lease not being renewed problem

that sucks. Go to Tenant.net and post the question. People on that board have a ton of experience with all kinds of landlord/tenant situations

You're welcome. I suggest you also keep a log of conversations with your landlord. If you do need to go to court, you will look reasonable and organized if you can cite dates and other backup information. I'd also note which apartments you know are vacant and are suitable for family members, etc. Not sure it will matter, but better to have as much proof as possible at your disposal.

I'd feel the need to have the conversation where I kick him in the junk and push him down some stairs, but I fully understand that this isn't the most productive conversation to have.

The NYC housing site sez: "Landlords may refuse to renew a lease only in certain enumerated circumstances, such as when the tenant is not using the premises as a primary residence. " (though they don't enumerate the circumstances right there, which is an issue).

In fact, the NYC housing site is a pretty good resource in general, as it will give you a solid baseline.

More seriously, I would consider taking his tight ass to housing court, or at least talking to housing legal services.

Or at least show him this article, and ask him if he really wants another vacant apartment in his building.

There's a solid amount of protection for you under NYC law. Crapsack landlords are one of my pet peeves, though, so you might also want to get another opinion (especially from the wife -- it IS a hassle to go through this rigamarole).

You can contact the Brooklyn Bar Association and/or the NYCBA.

They have attorneys they can refer you to - some might even be pro bono (apparently some large firms let go of herds of attorneys and they are doing - GASP - wolunteer work thru the Bar Associations).

Good luck...I had a landlord who tried to pull that on me once...I told him to take me to court (I believe that's what they have to do...or at least that's what they used to do).

I would recommend Ed Fusco on 7th Avenue (off of 8th Street)...he does a lot of real estate stuff and has lived in the neighborhood forever.

What the law says:
An owner may refuse to renew a rent stabilized
tenant’s lease in NYC because the owner wants the
apartment for personal use and occupancy as a primary
residence for the owner or a member of the owner's
immediate family. Under the Rent Stabilization Law, an
owner may begin an eviction proceeding when the current
lease expires, but only after the tenant is given written
notice that the lease will not be renewed. This notice must
be served at least 90 and not more than 150 days before
the current lease term expires.
did he miss the 90 day window? If so the issue is moot.
Did he Certify the notice? If not you never got it. Those are the first questions.
He can't lock you out. Only a city Marshall or sheriff with a warrant form the Court can do so. LL would be liable for triple damages if he did so, not to mention criminal charges.

LongTimeSloper wrote: Hmm, the 2 last rent controlled people in my building got bought out by the sponsor last year, they each got $65k to vacate their apartments so the sponsor could finally sell them.

Not a bad deal for people who lived here for 20 and 25 years and only paid about $180 a month for 1 bedroom apartments in a coop building in center Slope. If he wants you out, maybe he should try that technique with you.

Chump change! They should of held out for at least 250K. Where are they going to replicate their living situation in NYC with 65 K?

Looks like the LL may be okay in this situation, going with the "family member" angle. You may have your suspicions, but unless you can somehow prove he's not going to give it to a family member (which would, I think, be really tough) it looks like he's within his rights. If you've got a written certified notice between 150 and 90 days, looks like you guys might be out with a market-price apartment. Which does suck, especially with a new baby. Just gonna have to suck up those extra expenses all over the place. No fun, but, heck, it's a big world. It's not like Fart Slope is the only cool place to live with kids.

Good luck, AB.

LongTimeSloper wrote: they held out for years, but, one man wasn't going to live here anymore anyway, his wife had died and the place had too many memories for him. The other person moved to a buddhist colony upstate, so, I guess that was plenty of money for her also.

personally, I agree with you, but, it was like they lived rent free for all of those years. And, no way the sponsor was going to pay them $250k to leave, they would have just waited them out, death has to come sooner or later, LOL The other problem was, the lady who moved to the buddhist colony wanted to hodl out for more, but, once the other man accepted the $65k, she knew she wasn't going to get any higher. She might have gotten and extra $5k cause her place was in better shape, don't remember now

Rent controlled apartment tenants being bought out for $65,000 is ridiculous. What can you buy for that in New York City? It's funny how one of the former rent controlled tenants who took the pennies was supposedly practicing Buddhism. I'd have to be a monk to take those beans!

raw wrote: NYC rent laws are horrible. It's ridiculous that in the same building one tenant pays $200 a month for the same type of apartment that another pays $2500 a month for. The laws screw landlords and tenants who rent non rent controlled apartments alike. The NYC rent laws also screw over tenants in old rent controlled apartments that need renovations. It's all bad unless you have Donald Trump money and can buy half of Manhattan.

