Good Cause Eviction NYC 2026: What Every Landlord Must Know

NYC's Good Cause Eviction (GCE) law gives covered tenants new protections against non-renewal and steep rent increases. Below: what GCE actually covers, the exemptions most landlords forget, the new notice requirements, and a checklist for this quarter.

New York's Good Cause Eviction law took effect in April 2024 as part of the Housing Stability Package and applies statewide — including New York City. If you own residential rental units in NYC, this law almost certainly affects at least some of your portfolio. Here's what it actually does, who it covers, and what you need to do before your next lease renewal cycle.

What Good Cause Eviction actually does

Good Cause Eviction (GCE) does two things that fundamentally change the relationship between market-rate landlords and their tenants in covered buildings.

First, it limits non-renewal evictions. Under GCE, you can no longer decline to renew a lease simply because you want the unit back — unless you have one of the enumerated "good cause" reasons (covered below). Before GCE, a market-rate landlord could let a lease expire, decline to renew, and serve a holdover petition. GCE closes that option for covered units.

Second, it caps rent increases for renewal offers. Even if you have good cause to non-renew, and even if you want to offer a renewal instead, the rent increase you can propose is now capped. If you exceed the cap, the tenant has grounds to challenge the non-renewal in housing court as lacking good cause — because an unaffordable increase counts as constructive non-renewal under the law.

The law targets what lawmakers described as "no-fault" evictions — the practice of pushing out stable, paying tenants to re-let units at higher rents or convert them. Whether or not you agree with the policy rationale, the legal effect is real: market-rate landlords of covered buildings need to treat lease renewals differently than they did before April 2024.

Key distinction from rent stabilization: GCE is not rent stabilization. It does not freeze rents or require registration with DHCR. It does not make units permanently regulated. It imposes a process and a reasonableness standard on lease non-renewals and rent increases — which is a meaningful change, but a different one.

Which buildings and units are covered (and which are exempt)

GCE is broad but not universal. The exemptions are specific, and knowing them matters because misidentifying a unit as covered (or exempt) leads to either unnecessary compliance cost or legal exposure.

Covered by GCE:

• Buildings with 6 or more units in New York State (the law applies statewide, not just NYC)
• Tenants who have lived in the unit for at least one year (regardless of whether the lease is month-to-month or fixed-term)
• Market-rate units that are not already regulated under rent stabilization or rent control

Exempt from GCE — the list most landlords miss:

• Buildings with 4 or fewer units where the owner or the owner's family member occupies one of the units as their primary residence (the "small landlord exemption")
• Buildings with 5 or fewer units (all buildings below 6 units regardless of owner-occupancy)
• Rent-stabilized and rent-controlled units — these are already covered by separate, more comprehensive regulation; GCE doesn't apply on top of them
• Condominiums and co-ops where the owner is offering the unit for rent
• Units in buildings constructed within the last 30 years — this is a rolling exemption; in 2026, that means buildings completed after approximately 1996. The 30-year clock runs from first certificate of occupancy
• Two-family homes where the owner occupies one unit as their primary residence
• Subsidized housing with its own regulatory framework (certain Section 8 project-based, Mitchell-Lama, etc.)
• Seasonal or short-term rentals (occupancy of 90 days or fewer)
• Hospitals, care facilities, dormitories, and SROs under certain conditions

The new-construction exemption is the one most NYC landlords in newly built buildings rely on. If your building received its certificate of occupancy in 1997 or later, it was exempt through at least 2026. Buildings from the mid-1990s that recently lost that exemption need to re-evaluate their lease renewal practices now.

If you're unsure whether your building qualifies for any exemption, the Department of City Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has published guidance, and the DHCR can help clarify stabilization status. Consult an attorney for a definitive determination.

The new just-cause categories

For covered units, you now need a qualifying reason — "good cause" — to non-renew a tenancy. The law enumerates specific grounds. You cannot non-renew simply because you want to.

