City Council members are now considering a whopping eight measures that would strengthen tenant protections on landlords’ dime and time.
At a Tuesday hearing, Council members weighed proposals targeting illegal evictions, rent-stabilized disclosures and air-conditioning. Many were being re-introduced. But the meeting fell at a pivotal time.
Tomorrow, Council members are all but certain to pass a broker’s fee ban, underscoring their commitment to tenant rights in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
In homing in on tenants at the Committee on Housing and Buildings, elected officials showed they were keeping that momentum.
“We’re not doing enough,” Chair Pierina Ana Sanchez said to representatives of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development during the meeting.
Council members dialed in on a bill introduced this summer that would force landlords to provide air-conditioning to tenants — a policy responding to the ever-warming climate and heat-related deaths.
Another measure, introduced in September, would require owners of rent-stabilized buildings to post public notices that the property contains regulated units.
“Oftentimes younger or less informed tenants move in and don’t realize they might be living in a building with rent-stabilized units,” Sandy Nurse, who co-chairs the Council’s Progressive Caucus, said. “With such little vacancy, tenants have less bargaining power and are forced to pay [higher] rents.”
Both measures would take a bite out of landlords’ bottom lines.
The cooling legislation, which would require building temperatures to stay below 79 degrees when outside temperatures hit 82, conflicts with Local Law’s 97 requirements to curb carbon emissions. Air conditioning is a huge energy suck, and an expense that rent-stabilized landlords, buried under rising expenses, say they cannot afford.
Notices, meanwhile, could expose landlords to more litigation under a state law that holds owners liable for fraud in cases where they knowingly deregulated an apartment illegally.
The remainder of the measures dealt with illegal lock-outs.
One, Intro 621, would require landlords who illegally evicted a tenant to apply for a certificate of no harassment — an administrative hurdle — before changing the occupancy of their building. Another, Intro 623, would hike the penalty for unlawful eviction to a maximum of $20,000 from $10,000.
“We want to make it extremely costly to break the law and illegally lock out,” Nurse said.
Nurse went on to cite data showing that the NYPD made 39 arrests for unlawful eviction in 2020 and 2021, based on the top charge listed at arraignment.
It’s possible the slog of housing court pushed some landlords over the edge.
LeFrak, one of the city’s biggest landlords, sued housing court early this year for repeatedly postponing cases so renters would have time to find a lawyer. Meanwhile, tenants continue to rack up arrears.
One renter managed to stay his eviction for two years, accruing $60,000 in back rent by the time his landlord got him out.
Read more
Politics
New York
NY Dems may punish real estate in response to Trump
Politics
New York
Hochul amends rent bill, sparing landlords from “disaster”