On April 20, 2024, New York State enacted the Good Cause Eviction Law (GCEL), which limits evictions, requires lease renewals, and caps rent increases as of that date for apartments in NYC that are not otherwise regulated. The law does not apply to rent-regulated units or to some other specifically exempted categories of housing accommodations listed in the statute. 

For those apartments it applies to, the GCEL bars landlords from taking an unreasonable rent increase upon lease renewal. This results in a rent increase cap defined as the lesser of 10 percent or the inflation index (5 percent plus annual percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI)). As of April 2025, the resulting annual rent increase cap under the inflation index is 8.79 percent. A landlord may rebut the presumption that a higher rent increase is unreasonable in court. 

Since Aug. 19, 2024, the GCEL also has required that a notice advising of the law’s applicability (the GCEL Notice) be delivered with all initial and renewal leases, as well as with certain notices and court petitions. Some aspects of the GCEL have raised questions in eviction proceedings that have been addressed by courts.

We’ll review the basics of the GCEL—what types of housing are exempt, what constitutes “good cause,” and the law’s notice requirements. Then we’ll look at how courts have addressed questions about those requirements to help you avoid costly compliance missteps.

What Types of Housing Are Exempt from the GCEL?

Categories of housing accommodations that are not covered by the GCEL are listed in NY Real Property Law (RPL) §214. They are:

• Units owned by small landlords. The law defines small landlords as those who own 10 units or fewer within New York State. If the landlord is an entity such as an LLC, then that landlord is a small landlord if each natural person with a direct or indirect ownership interest in the entity or any affiliated entity owns no more than 10 units;
• Owner-occupied buildings that contain 10 units or fewer;
• Units that are sublet and the sublessor seeks in good faith to recover possession for their own personal use and occupancy;
• Units where the possession, use, or occupancy is solely incident to employment and such employment is being or has been lawfully terminated;
• Rent-regulated units;
• Units that are required to be affordable for certain income levels pursuant to statute, regulations, restrictive declarations, or regulatory agreements with a local, state, or federal government entity;
• Units on or within a building that’s owned as a condominium or cooperative, or on or within a building that’s subject to an offering plan submitted to the office of the attorney general;  
• Buildings for which a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy or Permanent Certificate of Occupancy was issued after Jan. 1, 2009, for a period of 30 years following the issuance of the certificate.
• Seasonal-use dwellings such as vacation rentals or off-campus student housing;
• Units within hospitals, licensed continuing care retirement communities, assisted living residences, adult care facilities, senior residential communities, and not-for-profit independent retirement communities;
• Manufactured homes located in manufactured home parks;
• Hotel rooms or other transient use units included in Class “B” multiple dwellings;
• School dormitories; 
• Housing for use or within a religious facility or institution; and
• Units with a monthly rent that’s greater than 245 percent of the fair market rent (FMR), as set annually by HUD. 

What Constitutes “Good Cause”?

Under the GCEL, what constitutes good cause for nonrenewal of a lease and recovery of possession of a housing accommodation is defined in RPL §216 to include the following:

• Nonpayment of rent, unless the tenant hasn’t paid because a rent increase is “unreasonable”; 
• Violation of a substantial obligation of the tenancy or breaching any of the landlord’s rules and regulations governing the apartment;
• Nuisance committed or permitted by the tenant; malicious or grossly negligent substantial damage to the premises or building; or tenant conduct that interferes with the comfort and safety of the owner or other occupants;
• Occupancy in violation of law where an order to vacate has been issued, unless the condition is created by the landlord, through neglect or otherwise;
• Illegal use of the premises;
• Unreasonable refusal of access for necessary repairs;
• Owner occupancy of the tenant’s apartment as principal residence;
• Demolition;
• Withdrawal from the rental housing market; and
• Failure to agree to reasonable changes to a lease at renewal, including reasonable increases in rent, so long as written notice of the changes to the lease were provided to the tenant a least 30 days, but no more than 90 days, prior to the expiration of the current lease.