Qualifying good-cause grounds for non-renewal:

1. Non-payment of rent — tenant owes rent that is not the result of a failure by the landlord to maintain the unit in habitable condition
2. Violation of a substantial lease obligation — must be a material breach of a term actually in the lease, not a trivial one
3. Nuisance — the tenant is causing substantial interference with other tenants or the building
4. Illegal use — the tenant is using the unit for an illegal purpose
5. Owner or immediate family member occupancy — you or a family member intend to occupy the unit as a primary residence. This ground has notice requirements and restrictions on reletting within a specified period
6. Substantial rehabilitation — you intend to demolish or substantially rehabilitate the building, which requires appropriate permits and a government order
7. Withdrawal from the rental market — removing the unit from residential rental housing entirely (not just finding a new tenant)

What doesn't count as good cause:

• The tenant's lease expired and you want someone who will pay more
• You want to renovate the unit modestly and want vacant possession
• You simply prefer a different tenant
• The tenant is complaining about conditions (this may additionally trigger retaliation protections — see below)

If you serve a non-renewal notice without good cause, the tenant can raise this as a defense to a holdover eviction proceeding in housing court. The court can dismiss the proceeding, which leaves you with a holdover tenant you cannot remove without a qualifying reason.

Rent-increase caps under GCE

This is the section most NYC operators have gotten wrong since the law passed.

GCE does not specify a fixed percentage cap the way rent stabilization does. Instead, it creates a presumptive reasonableness standard: a rent increase is presumed unreasonable — and therefore grounds for the tenant to challenge a non-renewal — if it exceeds the lower of (a) 5% above the prior legal rent, or (b) 3x the percentage change in CPI for the New York metro area for the preceding 12 months.

In practice, for 2025–2026 with NYC CPI running in the 3–4% range, the effective cap works out to roughly 8–10% before a tenant has grounds to challenge. But the specific calculation requires the actual published CPI figure at the time of your notice.

Key mechanics:

• The cap applies to the increase you're offering in a renewal, not to market-rate jumps when a unit turns over to a new tenant. GCE does not cap rents for new tenants — only for renewal offers to existing tenants.
• If you offer a renewal at an increase above the cap, the tenant is not obligated to accept. If they decline, and you serve a non-renewal, they can argue in housing court that the non-renewal was retaliatory or without good cause because the offered rent was unaffordable.
• If you offer a renewal at an increase below the cap, the tenant has weaker grounds to challenge the non-renewal in housing court, even if they choose not to accept.

Practical guidance: When calculating your renewal offer, pull the most recent 12-month NYC CPI figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Multiply by 3 and compare that to 5%. Take the lower number. That's your ceiling for a legally defensible increase on covered units.

If your building is in a local jurisdiction (like NYC) that also has rent guidelines board (RGB) orders for stabilized units, those orders do not control your market-rate units under GCE. The GCE cap is separate from and independent of RGB decisions.

Required disclosures and notices

GCE added affirmative disclosure requirements that did not exist before for market-rate landlords.

At lease signing and renewal: For covered units, you must provide tenants with written notice explaining that the unit is covered by GCE and summarizing their rights. The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) has issued model language you can use.

Non-renewal notice: If you are declining to renew a lease for good cause, you must:

• Provide written notice of non-renewal at least 30 days before lease expiration for tenancies of less than one year
• 60 days' notice for tenancies of one to two years
• 90 days' notice for tenancies of two or more years
• State the specific good-cause ground in the notice — a generic "we are not renewing your lease" is insufficient
• If the ground is owner occupancy, specify who will occupy and when

Renewal offer: If you are renewing with a rent increase, your renewal offer should reflect the GCE cap calculation and be provided with enough lead time for the tenant to accept or make alternative housing arrangements — the same 30/60/90-day notice windows apply to renewal offers.

For NYC landlords already sending rent increase notices under NY's general notice rules, GCE's notice requirements layer on top. You cannot satisfy both obligations with a single short-form notice if you don't include the good-cause basis.

Defenses tenants can now raise

GCE significantly expanded the defenses tenants can raise in housing court, particularly in holdover proceedings.

The "no good cause" defense: A tenant facing a holdover after non-renewal can now argue directly in housing court that the landlord lacked good cause. Before GCE, this wasn't a cognizable defense in a market-rate context — the lease was just over. Now, the landlord must affirmatively demonstrate that one of the enumerated grounds exists and that it was properly noticed.

