Advocacy groups Housing Justice for All and JustFix launched an online tool this week where tenants can enter their address and answer a series of short questions to help determine if their apartments are likely to qualify for protections under the ‘Good Cause’ law.

A rental building in Brooklyn. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

It’s been just more than a year since New York adopted “Good Cause” protections, giving eligible renters extra defense against eviction without cause, as well as a chance to challenge rent hikes over a certain threshold.

But that’s only if they’re actually covered by the law. The final version of Good Cause, adopted as part of last year’s state budget negotiations, included a number of carveouts, excluding tenants based on how many units their landlord owns or when the property was built, among other conditions.

That can make it hard for renters to tell if their units fall under the protections—though a new website is trying to help.

Advocacy groups Housing Justice for All and JustFix launched an online tool this week where tenants can enter their address and answer a series of short questions to help determine if their apartments meet the Good Cause criteria.

“Good Cause Eviction is a powerful tool to prevent evictions and price-gouging, but only if tenants know they have rights,” Joel Stillman, director of JustFix, said in a statement announcing the website Monday. “This tool uses public data gathered from multiple sources to sort through the law’s overlapping exemptions that make Good Cause hard to use, giving tenants the confidence that they have rights to stay in their homes.”

The site uses city building records as well as information supplied by the tenant to determine possible eligibility. Good Cause only applies to unregulated apartments (since rent stabilized units and other subsidized housing programs, like NYCHA, come with their own set of tenant protections) and those built after 2009. It exempts high-priced units renting for more than $6,005 a month, as well as smaller landlord-occupied buildings.

But perhaps the most difficult-to-determine criteria is portfolio size: the law only applies to tenants whose landlords own more than 10 apartments. This can be hard to gauge, since many owners register their properties under generically-named limited liability companies (LLCs). The Good Cause NYC tool advises renters to check the city’s property records database as well as search their landlord’s name on Who Owns What, another site created by JustFix which seeks out other properties an owner may be associated with.

Since going into effect in New York City, Good Cause enforcement has primarily played out in housing court. It’s generally on tenants to seek legal recourse if they’re covered by the law and facing eviction without sufficient reason, or subject to a rent increase higher than Good Cause allows.

“Good Cause Eviction is a historic expansion of tenants rights—but only informed and organized tenants are able to use it to defend their homes,” Cea Weaver, director of Housing Justice for All said in a statement.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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When Colorado and other states began legalizing marijuana more than a decade ago, they faced a problem: how to guarantee a safe product, with little data about the long-term risks of pesticides and other contaminants.

“‘Safe’ is a funny word,” both because what is harmful to one person may not be for another, and because people vary in their risk tolerance, said Jeff Raber, CEO of marijuana consulting company The Werc Shop and an instructor in the University of Denver’s cannabis program.

The same amount of a chemical in a batch of cannabis could be benign or harmful, depending on the size of the person using it, how often they smoke and how much they take at one time, among other factors, he said.

Colorado requires growers to test their harvest for yeast, mold, aspergillus (a type of fungus), E. coli and some other bacteria, pesticides and heavy metals, such as lead. Manufacturers also have to test for residual solvents and chemicals used to create their products.

Regulators had to work with limited existing information on the possible risks of pesticides and contaminants in marijuana, because few, if any, studies have examined what levels might be safe in a smokeable or vapeable product, Raber said. Rules for tobacco aren’t a particularly helpful starting place, since growers use different pesticides, he said.

“With edibles, we at least can fall back on food safety standards,” he said.

A 2013 study that Raber co-authored found that significant amounts of pesticides could pass through water pipes or glass pipes to the user. Filtration reduced the amount the user could have inhaled, though some residues still made it through. The study predates states’ current pesticide limits, though, so the risk to people using regulated cannabis now could be lower, Raber said.

Colorado based its updated 2023 pesticide regulations on rules in place in Canada, after a group of researchers and stakeholders considered various sets of standards used in other places with legal marijuana.

Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division referred questions about the standards used for different contaminants to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which said it couldn’t comment.

Ideally, more studies would settle what chemicals are risky in smokeable marijuana and whether any cannabinoids offset some of that risk, but most research is still trying to sort out how the plant itself affects people who use it, Raber said. And, of course, federal law limits researchers’ ability to grow and study cannabis, though Colorado scientists have ongoing projects looking at pesticide residues and heavy metal contamination.

The lack of direct data matters because not everything present on the bud makes it into the user’s body, said Mark Lefsrud, an associate professor who studies medical cannabis at McGill University in Canada.

For example, contamination with heavy metals would cause a problem in a concentrated or edible product, but lead and cadmium don’t turn into particles that users can easily inhale when smoking, he said.

“As a recreational consumer, I’d say it’s very low odds” that heavy metals in a smoked product would be dangerous, Lefsrud said.

The same goes for E. coli, which doesn’t fair well when set on fire, Lefsrud said. E. coli outbreaks periodically sicken and occasionally kill consumers — most recently, when contaminated onions showed up in McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers — but the state of Colorado hasn’t had any marijuana recalls attributed to bacteria since at least 2020. (Two of 61 recalls in those years mentioned unspecified microbial contamination, which could refer to bacteria or fungi.)

The biggest risk for an average marijuana consumer is from fungi, Lefsrud said. People with lung diseases or compromised immune systems can become seriously ill or die from inhaling mold spores, but even generally healthy people are at risk from toxins that aspergillus and other types of mold generate, he said.

Colorado allows growers to kill excess fungus on their product, but that process doesn’t destroy any toxins that the mold has already produced. Just because a bud looks and smells normal doesn’t mean it couldn’t contain toxins, Lefsrud said.

“In most cases, it’s the things you don’t see” that are dangerous, he said.

Lab equipment at SC Labs analyzes marijuana samples for potency in Denver, on April 7, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

The state does require testing if a batch fails mold testing and the grower wants to remediate it for use in products such as concentrates, according to the Marijuana Enforcement Division. The division hasn’t issued any recalls or taken any actions against marijuana businesses over products that failed toxin testing.

States differ in what kind of contaminants they regulate and the limits they set, but overall, they erred on the side of caution, Raber said. Ultimately, they had to make judgment calls based on imperfect evidence, like American and European food regulators who came to different conclusions about whether certain dyes are OK to eat, he said.

“It’s an evolving picture, but it’s evolving to get better,” he said.

States are relatively well-positioned to catch if a batch makes consumers sick in the short term, Raber said. Effects from long-term use will be tough or impossible to sort out, though, because most people use multiple products, and other differences between groups of people make it hard to pin down how much to attribute to cannabis, let alone to pesticides used on it, he said.

Raber works in the cannabis industry and isn’t interested in telling adults not to smoke, but said people should understand the uncertainties around safety.

Consumers can somewhat reduce their risk by switching up the products they use — so they don’t consistently expose themselves to a contaminant that happens to be high on one type of marijuana — and by not overdoing their use, he said.

“I think that’s the best you can do today,” he said.

By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The top producer at “60 Minutes” said Tuesday that he is quitting the show, saying that it has become clear that he would no longer be able to run it as he has in the past.

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In a memo to staff members, Bill Owens wrote that he would not be able to make independent decisions based on what is right for the audience.

“Having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time and with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, first reported by The New York Times.

The show has been under attack from President Donald Trump, who sued the network from $20 billion for the way it edited its interview with Kamala Harris last fall. CBS corporate leaders have been discussing a potential settlement with Trump, which Owens and others at the show have resisted.

By ALEJANDRO SERRANO/The Texas Tribune

Texas’ massive, multibillion-dollar mission to reinforce its border with Mexico helped Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland hire two full-time deputies and three part-timers. It gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. In the lawman’s words, it “kept us alive” as the number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record highs.

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And Cleveland, who became sheriff after 26 years as a Border Patrol agent, still has needs. He said he hopes and prays to be able to hire more deputies.