I agree whole heartedly, and most empirical evidence supports your conclusion.

See Rent Control and Housing Investment: Evidence from Deregulation in Cambridge, Massachusetts et. al.

available at:

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_36.htm

raw wrote: [quote=LongTimeSloper]they held out for years, but, one man wasn't going to live here anymore anyway, his wife had died and the place had too many memories for him. The other person moved to a buddhist colony upstate, so, I guess that was plenty of money for her also.

personally, I agree with you, but, it was like they lived rent free for all of those years. And, no way the sponsor was going to pay them $250k to leave, they would have just waited them out, death has to come sooner or later, LOL The other problem was, the lady who moved to the buddhist colony wanted to hodl out for more, but, once the other man accepted the $65k, she knew she wasn't going to get any higher. She might have gotten and extra $5k cause her place was in better shape, don't remember now

Rent controlled apartment tenants being bought out for $65,000 is ridiculous. What can you buy for that in New York City? It's funny how one of the former rent controlled tenants who took the pennies was supposedly practicing Buddhism. I'd have to be a monk to take those beans!


Not everybody goes on to buy in NYC, some people actually leave NYC, LOL. In that case, you could do something with that money. As for the buddhist, she became a buddhist nun about a year before she moved away.

I am not a huge fan of rent stabilization, however, the law is the law. I'm pretty sure that he's entitled to pick whichever apartment he wants for the family member, but the building has to be in the name of a person, not a corporation to use the family member eviction process. If you really want to stay, try this firm http://manhattanfirm.com/, I think they represented some of the tenants in the Economakis case - but be warned don't try to shaft them, they sued a client and won when the client tried to back out of a contingency fee agreement.

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_madness_of_rent_stabilization_st1TT9dnB0KdbjjV5Ic9TN

MADNESS OF RENT STABILIZATION
By STEFANIE COHEN
Last Updated: 12:30 PM, February 17, 2009
Posted: 12:57 PM, February 14, 2009
As Wall Street stumbles and jobs are lost like old gloves, diehard New Yorkers hope the economic downturn reveals at least one silver lining: out-of-control rents might finally fall.

But it hasn't happened - at least not as much as one would expect.

That's because New Yorkers are subject to the most perverse rental situation in the nation - a Soviet-style mechanism that keeps many apartment rents barely above the price they were in the 1970s.

MORE: MY $600-A-MONTH PRISON

Rent regulations are why residents pay $2,500 for a one-bedroom while their neighbor pays $900 - instead of both paying something in the middle. They're why tenants who are lucky enough to be in rent-stabilized units hold onto old, low-priced apartments they've long outgrown. It's why it's impossible to find an apartment unless you pay a ridiculous broker's fee.

And frighteningly, state lawmakers don't want to fix the system - they want to calcify it. Instead of continuing the trend of the past 15 years, in which the city moved toward deregulating rents, legislators are hoping to roll back Gov. Pataki-era reforms and put a massive number of rentals back into stabilization.

Earlier this month the Assembly passed a slate of 10 so-called "affordable housing" bills. Thanks to a slight Democratic margin in the Senate, they may become law when senators vote on the package this spring. The bills will do exactly the opposite of what the Legislature intends - keeping middle-class and low-income people out of New York for decades to come.
New York City has the longest-running rent regulation program in the nation, and is the only city with such stringent laws. It's also perpetually in the grips of a "housing emergency" in which the vacancy rate is below 5%, year in, year out.

Rent controls were first enacted in 1942 to counteract inflation during the war, and rents were frozen on March 1, 1943. When the federal law expired in 1947 after the economy normalized, New York state kept the practice in place for any building constructed before 1947.

The rent in controlled buildings is established via a formula known as the Maximum Base Rent. To qualify for rent control, a tenant must have been in the apartment continuously since 1971. The original tenant can cede the building to a relative, but only once. The number of rent-controlled apartments have been steadily decreasing in the city, now making up only 2% of the total units.

But in 1969, during the Vietnam War, the city created the rent stabilization system, which was meant to be a less rigid form of rent control. Stabilization covered buildings constructed from 1947 to 1969 with six or more units. Some newer buildings that get tax breaks also qualify. Under stabilization, the city Rent Guidelines Board sets the rents and the increases. About half of all units in New York City are governed by these guidelines.

