land trusts, would have 20 days to submit a statement of interest when a covered building goes up for sale. They would then have another 70 days to submit an offer before the property is marketed more broadly. If an owner receives an offer from a buyer that is not a qualified entity, the nonprofit would hold a right of first refusal.

The vote marked the second time in under a year that the Council has passed COPA. Lawmakers approved a similar version in December 2025, but former Mayor Eric Adams vetoed it, along with 18 other bills, on his final day in office.

The first version of the bill was introduced in 2020. Its aim was to preserve existing affordable buildings that were being bought by private equity firms and then converted to market-rate housing or resold.

Council Member Sandy Nurse, who sponsored the latest version, said she had to “really start over again” and make several changes to the original bill to make it workable. A key shift was narrowing the “targeted universe” of eligible properties from 10,000 buildings to between 2,000 and 3,400. The revised bill applies to buildings that meet a higher threshold of housing code violations. That change helped win support from Council Speaker Julie Menin and others.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of the vote, Nurse framed the bill as an anti-displacement tool. “Buying and preserving some of the housing we already have is the most immediate way to stop displacement. That’s what COPA does,” she said. She added that it lets trusted housing providers buy certain buildings, work with tenants, fix up the units and keep tenants in place at permanently affordable rents. It also gives eligible landlords a pool of community-oriented buyers, she said, and brings those buildings into a form of public oversight.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he intends to sign the bill. In a statement to The Real Deal, he said COPA “puts the power in the hands of tenants and community organizations,” and that the city is building on it with a historic investment in affordable housing preservation. “I look forward to signing this bill into law and continuing the fight to make New York a city for the many, not the few,” he said.

Small property owners are pushing back. Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, said COPA will devalue buildings and will “illegally take private property.” In a statement, she argued that giving nonprofits the right of first refusal shuts out conventional buyers with the financial wherewithal to immediately improve and rehabilitate a failing building. She also said government policies such as rent freezes set up small owners for failure and push them into economic distress, and called COPA a “devious housing scheme” meant to address problems the government created.

With the mayor signaling his signature, the focus now turns to implementation: how nonprofits mobilize within the 20- and 70-day windows, and how owners and brokers respond to the new process for distressed buildings.