The "excessive increase" defense: If a landlord offered a renewal at an increase above the GCE cap, and the tenant declined, the tenant can argue in a holdover proceeding that the non-renewal was de facto retaliatory — the landlord knew the increase was unaffordable and used it to constructively evict. Courts are still developing the doctrine here, but this argument is being raised and in some cases succeeding.

Habitability as an offset: Tenants can argue that rent claimed as owed is offset by the landlord's failure to maintain the unit. This isn't new under GCE specifically, but it becomes more consequential as a defense now because non-payment of rent is one of the few clear good-cause grounds — and tenants who raise habitability defenses undermine that ground.

Retaliation: Under both GCE and pre-existing state law, retaliating against a tenant for complaining about conditions or asserting legal rights is prohibited. GCE complaints by tenants (for example, if a tenant argues you're raising their rent above the cap) could trigger retaliation protection. Document your reasons for any non-renewal carefully.

What this means operationally: Before serving any non-renewal notice on a covered unit, consult your attorney. The days of sending a standard "we won't be renewing" letter without legal review are over for NYC market-rate landlords operating in covered buildings.

What landlords should do this quarter

If you haven't already reviewed your portfolio for GCE exposure, here's the action list:

• Map your portfolio against the coverage rules. For each building, confirm: number of units, year of first certificate of occupancy, whether you or a family member occupies a unit, and rent stabilization status of each unit. Create a spreadsheet. This is the document you'll hand to your attorney.

• Identify upcoming lease expirations in covered units. For any tenant renewing in the next 90 days, pull their move-in date, current rent, and calculate the GCE cap using current CPI. Decide on renewal vs non-renewal before the notice window closes.

• Draft a compliant notice template. Your attorney or a qualified housing attorney should review the template you use for GCE-covered non-renewal or rent-increase notices. The model language from DHCR is a starting point, not a finished product.

• Review your lease language. Your standard lease should reference GCE coverage (if applicable) and include the required disclosure. Leases that predate GCE don't automatically comply.

• Log the analysis. If you believe a unit is exempt — particularly under the new-construction or small-building exemption — document why, in writing, now. If a tenant challenges later, you want a contemporaneous record.

• Talk to your attorney before any non-renewal. The cost of a 30-minute attorney review is less than the cost of a dismissed holdover proceeding and a months-long delay while you re-serve with a corrected notice.

For NYC landlords using software to manage NYC-specific compliance workflows, the relevant feature to look for is lease renewal tracking with notice deadline alerts — so non-renewal decisions aren't made at the last minute when it's too late to cure a procedural error.

FAQ

Does Good Cause Eviction apply to my 3-unit building? No. Buildings with 5 or fewer units are categorically exempt from GCE. The law applies to buildings with 6 or more residential units.

My building was built in 2000 — am I exempt? Likely yes for now. The new-construction exemption covers buildings completed within the last 30 years. A building completed in 2000 would have its exemption expire around 2030. Verify your certificate of occupancy date and recalculate yearly.

Can I still raise rent on a GCE-covered unit? Yes, but the increase you offer in a renewal is capped at the lower of 5% or 3x the most recent 12-month NYC CPI. You can charge market rate to an entirely new tenant — GCE does not cap initial rents, only renewal increases for existing tenants.

What happens if I serve a non-renewal without good cause on a covered unit? The tenant can raise GCE as a defense in the holdover proceeding. If the court agrees you lacked good cause, the proceeding is dismissed. You are then back to day one and must either assert a valid good-cause ground or offer the tenant a renewal.

Does GCE affect my ability to evict for non-payment of rent? Non-payment of rent is explicitly listed as a good-cause ground. GCE does not protect tenants who owe rent. The process for non-payment eviction is otherwise unchanged — serve the proper notice, file in housing court, proceed as before.

Is GCE the same in every city in New York State? The state law creates a floor. Some local governments may have passed additional tenant protections. NYC is the most active jurisdiction but other cities have adopted or are considering local overlays. Confirm the rules for each municipality where you operate.

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This isn't legal advice. Consult an attorney licensed in your state.