Landlord rights?

bribing doormen at rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments in NYC has been a time-honored tradition for years. However, rent controlled apartments are few - for an apartment to be rent controlled the tenant must have been living there continuously since before July 1, 1971. When a rent controlled apartment becomes vacant, it either becomes rent stabilized or is removed from regulation.

sister its call doing hw . read those papers every day and goto different door man or supers and see. and make sure landlords arent the caring types .

OK. I don't understand something. Did these people move in without a lease? If they did, then it can't be rent stabilized, because theres no agreement between them and the landlord. Have they lived there since 1971 and never moved out?? If not, it doesn't sound like they have a right to stay.
And once a tentant stops paying rent, the mother has to send a Notice to Quit form saying they have missed paying their rent (and state the dates) After three months she can begin eviction proceedings (sending a notice every month).She should send this certified mail and also send a copy regular mail. Its all about keeping good records to bring to court. I can't see how a judge can allow anyone to stay in an apartment without paying rent, especially when there proof it wasn't paid. You'e going to have to help your Mom with this and not let her get intimidated by the system.

And you need to get a good lawyer to help your Mom understand what her rights are and why she needs to allow people in to view the building to buy. Something doesn't sound right .It's hard when parents get older and kind of lose their basic understanding of situations. Sometimes you can talk until your blue in the face and not always get through.
She should hook up with a respectable real estate person that has been recommended to her by someone she trusts. They have their ear on the pulse of the sales in a community and know what things are going for and how to move the property.
Maybe she was an old fashioned house wife and thats why she never paid into social security. Thats how it was with the Golden generation. Many women simply didn't work and kept house. It was a different world.

myohogirl wrote: Thank you for all your input. My mother didn't pay into social security because she owned her own business and did everything her own wacky way.

The building is actually an SRO - upper 2 floors of the brownstone are single rooms. No one has ever had a lease. Over the last couple of years as people have moved out she's kept some rooms empty. She actually has 3 tenants left. One has been there so long he's really become part of the family and hasn't paid rent at all in the last year. He's agreed to leave for $1000 (God willing that won't change). It's really the other 2 that we're concerned about.

It's very frustrating that she won't let people in the house and not putting it on the market to get the fairest price. I live in Los Angeles now and there's only so much I can do to convince her. We do have a tenant/landlord lawyer and basically he's just putting together contracts to get the tenants to agree to a fee.

I was fortunate enough to live in a rent controlled apartment in Los Angeles for 11 years. I started to feel like I owned the place, spending my own money fixing it up. Then one day my landlord sent me a notice that I had to move and I'd receive $2500. That's all the law allowed for me. I was devestated but moved on and found an even better place that I'm very happy in. I think New York laws on rent stabilization are absurd.

I think New York laws on rent stabilization are absurd

Ain't that the truth.

Dear Evilbert - your knowledge of actual stabilized rents is as half-assed as the rest of your rant. 60's rent? Where and when were you born?
I love the rent I'm paying but it ain't $90/month. But it is reasonable for what I get in return. I love what I pay in NYC and that's why I came to NYC in the first place and it was rent stabilization that allowed me to do my search for the apartment in which I now reside. What's your vision of NYC in the future, just the rich and poor along with the really entitled group - Gen Y'ers who look for instant gratification is all they pursue, including housing. So, get off my fucking back and find a real cause on which to expend your energy. Otherwise your jealousy will start to impact your health. :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

myohogirl wrote: My mother didn't pay into social security because she owned her own business and did everything her own wacky way.

Excuse me but is this not illegal? And if not, tell me how to do it! I would LOVE to stop being robbed of 12% of my paycheck each month, but I've never heard of some opt-out clause. This "wacky way" sounds more like an "illegal way".

Livetotravel wrote: What's your vision of NYC in the future, just the rich and poor along with the really entitled group

This is precisely the vision that rent control will create. The price caps lead to a housing shortage, which causes the available market rate unit prices to soar, leaving housing available only for the very rich and the very lucky. The intention, at least, is that the people living in regulated units are supposed to be poor, so by design rent regulation leads to a city with just the ultimate rich and poor extremes. Since the reality is that not just poor people get the regulated units (I know at least 4 people who make over $300,000 a year and live in r.s. units), the polarity is diluted a bit, but still, there is nothing inherent in r.s. that protects the middle class. Quite the opposite, in fact: the housing squeeze on the middle class that we see today is the direct result of rent regulation.

escap wrote: [quote=myohogirl]My mother didn't pay into social security because she owned her own business and did everything her own wacky way.

Excuse me but is this not illegal? And if not, tell me how to do it! I would LOVE to stop being robbed of 12% of my paycheck each month, but I've never heard of some opt-out clause. This "wacky way" sounds more like an "illegal way".

Livetotravel wrote: What's your vision of NYC in the future, just the rich and poor along with the really entitled group

This is precisely the vision that rent control will create. The price caps lead to a housing shortage, which causes the available market rate unit prices to soar, leaving housing available only for the very rich and the very lucky. The intention, at least, is that the people living in regulated units are supposed to be poor, so by design rent regulation leads to a city with just the ultimate rich and poor extremes. Since the reality is that not just poor people get the regulated units (I know at least 4 people who make over $300,000 a year and live in r.s. units), the polarity is diluted a bit, but still, there is nothing inherent in r.s. that protects the middle class. Quite the opposite, in fact: the housing squeeze on the middle class that we see today is the direct result of rent regulation.

