NY State Senator Pedro Espada proposed a bill that merges a landlord wish with a tenant gimmick. In fact, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The bill would permit landlords to take apartments out of rent stabilization even though they have J-51 tax breaks. This would reverse the Roberts decision by the state's highest court.

Thus as happened at Stuyvesant Town, landlords who repaid the J-51 tax benefits could deregulate apartments that were rent stabilized or rent controlled even BEFORE the building ever got J-51 benefits. This deregulation (invalidated by the state's highest court in Roberts) occurs

• when the apartment is vacant and the owner makes improvements to raise the rent to $2000 or more, or

• when the people living in the apartment have a household income of $175,000 or more for 2 consecutive years.

Worse still, this bill is so sloppily written that attorney Seth Miller has expressed concern that the bill could potentially let landlords de-regulate all rent regulated apartments in buildings whose J-51 benefits are repaid - by reclassifying those apartments as never having been subject to the rent stabilization law.

The bill would also freeze the rents of stabilized tenants with annual incomes under $45,000. This is consistent with the landlords' position that only the poorest tenants should have rent stabilized apartments (the middle-class be damned.) It ignores the fact that when vacant apartments were de-regulated between 1971 and 1974, the result was a massive housing emergency, ended only by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974.

RESOURCES:

The Real Rent Reform Campaign has a new website. Check it out!

The State Supreme (lowest ) Court has ruled that rent stabilized tenants may not be penalized with higher rent increases just because their rent is under $1000 and they have lived in their apartments for 6 years or more.

In Casado v. Markus, Justice Emily Jane Goodman ruled that the Rent Guidelines Board cannot create a whole new class of people to get a different percentage rent increase. As she put it, the RGB is penalizing "tenants failing to move in a city that has virtually no affordable housing."

State Senate Democratic Conference Leader has named Pedro Espada chair of the Senate's housing committee - again.

This is despite Espada's assurances to landlords that they have nothing to fear, and the fact that no important tenant bill got passed in the Senate last term. In fact, he pulled a coup (changing over to the Republicans) on the day he and Hiram Monserrate (convicted of battering his companion) were to have passed the repeal of vacancy decontrol.

Deborah Van Amerongen is resigning as head of the NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

Then-Governor Eliot Spitzer appointed her in a move well-appreciated by tenants.

Her resignation is effective January 15, 2010.

The Real Rent Reform Campaign (R3) has made a video, Real Rent Reform / Housing Here & Now - 2009 Year In Review for our Campaign about two main issues:

• the repeal of vacancy decontrol, and
• saving Mitchell-Lamas.

City Limits recently reported on a demonstration against the Dime bank - resulting in a conversation with tenants of the run-down buildings that Dime financed.

Tenants at Stuyvesant Town / Peter Cooper Village have reached an agreement with owner Tishman Speyer concerning rent reductions following the NYS Court of Appeals' ruling that apartments may not be taking out of rent stabilization while the owner gets J-51 benefits.

For a copy of the interim agreement, click: Court Order on Stuy Town Interim Agreement [The Justice System]. For more on the arrangement and background, click on "read more" below.

On November 25, 2009, Justice Alice Schlesinger of New York State Supreme Court

• ruled that DHCR's November 2007 regulations on "unique or peculiar circumstances" are valid, and

• sent the case back to DHCR to determine within 150 days the thousands of "unique or peculiar" applications pending regarding 24 buildings state-wide.

Click here for a copy of the decision (and click here for the corrected caption). Click on "read more" below for a summary.

Click here for a chart of the case as of December 7, 2009.