Advocates pushing for the city to enforce its Proactive Rental Inspections law are continuing their legal challenge.
The City of Buffalo created the law about six years ago, which was designed to address issues in Buffalo homes like lead-based paint, faulty plumbing and other safety and quality of life issues. But some residents have been saying for years that city officials haven’t been following their own law — nor demanding landlords comply.
Several community groups and Buffalo renters filed a class action complaint against the city in July 2024 to demand the city fully implement its Proactive Rental Inspections law, which was enacted in 2020 and largely based off a model in Rochester used to remediate the presence of lead-based paint in residential properties. It's a law that housing advocates say would afford the most basic and necessary requirements for safe living conditions to renters.
“Implementation of the law would ensure that landlords are only renting out properties when they are fit to be lived in, when they are up to code," said Sarah Wooton, interim director of Partnership for the Public Good, one of the organizations on the lawsuit against the city.
The New York State Supreme Court case was dismissed last January by Judge Michael Siragusa, who sided with the city's argument that the program was being implemented under the discretion of then-Department of Permits and Inspections Commissioner Catherine Amdur.
The case went to Appellate Court on April 9 for oral arguments. Matthew Parham, director of litigation and advocacy at the Western New York Law Center, says he’s hopeful the judges recognized what the initial courts got wrong.
“Based on what was presented before all the judges on the panel seemed to understand that the city wasn't complying with the letter of the law," Parham said.
Part of that noncompliance, he says, is that the city still lacks an application process for Certificates of Rental Compliance — which landlords are supposed to receive after a city inspector deems their property up to code.
It’s unclear how many certificates the city has issued since the last court appearance. BTPM NPR reached out to Department of Permit and Inspection Services commissioner Lou Petrucci, but he has not yet responded.
Parham also believes that Siragusa misinterpreted the PRI law by wrongly concluding that properties in the rental registry did not need to be inspected unless landlords applied for Certificates of Rental Compliance, and by incorrectly treating the Green Amendment as unenforceable unless it explicitly said otherwise, which is the opposite of how constitutional rights are supposed to be analyzed, he said.
Advocates say they hope to see enforcement of the PRI program under Mayor Sean Ryan’s leadership, as he ran much of his mayoral campaign on improving housing quality.
“We're hopeful that the new administration will be more committed to implementing this law, because it's because of the track record of the mayor on housing issues,” Parham said.
A decision on the case is expected to come from the Appellate Court in a matter of weeks. Wooton says no matter which way the case goes in court, she also hopes for progress in advocacy with Buffalo’s new mayoral administration moving forward.
"While it's too early to tell what's going to happen in this situation, we know that we'll continue on with those conversations and advocacy no matter what, until folks are able to live in safe, affordable homes," she said.
