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Newly released data by the Rent Guidelines Board shows the total number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York City increased in 2014, up 169 units. There were 9,182 apartments added to rent stabilization last year, compared to 9,013 that were removed from the rolls.
New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman recently reached a $1.2 million settlement with developers who illegally converted rent-stabilized apartments to luxury condos. The developers agreed to pay $1.2 million to a city housing fund for the loss of five rent-stabilized apartments. The deal also requires them to provide two years of rent payments to tenants who stayed and to reimburse legal fees.
Recently, the New York City council passed a bill that would require owners to provide tenants at least 24 hours’ notice before launching into any renovations that would “disrupt building services,” ranging from building heat to water and electricity. HPD would assume responsibility for enforcing the potential law.
A group of advocates and state Assembly members recently called for the end of certain fees owners are legally allowed to charge rent-stabilized tenants to bump up the amount of money they collect every month. These levies include a $5 monthly charge per appliance for having an air conditioner, for example, or a roughly $16 monthly fee for a washing machine.
Many aging apartment buildings in the Bronx do not have the resources to upgrade boilers and undertake major repairs and renovations to make them more energy efficient and to improve living conditions for tenants. In response to this problem, borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. has teamed up with city housing officials to create a program that will help those buildings pay the upfront costs for energy improvements, such as rep...
Last fall, Mayor de Blasio signed a bill increasing the maximum penalties for owners found to have harassed their tenants, from $5,000 to $10,000, and requiring the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to post a list online of owners that have been found to harass their tenants. Now, there has been a new bill introduced targeting a similar pool of owners who aggressively seek to buy out rent-stabilized leases....
New York City's Human Rights Commission (HRC) recently filed a notice that an owner’s policy of not allowing rent-stabilized tenants to use the gym is discriminatory. The notice followed a tenant's complaint that the rent-regulated tenants excluded from the building’s gym are largely over 65, while market-rate tenants aren't. The HRC’s notice states that there's enough evidence of age discr...
The Manhattan District Attorney is overseeing the investigation into the deadly building explosion that occurred last month in the East Village. The explosion caused two buildings to collapse and ignited a large fire that quickly spread to neighboring buildings, injuring at least 19 people and killing two.
On March 30, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law Intro. 685, which extends the city's rent stabilization laws for another three years, until April 1, 2018. The mayor has asked Albany to also follow the city's suit as the Urstadt Law of 1971 comes up for renewal this June. The city extension will stick only if the state renews the law.
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