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The City Council recently released a report entitled, “Landmarks for the Future,” with several new proposals to alter the way the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) works. The city council made similar proposals last year. This year, the council once again proposed a series of recommendations for the LPC including imposing time limits on designating items.

On June 8, the full City Council voted 38-10 in f...

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently announced that a landlord and developer of an Upper West Side building will pay the city a $500,000 settlement for illegally buying two elderly, rent-controlled tenants out of their units, and later trying to conceal the fraudulent transaction. The developer, who began converting apartments in the building into condominiums in May 2012, bought the units from them for $200,000 and $155,000 res...

On May 3, the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) voted on preliminary increases for next year for the city’s rent-stabilized apartments. The nine-member board voted 5-4 in favor of increases of 0 percent to 2 percent on one-year leases and 0.5 percent to 3.5 percent on two-year leases signed between Oct. 1, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2017.

According to a recent report by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), 42 percent, or 5,885 of the 13,755 low-income units built in 2014 and 2015, were aided by the 421-a program. That study included 156 projects that were either all low-income or mostly market-rate, with about one-quarter of the units set aside as low-income housing.

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently proposed a $183 summer credit on the water and sewer bills of over 664,000 homeowners, in keeping with the city's past efforts to ensure bills stay as low as possible. The 664,000 homeowners represent almost 80 percent of all customers. Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Emily Lloyd stated that the one-time credit results from the administration's decision to no longer reques...

In recently released guidance, HUD tells owners that turning down tenants based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair Housing Act, and the guidance from HUD's general counsel says that in some cases, turning down an individual tenant because of his or her record can be legally justified.

Mayor de Blasio recently announced two new appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB). The two appointments – former United States Magistrate Judge Kathleen Roberts and Mary Serafy – have years of experience in both the public and private sectors and will be responsible for establishing rent adjustments for approximately one million dwelling units subject to the Rent Stabilization Law in the city. Judge Kathleen Robert...

A state appellate court recently dismissed the city’s Commission of Human Rights’ $185,000 claim against an owner, finding that the landlord was just in denying a paraplegic tenant a wheelchair ramp to her first-floor Astoria apartment because the costs were too burdensome.

Last December, Airbnb released a massive dataset covering November 2014 through Nov. 1, 2015, about its business in New York City. The data provided information on thousands of hosts in the city including statistics such as host earnings, the types of listings, and how often people rent out their homes. This action was taken to counter the image portrayed by the New York state attorney general, who has accused Airbnb of enabling illega...

Evictions by city marshals have decreased 24 percent since Mayor de Blasio took office, down from 28,849 in 2013 to 21,988 in 2015. And evictions decreased by 18 percent last year even as the number of cases filed by owners for nonpayment of rent declined by only 2 percent, court and city marshals figures show. The drop in evictions may be due to de Blasio administration’s efforts to increase free legal services for tenants.