Year Of The Tenant: What Neighbors Are Urging State Lawmakers To Do

As our neighbors descended upon the capitol building in Albany this past Tuesday, they had a very specific set of bills they urged lawmakers to support in 2015 – which the Flatbush Tenant Coalition and other tenant groups have deemed “the year of the tenant.”

“Rent regulated housing is the primary source of housing for low-income New Yorkers,” the Alliance for Tenant Power, of which the Flatbush Tenant Coalition is a member, stated in a packet given to legislators on Tuesday. “However, the pressure to deregulate apartments has led to the de-stabilization of diverse neighborhoods. Tenants struggle with rising rents that have outpaced cost of living increases in income, and the windfall landlords receive in deregulated units has led to harassment and fraud. The Alliance for Tenant Power is organizing to preserve and strengthen the rent regulation system legislatively to maintain diverse and livable communities.”

Here are the legislative priorities from the Alliance for Tenant Power (which consists of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change, Tenants & Neighbors, Community Service Society, CASA New Settlement, Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, The Legal Aid Society, and Faith in New York):

• Repeal vacancy destabilization (Bill #A1865, sponsored by Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal): This bill would repeal what’s known as vacancy decontrol, the process by which, upon vacancy, landlords can remove apartments from rent regulation when rents rise over $2,500. “Vacancy destabilization is really what drives harassment because it’s a race to that $2,500,” Flatbush Tenant Coalition Coordinator Aga Trojniak said. This bill would also re-regulate most of the apartments that were deregulated over the past 15 years. There is currently no corresponding bill in the state Senate for this.

• Protect tenants with “preferential rents” (Bill #S1775/A5473, sponsored by state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblyman Keith Wright): This legislation would close a loophole in the rent laws that current impacts hundreds of thousands of “preferential rent” tenants. Preferential rents occur when a landlord offers a rent stabilized apartment for less than the legal regulated rent, which is often higher thant he market can bear. Currently, when leases are renewed, landlords can raise rents to the level of the legal regulated rent, which can be hundreds of dollars higher than the preferential rate. (For example, we reported on one Ditmas Park resident’s rent for a studio spiking by $430 each month, forcing her to leaving her home.) This bill would require that preferential lease renewals be offered based on the lower rate, and only allows landlords to jump up to the legal regulated rent upon vacancy.

• Make MCIs (major capital improvements) temporary surcharges (Bill #S1493/A5373, sponsored by state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell): This bill would turn major capital improvement rent increases into temporary surcharges, rather than permanent additions to the rent. When a building-wide improvement is paid off, the surcharge would no longer be factored into the rent. Additionally, MCI rent increases would not be compounded into the monthly rent for the purposes of determining annual or biennial rent increases. This legislation would make a big difference in our area, neighbors said, as landlords, such as the frequently-lambasted Shamco property management company, will purchase a building and then immediately hit everyone in it with MCIs, which neighbors said is an attempt to boot rent regulated tenants who don’t have the extra cash to spend on these improvements (which sometimes aren’t even actually done).

• Reform the Individual Apartment Improvement rent increase systems (Bill #S3285, sponsored by state Sen. Daniel Squadron): “It has become apparent that the imposition of unwarranted and fraudulent rent increases based on alleged ‘improvements’ in vacant apartments is the greatest single factor driving the rapid inflation of rents and the single greatest threat to the affordability that the rent laws were enacted to preserve,” the Alliance for Tenant Power wrote. This bill would place more stringent controls on a landlord’s ability to charge tenants for improvements, as well as require landlords to provide documentation explaining how the rent adjustment was computed.

• End fraudulent fees (Bill #S1733, sponsored by Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat): Surchargest for tenant-installed appliances, such as air conditioners or washing machines, for which tenants pay for electric utility services would be prohibited if this bill passed.

• Repeal deregulation of rent regulated apartments (Bill #A04741, sponsored by Assemblyman William Colton): Tenants rights advocates have argued that having the possibility of deregulating apartments puts current tenants at risk for harassment by landlords and fraudulent deregulation. This bill would make it so rent regulated apartments would remain rent regulated, no matter the rent charged or the income of the families living in the apartment.

• End source of income discrimination (Bill #S151/A3059, sponsored by state Sen. Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman David Weprin): This would make it be illegal for landlords to deny tenancy to people who pay their rent using Section 8 vouchers, or other forms of rental assistance.

In addition to advocating support for these specific bills, tenants also urged lawmakers to end the 421-a tax abatement program for developers – you can read more about that in our coverage here.