As with tenant protections under the rent stabilization laws, a tenant can’t waive their right to the protections under the GCEL and any waiver agreement will be found void as against public policy. 

If a tenant doesn’t move out in response to a landlord’s lease termination or nonrenewal notice, the GCEL requires the landlord to commence court proceedings in order to seek eviction. 

When Is the GCEL Notice Required?

Starting on Aug. 19, 2024, regardless of whether a unit is subject to or exempted from the GCEL, all initial leases and renewal leases for all housing accommodations in New York City must include a Notice to Tenant of Applicability or Inapplicability of the New York State Good Cause Eviction Law (GCEL Notice). The GCEL Notice informs a tenant if he or she is covered by the GCEL and, if not covered under the GCEL, explains the reason why the unit is exempt. 

The GCEL Notice may cause some confusion when delivered, as required, to a tenant who is not subject to the GCEL. Be sure to check off the boxes on the form that provide clarification. For example, if the tenant is subject to rent stabilization, be sure to check “No” on the first page of the GCEL Notice in response to Question No. 1, “Is this unit subject to Article 6-A of the Real Property Law, known as the New York State Good Cause Eviction Law?” Then check the box next to Question 2. D, “Unit is subject to regulation of rents or evictions pursuant to local, state, or federal law (exemption under subdivision 5 of Section 213 of the Real Property Law).” 

GCEL Notice is required with predicate notices and court petitions. The GCEL Notice also must be delivered to tenants who are served with:

• A notice that a landlord intends either to offer a renewal lease at a rent increase equal or greater than 5 percent, or to not renew the lease; 
• A 14-day rent demand;
• Other notice, as may be required, that a landlord is terminating a landlord-tenant relationship and intends to commence an eviction proceeding; or
• A notice of petition and petition in a summary eviction proceeding.

Compliance Pointer: You can find a Model Notice: Notice to Tenant of Applicability or Inapplicability of the New York State Good Cause Eviction Law, here. The language of this notice is pulled directly from Section 231-c of the law, which can be found here. If the unit is exempted from the law, the notice must identify the applicable exemption.

Questions Raised by GCEL Requirements

Since the GCEL and its Notice requirements took effect, courts have addressed some questions that have come up in connection with the Notices. We highlight some of those here. We anticipate that other questions may continue to arise. 

What happens in court if GCEL Notice wasn’t given to tenant or is incorrect? Courts have dismissed cases where the GCEL Notice is missing or defective. As with other eviction proceedings, if the required pre-litigation notice is defective, this can result in dismissal without prejudice to starting over with a new notice before commencing a court action. Unlike a court petition, which often can be amended, a predicate notice upon which the case is based cannot be added or amended after the case commences. 

For example, in Eqr-228 W. 71st LLC v. Ford, a landlord sued to evict a tenant for violating his lease and creating a nuisance. The court dismissed the case because the landlord didn’t check off any box on the GCEL Notice form to indicate what grounds for good cause eviction the court proceeding was based on [2025 NY Slip Op 34136(U)(Civ. Ct. NY Co. 2025)].

Compliance Pointer: Be sure to review the GCEL Notice form before sending and check off applicable boxes. Note that, since the GCEL Notice requirement didn’t take effect until Aug. 19, 2024, courts have denied tenant requests to dismiss cases for failure to serve the GCEL Notice if the case was commenced after the GCEL went into effect in April 2024 but before the GCEL Notice requirement took effect.

When is nonpayment of rent good cause for nonrenewal of lease? Nonrenewal of a lease based on nonpayment of rent may or may not be considered good cause. 

In Shared Cooper LLC v. Callejas, the court denied the landlord’s claim that the tenant’s frequent late payment of rent created good cause for termination of the unregulated tenancy. In that case, the tenant frequently paid up to three months late, but sometimes paid rent in advance, and was up to date with rent payments at the time the landlord issued its termination and GCEL Notices to the tenant. The court compared this case to other cases where courts found good cause for eviction by some HDFCs that had demonstrated prejudice suffered by late rent payments to providers of low-income housing. Here, the court did not find that the same concern was evident [2026 NY Slip Op 50054(U)(Civ. Ct. NY Co. 2026)].

