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An East Village tenant who used an unorthodox “sushi defense” to keep her rent-stabilized studio apartment has recently lost her last court battle to keep her discounted pad. The owner had tried since 2007 to evict the tenant based on nonprimary residence. As evidence, the owner cited the fact that the electric bills for the apartment were negligible, but the tenant claimed that was because she ate a lot of take out and made a lot of sushi. This was dubbed &...

In 1885 New York State legislators enacted a law intended to safeguard construction workers who were finding themselves facing increasing dangers while working at ever-greater heights. The law, which became known as the Scaffold Law, requires employers on building sites to ensure the safety of laborers working above the ground.

In December, a high-profile panel issued a set of recommendations for reining in the state's high property and business taxes. The group, led by former Governor George Pataki, identified some $2 billion worth of proposed tax cuts, half of it earmarked for property-tax relief for homeowners in suburban New York City and more rural upstate New York.

The Bloomberg administration recently launched a new Web site to track how money earmarked for Hurricane Sandy relief is being spent. Administration officials said that some of the information on the site would be updated every month, while some of it would be updated every quarter.

A limited-equity housing cooperative's board in Chelsea is evicting a retired resident after the board used a sting operation to catch the resident renting out his private terrace on short-term rental sites AirBnB and Roomorama. The resident's apartment building was given 25 years of tax abatements to keep it affordable to those with limited incomes. Currently, the city allows the building's taxes to be calculated based on the cooperative's income, as is...

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has pledged to see through his plan to tax vacant lot owners, a move that could affect upwards of 10,000 lots throughout the city, with the highest concentration on Staten Island.

Manhattan is set to get its first residential building that measures up to passive house standards, a set of green guidelines that aim to cut heating costs by 90 percent through the use of solar energy, better insulation, and other measures. Developer Synapse Capital recently closed on a 9,900-square-foot lot at 542 West 153rd Street and has plans to construct a 40-unit passive building on the site.

In keeping with his pro-tenant, pro-affordable housing policies, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has stated during his campaign that if he's elected, he would push hard for a rent freeze on stabilized apartments. It remains to be seen whether he’ll act on his...

This is the second year NYC has required buildings to report on their energy and water consumption and the first year large apartment buildings have had to do so. Local Law 84 (LL84) covers the biggest buildings in NYC--24,000 that are over 50,000 square feet. Recently, the city released the 2012 energy and water u...

In the ongoing battle between New York State short-term rental laws and popular short-term rental Web site Airbnb, the latest defensive strategy by the company appears to be an information campaign using economic data.