ALBANY – State lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved the biggest overhaul of New York’s rent laws in a generation, offering New York City tenants new protections against rent hikes and evictions and putting the powerful real estate lobby on the defensive.

The Democratic-led state Senate passed the once-hotly contested measure by 36-26 vote Friday afternoon.

It then cleared the Democratic-run Assembly 95-42.

Cuomo signed the “The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019” into law moments later. The current rent rules expire at midnight Saturday.

The sweeping legislation will impact a million New York City households that live in rent-stabilized or rent-controlled apartments across the five boroughs.

The new law will:

Bar landlords from jacking preferential rents to the legal maximum for the life of the tenancy

Ends provisions that allow landlords to increase rents up to 20% every time a regulated apartment turns over

Repeals provisions in state law that allow apartments to be deregulated after rent exceeds $2,770

The provisions reverse two decades of policy that allowed for the gradual deregulation of the city’s housing market, which tenant activists say led to 290,000 apartments becoming market rate.

Additionally, the law imposes new restrictions on how quickly landlords can recoup costs from apartment and major building improvements.

The current rules allowed landlords to increase rents by 6% a year to pay for major building-wide improvements or unit rehabs. The omnibus rent bill cuts that down to 2%.

There are 966,000 rent-stabilized apartments in New York City and another 22,000 units that remain under rent control, which accounts for nearly half of the 2.2 million rental units in the five boroughs.

Lawmakers were thrilled they were able to pass the toughest rent protections in a generation. The legislature tilted pro-tenant after Democrats won control of the state Senate last year. The real estate lobby had more clout when Republican allies ran the chamber.

“It’s the idea that we provide assistance to the middle class,” said Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Queens). “This is a wonderful way for people to continue to live in New York City.”

“Housing is important to every single one of us,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) “We need housing at every single level, at every single strata.”

“Without stability in those very essential things [like housing] you can’t possibly grow roots that will make you strong,” she added. “What we’re doing today says ‘we get it’. What we’re doing today says ‘we don’t want people living in fear.’”

Her remarks in the Senate chamber followed three hours of largely prosaic debate over the massive rent package.

“We deserve to live where we work,” said Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), who was one of the victorious liberal insurgents in the 2018 Democratic primary fights. “We deserve to live where we are born, we deserve to live where we are raising our children.”

Meanwhile, Republicans offered up a bevy of criticism of the proposal, including claims that cutting back rent hikes would degrade the state’s aging housing supply.

“This legislation would have a deleterious effect on providing affordable housing, which is must need for our citizens,” said Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Suffolk).

The votes fell largely upon party lines – with most Democrats in support and Republicans opposed.

Cuomo approved the legislation, even though he was sidelined during the negotiations by liberal lawmakers and tenant activists – whom he took to regularly mocking in recent days as the talks appeared to falter.

“At the beginning of this legislative session, I called for the most sweeping, aggressive tenant protections in state history. I’m confident the measure passed today is the strongest possible set of reforms that the Legislature was able to pass and are a major step forward for tenants across New York,” Cuomo said in a statement.

The head of the group that represents landlords of rent-stabilized buildings warned the law will worsen New York’s housing stock.

“This is a dark day for tenants and New York City’s affordable rental housing stock. The same irrational Albany lawmakers who ran Amazon out of town have lit the fuse that will run the city’s housing stock into the ground and bring back the bad old days of the 1970s when prohibitive laws in tandem with high property taxes forced landlords to abandon their properties and New York became the poster child of urban blight,” said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 owners.

“The new rent reform legislation effectively shuts down reinvestment because it eliminates the resources landlords need to upgrade and maintain their buildings and apartments – and that will mean the loss of millions of jobs for New Yorkers and billions of dollars in revenue for local businesses and city coffers.”

Strasburg claimed hundreds of RSA members have already stopped apartment and building upgrades dead in their tracks – even ones that are already underway – because of the law.

“Business will dry up for local contractors and neighborhood supply stores, which then lay off workers. Punishing the few bad actors in the industry will have a chilling effect on affordable housing, tenants and our neighborhoods,” he said.