“Although HPD and DOB are responding quickly to 311 complaints and sending out inspectors, there is a very troubling lag time and delay in terms of closure of these complaints,” Councilmember Pierina Sanchez said.
Tenants say they fear the property owners are waging a war of attrition, waiting the renters out until they give up, move on and forfeit the rent-regulated apartments.
The board voted to freeze existing rents for six months before increasing rates for the remaining half of the year, what some members described as a compromise between what tenants and landlords had each been pushing for. The new rules will take effect Oct. 1.
A one-word change in a preliminary document could lead to a court fight over what the 2019 rent law really said.
The board voted to authorize a rent freeze on one-year leases and the first year of two-year leases, with the second year on those leases capped at 1 percent.
In 1945, near the end of the WWII, the city instituted commercial rent control as an emergency wartime measure, authorized by the state. Advocates are calling for a similar response to the COVID-19 crisis.
‘New Yorkers who live in rent-regulated units, the vast majority of whom have only low or moderate incomes, must be protected from the destructive financial impact of the coronavirus.’
Is reality matching those predictions? Is it too early to tell? Have government agencies caught up with the dramatic reorientation of rent policies that the legislature approved?
The housing news you might have missed this week.
Sweeping rent reforms are now law. Exactly how the letter of that legislation translates into reality will depend in large part on how the state’s Division of Homes and Community Renewal publicizes and enforces it.
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