The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: How Policy Can Help Tenants Purchase Their Homes.” View the full webinar here.

Tram Hoang: As we’re talking to other cities and states about how they’re building out their policies, I put it under four categories in terms of building the right ecosystem for the policy, because the policy must exist with infrastructure. I think the first bucket which has the most to do with policy is clear timelines for notice and acquisition. And I think DC having a longer timeline obviously is—the longer the better, right? The more time the better. To know how much time tenants have, to organize, to make an offer, to get funding, all of that.

I think the second part of the ecosystem that’s very important is technical assistance across the spectrum. Not only are we talking about public education awareness so that tenants know what their rights are, but we also need legal support so that they can navigate the real estate transaction. And then funding for tenant organizing, so that they can actually have the capacity to organize to buy their building or negotiate.

“We’re so concerned…with saving the property in the first place that we often forget we need long-term support for building management and sustainability.”

The third piece is financing. So as folks have talked about, there’s predevelopment financing, acquisition, rehab or construction, and then the long-term permanent financing. And all of that needs to be considered as you’re designing a policy, and more importantly, a program for implementation beyond that.

And then the last piece that I think, we’re so concerned with getting, with saving the property in the first place that we often forget we need long-term support for building management and sustainability.

I think you have in New York City is a great organization to look at in terms of an organization that supports—it’s a cooperative housing organization that supports tenant co-ops in owning, managing their building—whether that means figuring out property management duties, or calculating shared equity, or how do we finance capital improvements. Those are all big decisions that people should receive guidance on. And that’s a big consideration for building out a policy and program.