Syracuse Good Cause Eviction: Why It Will Backfire on Everyone

Syracuse is on the verge of passing Good Cause Eviction. The Common Council is expected to vote on February 24, 2026, and the votes are there. Mayor Walsh supports it. At least five councilors have publicly backed it. This thing is going to pass.

And it is going to backfire on everyone. Landlords, tenants, the city itself. Every single group this law claims to help will end up worse off within five years.

We manage rental properties across Central New York. We have seen what bad policy does to housing markets. This one is going to leave a mark.

What Good Cause Eviction Actually Does

New York State passed the Good Cause Eviction law effective April 20, 2024. It does not automatically apply everywhere. Municipalities have to opt in. Syracuse is about to do exactly that.

Here is what the law does in plain English:

• Landlords cannot refuse to renew a lease or remove a tenant without “good cause”
• Rent increases are capped at the lesser of CPI + 5% or 10% per year
• “Good cause” is defined narrowly: nonpayment, nuisance, illegal activity, owner occupancy, or substantial renovation
• Tenants can challenge any eviction or non-renewal in court, and the burden is on the landlord to prove cause

On paper, this sounds reasonable. Nobody wants tenants thrown out for no reason. But the practical effects are devastating.

You Cannot Remove Problem Tenants Who Pay Rent

This is the first problem landlords will hit. You have a tenant who pays rent on the first of every month but makes life miserable for everyone else in the building. They blast music at 2 AM. They leave garbage in the hallway. They intimidate neighbors. They let unauthorized occupants move in.

Under Good Cause, as long as that tenant pays rent, you cannot get rid of them. “Nuisance” is a ground for eviction, but proving nuisance in court requires documented, repeated violations and typically police reports. Most problem tenants are smart enough to stay just below the legal threshold.

The other tenants leave. The good ones always leave first. Now you have vacancies and the problem tenant is still there, protected by law.

Rent Caps Kill Property Investment

The rent cap is where this law does the most damage. Landlords cannot raise rent above the lesser of CPI + 5% or 10% in a year. That sounds generous until you look at real numbers.

Property taxes in Syracuse have gone up 15-20% over the past three years. Insurance premiums have doubled for many landlords since 2022. Water and sewer rates keep climbing. A new roof costs twice what it did in 2019.

When your expenses go up 15% but you can only raise rent 7%, you lose money. Period. There is no complicated math here. The building becomes a money pit.

Landlords who cannot cover expenses stop investing. They stop replacing furnaces. They stop fixing roofs. They do the bare minimum to stay within code, and sometimes not even that. The building deteriorates. The tenants live in worse conditions. This is not hypothetical. This is exactly what happened in rent-controlled cities across the country.

New Investors Will Avoid Syracuse

Syracuse already has trouble attracting real estate investment. The property tax rate is brutal. The climate is rough on buildings. The tenant pool in many neighborhoods is high-risk.

Now add Good Cause Eviction on top of that. An investor looking at Syracuse versus a city in Pennsylvania or North Carolina is going to pick the city where they have full control over their property. Every time.

We talk to out-of-state investors regularly. They ask about the regulatory environment before they ask about cap rates. Good Cause Eviction is the kind of thing that makes them cross an entire city off the list.

Existing Owners Will Sell and Leave

Landlords who already own in Syracuse are doing the math right now. Many of them are going to sell. Not because they want to, but because the numbers do not work anymore.

When a landlord sells a building with capped rents and tenants who cannot be removed, who buys it? Not another small landlord. The only buyers will be institutional investors who buy at steep discounts, or slumlords who plan to milk the building until it falls down.

Small landlords are the backbone of Syracuse’s rental housing. They own the duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings that make up most of the rental stock. When they leave, the quality of housing drops fast.

Housing Supply Shrinks and Rents Go Up

This is the part that Good Cause supporters refuse to acknowledge. When you cap rents and restrict evictions, you reduce the supply of rental housing. Landlords convert rentals to owner-occupied. They let buildings sit empty rather than deal with the risk. New construction slows because the return does not justify the cost.

Less supply with the same demand means higher rents. Not immediately. Give it three to five years. The tenants who were supposed to be protected by this law will be paying more, living in worse conditions, and competing for fewer available units.

Syracuse already has a housing shortage. The vacancy rate in desirable neighborhoods is under 3%. This law is going to make that worse, not better.

The People Hurt Most Are the Tenants

Good Cause Eviction is sold as tenant protection. In practice, it protects bad tenants at the expense of good ones.

Good tenants do not need this law. They pay rent, they take care of the unit, and landlords bend over backwards to keep them. No sane landlord evicts a reliable tenant. Turnover is expensive. Every landlord wants long-term tenants who pay on time.

The tenants who benefit from Good Cause are the ones who make other tenants’ lives miserable. The chronic late payers. The ones who damage units. The ones whose “guests” deal drugs out of the apartment. These are the tenants who will now be nearly impossible to remove.

Meanwhile, the good tenants suffer because buildings deteriorate, maintenance gets deferred, and the overall quality of rental housing drops. They cannot find new apartments because supply is shrinking. They pay more because landlords front-load rent increases to the maximum allowed every single year, whether the market justifies it or not, because they know they may not be able to raise rent enough later.

What This Means for Syracuse Landlords

If you own rental property in Syracuse, you need to prepare now. Do not wait for the vote.

• Review your portfolio and check which buildings qualify for exemptions (buildings with 10 or fewer units are exempt)
• Talk to your attorney about structuring ownership to maximize exemptions
• Document everything with every tenant, starting today
• Raise rents to market rate now, before the law takes effect and caps your ability to adjust
• Screen tenants harder than ever, because once they are in, getting them out just got much harder

We have a detailed breakdown of the exemptions in our companion article: Good Cause Eviction Exemptions in New York.

The Bigger Picture

Syracuse has real housing problems. Aging housing stock. Lead paint. Absentee landlords who do not maintain properties. Tenants who cannot afford market rent. These are real issues that deserve real solutions.

Good Cause Eviction is not a real solution. It is a political win that will create worse problems than the ones it claims to fix. Every city that has tried rent control and eviction restrictions has ended up with less housing, worse housing, and higher rents for the people who can least afford it.

San Francisco. New York City. Los Angeles. The evidence is in. It does not work. Syracuse is about to learn this the hard way.

If you own rental property in Syracuse, Oswego, Auburn, or Utica, we can help you figure out your next move. Whether that is restructuring your portfolio, tightening your screening process, or selling and reinvesting somewhere else, we have been through it.

Talk to Us

Call RenPro Property Management at 315-400-2654. We manage properties across Central New York and we are watching this law closely. If you need help preparing for what is coming, reach out.