Tenant with Heating Complaints
I have a tenant who is a real pain in the you know what! She’ll sit around and wait til the temp drops 1 to 3 degrees below 55 OUTSIDE and then call and get real pissed off about how cold she is. I remind her that the heat is indeed on and that we’re…
I have a tenant who is a real pain in the you know what! She’ll sit around and wait til the temp drops 1 to 3 degrees below 55 OUTSIDE and then call and get real pissed off about how cold she is. I remind her that the heat is indeed on and that we’re only required to maintain an INTERIOR temp of 68 day/ 55 night. I told her if she had a personal preference I could buy her a heater to which she declined. Lately she’s been stalking my family and me and sometimes as soon as I’m home she’ll bang on my door or start cussing me out in front of my twin toddlers and then leaving very nasty voice messages. She’s sent me a photo copy of her gas bill because she complaints that since “I never turn the heat on”, that she’s had to heat her apartment with her oven open. By the way, her bill was at a massive grand total of 26 bucks for the month… I’ve told her we haven’t had any heating problems with the other tenants. Now she has tried reporting me to the Housing Preservation Dept. They didn’t find a heating problem but instead cited alterations and minor wall damage to her apartment. I can’t seem to get through to this women nor stop her from harassing my family and me.
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No there is nothing being done to fix this.
These laws are the responsibility of NY State – the Legislature and governor. If anything is changed it will be for the worse because the state government is now totally controlled by the liberal Democrats. There were some amall improvements made about 10 years ago, but the regulation lobby is pushing the Democrats to reverse them.
In fact, I DO fear that these rent laws will be tightened even more, not improved.
I don’t care what the tenant’s circumstances are….paying only 130$ a month for a 2 bedroom in NYC is CRIMINAL!…..landlords are entitled to make a profit off of their buildings. Call me “NYC housing Laws” illiterate….but are there any laws or legal actions being taken to kind of “fix” or improve this type of scenario?…just curious
^^
son looked at her and said “monster”, “bad” and pointed his toy lazer space gun at her
That made me laugh out loud.
curiositykilledthecat didn’t renew tenant’s lease, but as we know in your situation she’s RC and you don’t have that option.
Doing a quick calculation using the rule of 72s you can double the rent every decade as long as the MCR is less than the MBR. Like Vinca says, do what’s required to get the increases, and you may be able to get the rent over 2 grand in 40 years / by the time she’s 101 and ready to kick the bucket.
We had a holdover tenant when we bought our place a few years ago. She complained consistently about the cold, and since we didn’t have any history on the house, we took her at her word and took a series of actions–none of which satisfied her. As this was going on, any time we were in the apartment it seemed warm enough to us. So…
We bought something like this:
http://www.madgetech.com/dynamic_site/view_product.php?itemnumber=CRYO-TEMP
It records the temperature every minute or so, and stores the information for, say, 30 days. Then you hook the device up to your PC and download the info–you can make graphs, whatever. The point is that it gives you lots of reading for the temperature over a substantial time period. This way you can figure out whether:
1. You do have a heating problem, and the data will help put you on the road to diagnosing the issue. I.e. it’s dropping at night; or it’s only particularly cold on days that it’s super cold outside, etc.
or
2. You have a tenant with unreasonable expectations regarding what ‘warm enough’ is.
Our situation turned out to be #2, so we didn’t renew her lease.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
Thanks again for everyones helpful insights! The tenant lives under the succession right from her father, who was the original rent control tenant. He was about 101 years old went he passed away last year. Very nice man but had a bad habit of smokin flicking and spitting from the top stairwell down to the first floor. I was friendly with him but his daughter is just plain crazy. She’s in her 60s, alone and angry I guess. I’m not clear on how much she likes living here if it were for the cheapo rent. She’s quite a heavy set women, huffing and puffing up and down 3 floors to her apt every day. She’s become increasingly foul mouth and angry, even in this recent nice spring weather. Last time I saw her I was holding my 2 yr old in the hallway and she started exploding on me about how she needs 80 degrees in her apt. My son looked at her and said “monster”, “bad” and pointed his toy lazer space gun at her. Boy was she POed. I guess she thought I spend my evenings telling my kids what a witch she is. She went back up and called me to leave another profanity laced rant on my phone.
Bklnite, you are right, I posted wrong link. I meant to post this link to MBR info/calculations: http://bit.ly/aHQpyt
I personally have no sympathy for a LL who calculates that it’s not worthwhile to apply for increases yet cries about the rent of his RC tenant; or a LL who defers maintenance or curing violations and blames that on RC, too. Anyone, at anytime, who bought a building with RS or RC tenants should have understood the program prior to making the purchase, as well as made a calculation based on purchase price and existing conditions as to whether they were making a sound financial decision. Pre-purchase, caveat emptor. Post-purchase, quit your whining.
“Rent Increases
In New York City, rent control operates under the Maximum Base Rent (MBR) system. A maximum base rent is established for each apartment and adjusted every two years to reflect changes in operating costs. Owners, who certify that they are providing essential services and have removed violations, are entitled to raise rents up to 7.5 percent each year until they reach the MBR. Tenants may challenge the proposed increase on the grounds that the building has violations or that the owner’s expenses do not warrant an increase.”
http://www.housingnyc.com/html/resources/dhcr/dhcr1.html
So I believe OP could potentially raise the rent less than 10 bucks, which may not be worth the trouble, esp. w/ a tenant who seems inclined to challenge that LL is providing essential services.
Like DIBS said…buyer beware when there’s a rent controlled tenant in the building.
Vinca,
I’m less familiar w/ rent controlled (vs. rent stabilized), but isn’t RGB order #41 for RS? “These rent adjustments will apply to rent stabilized apartments …”
http://www.housingnyc.com/html/guidelines/orders/order41.html
And, re: flat sum increases for apartments where vacancies have not occurred in last six years, that’s true (at least for RS apts). I believe I read in an RSA newsletter there’s a court case pending and landlords have a dilemma – if you add the increase and the challenge is upheld you may end up having to give some of the money back.
On RC apts – I believe if you keep clear of violations and do the math right you can get increases which some LL’s don’t bother to do because the amounts you can legal increase are small.