Almost six years after the first version of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) was first put forward, New York City council members successfully passed the bill during one of their final meetings of 2025.

The long-fought policy would give nonprofits (and for-profit organizations that partner with nonprofits) first dibs at purchasing distressed residential properties before they hit the speculative market.

Two weeks after housing rights advocates celebrated the legislation’s passage, outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams vetoed COPA and 18 other bills — including the Street Vendor Reform Package, Safer Sanctuary Act, several housing affordability policies and a bill to create a land bank — during his final moments in office.

But advocates say there’s still time to save the bill. New Economy Project director Deyanira Del Rio says the first step to overriding Adams’ veto would require newly-elected Council Speaker Julie Menon to bring the bill back to the floor for the new council’s vote.

Per New York City’s legislative process, the Council only has 30 days to override the Mayoral veto, starting Wednesday. For the bill to pass, at least 34 council members will need to vote in favor.

Tenants, community and affordable housing organizations, and elected officials gathered at City Hall for a press conference and speak-out during the new year’s first stated meeting to call on Menin and the council to override Mayor Adams’ veto.

“Starting today, the clock starts ticking for them to override the veto. We know the votes will be there. We just need the speaker to bring it to a vote,” Del Rio said.

For community land trusts and tenants associations who don’t have the financial backing of New York’s typical real estate players, COPA could be a powerful tool to help them maintain affordability.

“We want to try to keep those units affordable. This is an opportunity to do that,” Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who sponsored the latest version of the legislation, said in a press conference. Without COPA, she said, “we potentially lose those affordable units.”

But opponents in the real estate industry argue that the bill will slow sales and punish owners who would have to deal with additional transaction regulations.

“COPA in any form is an illegal taking of private property,” Small Property Owners of New York Board President Ann Korchak told Gothamist. “The proponents pitch it as community empowerment, but it is nothing more than a pipeline for backroom deals, vulnerable to bribery and corruption, that will end in the destruction of affordable housing and extinction of small, immigrant, family-owned buildings.”

Housing affordability advocates in San Francisco disagree. New York’s bill was modeled after San Francisco’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, which was enacted in 2019 and has since enabled the preservation of at least 436 homes for more than 1,000 residents who would otherwise have been at serious risk of displacement.

“None of [opponents’] predictions have come to pass,” leaders of the San Francisco Community Land Trust and Council of Community Housing Organizations in San Francisco argued in a Next City op-ed last month.

“San Francisco’s real estate market remains active, with some of the fastest building sales in the country. COPA has faced no legal challenges, and the real estate industry has simply incorporated its requirements into standard business practice.”

This post was originally published on Next City.