In 1993, lawmakers under Gov. Pataki moved toward deregulation, voting to convert stabilized buildings to market rate once the rent hit $2,000 a month and became vacant; or the rent went above $2,000 a month and the household income was more than $175,000 a year for two years in a row.

Since the 1993 reforms, about 300,000 units have moved out of stabilization. As a result, rent regulation critics say, national developers such as Equity Residential, Avalon Bay and Toll Brothers began investing in the city.

"The landscape looked friendly to investment for the first time in years," said Marolyn Davenport, vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York. "Investors felt they could make money here." If the Pataki reforms continue, units would convert to market rent at a rate of about 10,000 a year, said Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a trade association that represents owners of rent regulated properties. At that rate, it would take about 100 years for New York City to free itself from rent stabilization's stranglehold.

But even this trickle is too much for opponents in state government, who want to put the 300,000 units back into stabilization. Another bill, meanwhile, would raise the amount of rent a unit must hit in order to trigger "decontrol" from $2,000 to $2,700 a month, and would raise the household income figure from $175,000 to $250,000. (Ironically, people who make over $250,000 not only wouldn't qualify for rent stabilization, they'd also be hit by a "millionaire's tax" being considered).

"The proposed legislation sends a message to these firms that New York as a business climate is unpredictable," Davenport says. "It's a terrible time for us to send a message that we're going to discourage investment in housing."

Economists across the board say rent stabilization does more damage than good. Those lucky enough to have rent-stabilized apartments never want to let them go - even if they've outgrown them. New city residents end up taking the biggest hit, as they fight over a small number of open units with high rents and broker fees. The rules discourage mobility and renovation.

"The reason tenants in New York suffer under housing shortages and high rents is the fault of rent controls," said Loyola University professor Walter Block. "If politicians allowed the prices to rise, entrepreneurs would build more housing, the shortage would end, and then prices would fall. Every building that's five stories high right now would become 50 stories.

"People don't understand that prices have a role to play in signaling demand. If you short-circuit that role, you mess up the market," he added. "Rent regulations cause the whole market to fall apart. Lawmakers and tenants just don't understand the economics of the situation." Yes, rents overall probably would go up if controls were suddenly lifted. But soon, builders would start building, prices would start to fall and the market would correct itself, Block said. He predicts rents would eventually fall far below the current market rate.

Now is an especially good time to lift rent controls, Block added, because the downturn in the economy would keep prices from shooting too high. Landlords may want to raise rents to Park Avenue levels, but demand will rein them in.

New York University economics professor Andrew Caplin said the slowed economy makes increased rent regulations appear even more ludicrous. With Wall Street collapsing, New York's real estate market is more important then ever, he said.

"What you should be doing is taking off a lot of the building restrictions that have built up over the ages, not piling more on. The rental market is about to collapse. There will be empty units soon, and builders won't be able to cover basic costs," he said. "Why would they load more restrictions onto landlords right now? New York needs to build itself up economically instead of making endless efforts to take its bounty and destroy it."

Those who support rent regulation say the controls are crucial to keep middle class and working families in affordable, decent housing. Without them, they say, cops, teachers and city workers will be forced to move to the suburbs, where they can afford a nice home - taking their expertise with them.

"We've been working on the rent regulation agenda for 15 years," said Assembleyman Vito Lopez, who sponsored a number of the bills. "There is an urgent need in this city to preserve affordable units." "This city is quickly becoming a city only for the very rich or very poor," added Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, also a sponsor of the bills.

But isn't it already? According to the Rent Stabilization Association's Freund, the stabilization system has no way of determining that it actually helps people most in need - wealthy tenants can just as easily qualify for rent-stabilized apartments as the working class.

"Rent regulations have nothing to do with income - it's just happenstance that you live in one of those buildings," he said. "It's just a serendipitous system." More than that, he said, the system does nothing to curb the housing emergency.

"We've had the regulations in the city since World War II, and they've done absolutely nothing to ease what is known as the housing crisis," he said.

Rent regulation bills are popular with lawmakers because they sound good to voters, most of whom are renters, said Freund. But if renters - or their elected officials - understood the economics behind the price controls, maybe they wouldn't vote for them.

"The people who do these housing vacancy studies every few years are not economists," Professor Block said. "And if they are, they're traitors.