GREENPOINT — North Brooklyn loft tenants rallied at the San Daminao Mission Thursday night to drum up support for reforms to the state's Loft Law currently on the table in Albany.
"We can change things, but we have to show up," shouted Ximena Garnica, a dancer and choreographer, to a colorful crowd — some toting drums, others with bright banners and garbed in homemade costumes. Garnica is a loft tenant, whose live/work home and dance studio of more than a decade may not earn coverage under the current Loft Law because of a loophole.
Tenants and advocates under the umbrella of New York City Loft Tenants are calling on state legislators to pass some key reforms. The new law would abolish the June 15 deadline to apply for coverage. The group also wants to do away with some Bloomberg-era exemptions to Loft Law protection for places with basement units or ones without external windows.
They are calling to broaden the window of eligibility for loft tenants; currently you have to prove you lived in the building in 2008 and 2009.
Their goal is to include as many tenants as possible loft law coverage, which protects them much like rent-stabilized tenants, with regulated rent increases and staving off evictions.
Much of their focus is in North Brooklyn's industrial areas, which became eligible for Loft Law coverage under the the 2010 changes to the law, and where artists' live/work spaces are increasingly threatened by development.
The measures have the support of State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol and Assemblywoman Maritza Davila, who brought the proposed changes to the law to the State Assembly's Housing Committee.
The committee is currently looking at the reforms and is expected to release a draft bill next week, staffer at Davila's office Rachel Fuente said. Advocates say they also are counting on the support of Republican State Senator Marty Golden, though his office didn't immediately confirm that.
At Thursday night's rally, Loft Board tenant advocate Chuck DeLaney, who helped draft the original law, urged tenants to turn up in Albany garbed in wacky costumes with bright signs and make upstate lawmakers feel their presence if they expect the changes in the law to pass.
"Because you're artists you actually remind them of their younger brother who was the creative one in the family," DeLaney said.
