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An owner is under investigation for allegedly using illegal tactics to force rent-stabilized tenants out of his properties. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched the investigation following complaints about the behavior of the owner's company, Steven Croman Realty.
Recently, a planned separate entrance for residents of low-income units in a luxury housing development on the Upper West Side was approved, and claims of modern-day segregation followed shortly after. Now, the de Blasio administration hopes to change a 2009 zoning code, enacted under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that allowed for divided housing.
In the wake of the Rent Guidelines Board vote that capped rent increases at the lowest hike in the board’s 45-year history, the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA) has called upon Mayor Bill de Blasio to keep taxes and other building owner costs down.
In a 7-0 ruling, the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, recently ruled that the tenant could not trigger a DHCR probe into improvements made at her apartment beyond the four-year time frame. The tenant had tried to invoke the Grimm decision to prove that the owner overvalued the cost of improvements he made to the six-story building in which she resided to inflate her unit’s rent.
According to recent data from the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, bedbug infestations have dropped every year for the past four years. Brooklyn has had the most bedbug violations since 2010, but all five boroughs have seen declines in confirmed bedbug cases. Here are the numbers:
Mayor de Blasio’s budget for the Health Department includes $611,000 to target the “rat reservoirs.” The money will be used to hire nine inspectors to hunt and exterminate in Manhattan and South Bronx. They will be specifically targeting colonies in parks and sewers where rodents lurk and infest the surrounding neighborhood.
New York's highest court recently agreed to determine whether a rent-stabilized lease could be sold off in a bankruptcy or is a protected "local public assistance benefit," as outlined under New York law. Other such protected benefits include welfare and unemployment payments.
Mayor de Blasio recently announced the appointment of Rachel Godsil as Chair of the Rent Guidelines Board. This news comes after the mayor made five appointments to the board last month: Sarah Williams Willard as an owners' representative, Cecilia Joza and Steven Flax as public members, and Sheila Garcia as a tenant representative. The mayor also reappointed current tenants' representative Harvey Epstein to the board.
Apartment rents in the city are about 75 percent higher than they were in 2000, according to a recently released report on housing affordability from city Comptroller Scott Stringer. The median apartment rent in the city surged 75 percent to $1,100 between 2000 and 2012. That's 31 percent higher than the average in the rest of the U.S. The median rent was $630 in 2000; inflation accounts for about $200 of the $470 increase since then.
RSS