The 1997 Rent Regulation Reform Act provided that when a tenant’s income is in excess of $175,000 for two successive years and where the apartment’s rent is $2,000 or more per month, the apartment will be declared exempt from rent control or rent stabilization. Shame on the lax owner/landlord who is not monitoring such things.

And if you are really interested in what impact deregulation would have on the middle-class, an economic group that I occupy, read this thoughtful report.

http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/pdfs/Saving Our Middle Class.pdf

"The intention, at least, is that the people living in regulated units are supposed to be poor,"

Not so, there is luxury decontrol which means deregulation for apartments with rents of 2,000 or more and an income of $250,000 for the tenant.



"there is nothing inherent in r.s. that protects the middle class"

Actually, there is nothing inherent in rs that protects the poor either.

germfree! wrote:

If you're really interested in an answer to your question, and not just pontificating - try Google - you'll find a wealth of information of NYC's progressive housing laws - the whys and wherefores thereof. And try to remember that there are about 1 million rent stabilized apartments in NYC - and all tenants thereunder are subject to annual increases made by fiat by the NYC Rent Guidelines Board - For a two-year renewal lease commencing on or after October 1, 2007 and on or before September 30, 2008: the increase is decreed to be 5.75%

That doesn't answer the question - which was ethical rather than purely legal one - which I was asking you, personally. The answer to which will not be on Google.

I realise that rents on these apartments are raised by the mandated increase (and 5-6 % on low rent is not a huge leap), but that is irrelevant to my initial question. Also - are the beneficiaries of these cheap rents means-tested on an equally regular schedule?

There ought to be many disincentives to taking a rent stabilised/controlled apartment out of the market, but these should not include subsidising your future rent.


I'm sure a Google search will show me otherwise, but that doesn't make it right, and that's why I asked you on this board, where these conversations take place.

I'm in no ethical quandary, I sleep very well each night. My owner/landlord lives very well as do his children. I actually do not hear too much whining by anyone except by the neo-capitalist on this board - and wishing the laws weren't as they are is rather a waste of time don't you think?. The 1997 Rent Regulation Reform Act provided that when a tenant’s income is in excess of $175,000 for two successive years and where the apartment’s rent is $2,000 or more per month, the apartment will be declared exempt from rent control or rent stabilization. Shame on the lax owner/landlord who is not monitoring such things.

remember that it is tenants income (as in plural) - as in household income - so if two people are co-tenants and their combined incomes are $175,000 or more - to market it goes - that's a gross income of $87,500 each, not such a severe threshold in today's NYC marketplace.

well it's not 1955 anymore. The average cost of an apartment in PS is $629,000 - the average price of a townhouse in PS reached $3.35 million in late 2005, a 90 percent increase over the last quarter of 2004. So you either have money to buy a place or you don't. You either become a home buyer or you rent. It's a simply as that - you either have tons of cash for a down payment or you don't.

This entire argument has become supercilious - I'm feeling entitled to end my participation in this thread.

in the areas i have lived in people are able to raise families and put kids through college on slightly more than 30k a year!!! and this is still recent!

everyone else is living a upper class life style with their pay and pretend they are middle class.

Flexichick wrote: <====is searching for rent-stabilized apartment after reading this

No shit, what a racket. I want in on that.

Jamzer wrote: It's 40 minutes door to desk for my commute from PS to mid-town and I don't have to worry about a train or bus schedule. Just out of curiosity - where can I buy a house and have the same commute with roughly comperable amenities? Hoboken and Jersey City come to mind - but I don't think you can buy a house there for very cheap. I would love to know because I would seriously consider buying there!

My boss tried to convince me to move to his town in NJ. He said I could get a nice size house for $200,000 and my commute to downtown would be 30 minutes. Well we compared it to what we would get in PH and the mortgage would be lower but we would pay the same because the taxes were ridiculous! We would pay more commuting because I would have to take the NJ Transit to the PATH but my husband would have to take NJT to the PATH to the subway. Not to mention you would still have to drive more than here so when you factor it all in it would be more expensive for us to live there. Maybe it sounds silly but I just dont feel like it fit in any where but Brooklyn

Livetotravel, I don't know how the people I know who make over $300K and live in r.s. units get away with it. Apparently it is quite possible, so I'm guessing they're not the only ones, and I doubt that they lose sleep either. Speaking of losing sleep, though, the victims of rent control are not the landlords, who paid a discount when they bought the property in the first place--the victims are other New York tenants who are faced with the shortage in housing, and resultant steep prices, that all price caps inherently create.

As for your link, I read through the first 15-20 pages, and from what I can see it is not at all a scientific analysis of the effect of deregulation, but rather just a compilation of the opinions of a group of respondents. The fact that a surveyed group thinks more rent control would help the middle class by no means whatsoever constitutes evidence of such. For actual analysis of the effect of rent laws and their repeal (most notably in , see the reams of articles and research on the subject that are available at www.manhattan-institute.org and www.cato.org. Oh, yes, and I know that they are both biased, right-wing think tanks. For less blatantly biased views on the subject, do a Google search to see what the Economist, Paul Krugman, and Nicholas Kristof have all said on the subject.