If, instead, there had been a showing that, during the history of the tenancy, a landlord had to commence a number of nonpayment proceedings in order to obtain rent payment and that there were no substantive defenses to those proceedings, a court may view a “chronic” nonpayment situation differently and find good cause to evict.

The outcome may also depend on the facts of the case and the court’s point of view in interpreting the GCEL. In another case, 1719 Gates LLC v. Torres, the landlord sued to evict the tenant after a 90-day nonrenewal notice expired, and claimed that it wasn't renewing the lease because thetenant owed more than $30,000 in back rent. Here, the court ruled for the landlord and ultimately found that the plain language of RPL §§216(3) and 231-c clearly contemplated a nonrenewal holdover proceeding for good cause eviction based on nonpayment of rent. The court further reasoned that by allowing a nonrenewal holdover for nonpayment where the tenancy had expired, yet affording the tenant the right to cure under RPAPL §751(1), the GCEL had created a new cause of action blending elements of nonpayment and holdover proceedings [2024 NY Slip Op 24282 (Civ. Ct. Queens Co. 2024)].

Is good cause to evict required in a licensee holdover proceeding? In Latchmin & Singh Realty LLC v. Singh, the court said no. The landlord sued to evict a licensee and claimed that the five-unit building wasn’t subject to rent regulation. When the question was raised as to whether a GCEL Notice had been improperly omitted, the court ruled that no GCEL Notice was needed because there was no landlord-tenant relationship involved in the licensee holdover proceeding [2025 NY Slip Op 51776(U)(Civ. Ct. Queens Co. 2025)]. 

In the Latchmin case, the court pointed out that the model GCEL Notice form doesn’t have any place for a petitioner to check off that the GCEL does not apply because there is no landlord-tenant relationship. 

What is a “small landlord” under the GCEL? “Small landlords” are exempted from coverage under the GCE. The law defines small landlords as those who own 10 units or fewer within New York State. If the landlord is an entity such as an LLC, then that landlord is a small landlord if each natural person with a direct or indirect ownership interest in the entity or any affiliated entity owns no more than 10 units.

The GCEL provides that if a petitioner claims to be a small landlord, it must give tenants named in the eviction proceeding the name of each natural person who, directly or indirectly, owns or is a beneficial owner of the premises at issue, the number of units owned, jointly or separately, by each such natural person owner, and the address of such units, excluding each natural person owners’ principal residence. In Felin v. Martinez, the court dismissed the case because the landlord failed to comply with RPL §214 and never attempted to provide the required information [2025 NY Slip Op 33503(U)(Civ. Ct. Queens Co. 2025)]. 

This case raises some questions not addressed in the court decision. For example, if, as indicated, this was a “licensee” holdover proceeding, another court might have found that no GCEL Notice was required. And the GCEL Notice form contains no space for inserting any required additional information identifying a small landlord. It is unclear if it would be sufficient to supply information about a small owner or owners for the first time in the eviction petition. The Felin court states only that the law requires landlords to attach a copy of the GCEL Notice to the court petition. Arguably, service of the GCEL Notice form with the small landlord exemption box checked, and provision of any additional owner information in the eviction petition should be sufficient.

Municipalities Outside NYC That Have Adopted GCEL

The GCEL also applies in other villages, towns, or cities in New York State that elect to opt-in for coverage.

As of September 2025, the following municipalities outside NYC had adopted the state’s Good Cause Eviction Law:

City of Albany

City of Rochester

Village of Croton-on-Hudson

City of Kingston

City of Hudson

Village of New Paltz

City of Poughkeepsie

Village of Catskill

Town of Poughkeepsie

City of Beacon

Town of Fishkill

City of White Plains

City of Newburgh

City of Binghamton

City of Middletown

City of Ithaca

Village of Nyack