But he also has worries about the state plowing billions of more taxpayer dollars into border security as the border gets quieter and quieter — and President Donald Trump vows mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country.

“With President Trump being in the White House, I would foresee the federal government spending more money. The state Legislature surely shouldn’t have to spend that much more money,” he said in an interview. “Why are we asking (for) that?”

Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of Terrell County, state lawmakers and leaders in Austin are asking for just that.

As the Legislature irons out the details of the state’s spending plan for the next two years, $6.5 billion for border security has sailed through both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has dwindled to a trickle and the federal government has begun expanding its immigration enforcement apparatus to deport as many people as Trump promised on the campaign trail.

If approved, the appropriation would increase the tab for the state’s border security spending to nearly $18 billion since 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott began the state’s own crackdown, Operation Lone Star, in response to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. That new sum would be more than five times the $3.4 billion that state lawmakers spent on border security over the 14 preceding years, when lawmakers began regularly allocating money for border operations.

“It’s hard to make the argument that the politics around immigration and the border have ever been especially preoccupied with good governance,” said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin.

The project’s December poll, after the presidential election, found that 45% of Texas voters felt the state was spending too little on border security. That number increased to 63% among only Republican voters.

“If you’re trying to balance good governance and some semblance of fiscal responsibility with politics on this issue, as a Republican legislator or a Republican elected official, the politics are still weighing very heavily on that scale,” Henson said.

At various points in the last four years, Abbott has said the state must maintain its presence — and spending — along the border until it achieved “operational control” of the border.

“Texas will not stop until we gain full operational control of the border,” Abbott said in June when he welcomed troops to a new military base the state built in Eagle Pass.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that the nation is close to reaching that goal.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection “literally has almost 100% operational control (of) the border which means that our country is secure and that we know who’s coming into this country,” Noem told NewsNation.

In a statement, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state devoted money to border security before 2021.

“Gov. Abbott will continue working with the Legislature to determine appropriate funding levels,” Mahaleris said. “This funding is critical to ensure Texas can continue working closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and nation.”

State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who is a lead writer of the state budget, also appeared open to the idea of redirecting the money currently earmarked for border security. She said she was closely monitoring illegal crossings and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor’s office, state leadership and state police “in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and keep Texans safe.”

In a statement to the Tribune, Huffman said Texas “is undoubtedly benefiting from the Trump Administration’s focus on reinstating security at our southern border. … It is essential that the state uses taxpayer funds prudently and in coordination with the federal government’s ongoing efforts.”

But it’s not clear how much appetite there is to make a change to the state’s recent multi-billion-dollar border commitment.

During a budget debate in the House last week, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, unsuccessfully tried to shift the border security budget to give Texas teachers a pay increase. “We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,” Rodríguez Ramos said.

A few weeks ago, State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat who serves on the upper chamber’s border security committee, went to Del Rio to check out the state’s military operations, the international port and Operation Lone Star staging. When she toured the Rio Grande, she said a tent set up to book people arrested under Operation Lone Star held a lone individual — a U.S. citizen from Texas accused of a crime, she said.

Eckhardt said in an interview that the $6.5 billion currently being considered might not even cover the cost of some immigration-related proposals that lawmakers are now considering. She pointed to a potential prohibition on granting bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies — which could increase the costs for the local government if it is not allowed by the state to release the individual.

“We are shifting the cost of Trump’s goal onto state and local taxes,” Eckhardt said.

Selene Rodriguez, a border and immigration expert for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency when it comes to spending.

“I myself am a big proponent of increased public safety efforts because I believe that is one of the few legitimate roles of government,” Rodriguez said. “But if you’re going to do it, do it correctly. Line the pockets appropriately, and if you don’t need 5,000 Guardsmen at the border maybe don’t have them there.”

At least two bills this session called for auditing Operation Lone Star. Both bills, one in each chamber, were referred to committee. As of mid-April, neither had received a hearing.

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.