Bill Would OK Harassment Suits Against Landlords
The City Council introduced a bill yesterday that would allow renters to sue landlords for harassment. At present, tenants are only able to sue landlords over specific violations, not over patterns of harassment. The would-be law has grown out of the citywide hemorrhage of affordable housing, because more and more tenants are claiming that landlords…
The City Council introduced a bill yesterday that would allow renters to sue landlords for harassment. At present, tenants are only able to sue landlords over specific violations, not over patterns of harassment. The would-be law has grown out of the citywide hemorrhage of affordable housing, because more and more tenants are claiming that landlords are trying to drive them out of rent-regulated apartments by systematically denying basic services like heat or hot water, according to renter advocacy groups. Unsurprisingly, landlords think the bill could lead to a lot of baseless lawsuits. Think this would be a good thing?
Bill Would Give Tenants Right to Sue Landlords [AM New York]
Hot Water for Landlords [NY Post]
Photo by West Side Neighborhood Alliance
No one is probably reading this post anymore, but in case they are, here’s the response to the “show me the study” claim:
http://www.nber.org/~luttmer/rentcontrol.pdf
And it’s nothing new. We’ve known this at least since the 1970s:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3808(197211%2F12)80%3A6%3C1081%3AAEAORC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R
(In fact, we’ve known it for longer than that, but I’d have to cite an economist whose name would likely incite a flame war on this board.)
Just go to scholar.google.com, type in “economics rent control,” and you’ll see that the inefficiency of rent control is well-established.
If anyone wanted proof of abuse of the RS/RC system by those who can obviously afford to pay more, Bianca Jagger is finally losing her RS Park Ave apt:
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2007/10/18/2007-10-18_bianca_jaggers_landlord_can_evict_her_co.html
LOL!
7:02 again here. A couple other techniques I neglected to mention: unscrewing cover plates on electrical outlets and yanking the wires out of the wall, then claiming that “electrical service was dangerous,” but refusing to admit an electrician to address the problem (claiming that being compelled to admit an electrician to fix the dangerous situation created by the tenant constituted “harassment”); dumping garbage down the toilet and then claiming that the plumbing didn’t function properly, but refusing to admit plumbers, ditto; and so on. The housing court judge’s response was that we could schedule an inspection of the apartment within three months. I figured by that time the apartment would be totally trashed and possibly torched (the tenant also had a penchant for altars and candles, and remarked occasionally what a pity it would be if the house caught fire). It hadn’t occurred to me to take “before” pictures and have the tenant give me a document attaching the photos and attesting to the fact that this was the condition in which the apartment was rented. So it was cheaper to settle and be done with it for the sake of both my sanity and the safety and preservation of the house I’d worked so hard to restore.
This bill’s restriction to “three lawsuits in a ten year period” is completely useless as a tool for protecting landlords against this kind of scam – as long as you’re one of the three, you’re hosed. And in my case, to the best of my knowledge, I was the third in four years; the only reason I wasn’t the fourth was that the case immediately preceding mine had taken over a year in court (during which time the tenant was occupying the apartment in question, and not paying a dime in rent).
I occupy the upstairs triplex in my two family house in Fort Greene, and if this bill passes, based on past experience with a downstairs tenant, I will simply take my garden floor apartment off the market altogether. It’s not worth the risk. Why? Because I’ve been there and done that, bigtime. Several years ago I unwittingly rented to a serial tenant with perfect credit and references, all of which turned out to be fraudulent. His pattern in every apartment he’d rented was the same: get a lease in a two family house with a single owner occupier upstairs so it was his word against the landlord’s with no other witnesses, pay rent for about two months, then refuse to pay any more, based on claims of harassment and denial of services. It took a private eye to track down his true history, including assault of his prior (senior citizen)landlord in another neighborhood with a dangerous weapon (while THEY were in landlord tenant court under similar circumstances); trespassing in the apartment of the landlady before that (the lady was so infirm she couldn’t document whether anything was missing, just that she’d been threatened); resisting arrest in the attack case when the prior landlord reported it to the police;and two weeks in jail for that attack(record sealed).
And how did he justify the denial of services complaints against landlords? Very simple: he turned off the valves on his radiators in the middle of the winter, waited till his apartment was freezing, and called the City to complain. Worked like a charm every time. After the inspectors left, he just opened the valves and was toasty warm again. Not only that, he called PACC and I was suddenly getting phone calls from that organization (to which I used to DONATE for god’s sake) informing me that he’d enlisted them to MEDIATE his complaints, and that they were very concerned that a “tenant was being displaced,” yadda, yadda. I told PACC (which had never even come over to inspect his apartment, thank you) to stick it in their ear – I’d been in Clinton Hill and involved in community activities for sixteen years, he’d been here for six months, but suddenly because he was a TENANT he was presumed to be the injured party and I was the vile capitalist. If they HAD bothered to inspect, they would have seen a beautiful (completely restored, all original) apartment, complete with plaster, parquet and original fireplaces, private garden access, etc.. But PACC didn’t inspect either the complainant or the apartment, just knee-jerked in his support despite the fact that he was a complete grifter with a criminal record. Then he set about his usual extortion tactics, which he’d used to get settlements out of his previous landlords in exchange for agreeing to vacate (after reviewing the files my PI unearthed, I actually called and spoke to a couple of them; not only were they too terrified of this guy to testify – the settlements he’d negotiated with them compelled them to give him favorable recommendations to his next victims, plus cash, in exchange for moving out). He yelled nonstop all night long so none of my neighbors could sleep (threatening to kill his girlfriend, screaming about his miserable childhood,etc.), blasted music all hours of the day, and accused some of the neighbors of harassing HIM for telling him to please pipe down. I figure he’d probably been living rent free for at least ten years, just repeating the same scam till he got a settlement and moved on to his next victim. The neighbors were calling begging me to get rid of him, and all I could say was, “I’m trying, believe me, our next court hearing is in two weeks….” It got a lot worse than that…and like his prior landlords, I ended up paying him to leave because he made it so frightening to live in my own house and there was no recourse in landlord tenant court, from the police (did I mention he filed a harassment complaint against ME with the 88th on the basis that he “felt insecure” in the apartment?) – no help anywhere.
When we settled, the judge leaned over the bench and instructed him to “be sure that when you turn in your keys, you get a receipt to protect yourself.” What a joke. I changed the locks three minutes after he was gone and counted myself lucky to have survived the experience. That was when I stopped giving leases. But now the City of NY wants to make it even easier for scam artists to engage in this kind of behavior? Thanks, but I’ll just turn the garden floor apartment into a lovely guest suite and home office.
1st. To the teachers, try the teacher next door/officer next door program. It is a pain in the neck and lots of leg work but can pay off when you get a house for half price. Just don’t think you are going to get a house in a trendy area.
2nd. My mom owns a home out of state. She also has a three bedroom with garage parking and a terrace facing the Verrazano that she rents for $1100 which includes all utilities except for electricity. On her retirement income and investments she can afford to pay the $1100 easily. Several of the older people in her building do the same. They don’t even sublet! The younger families with children are in the smaller apartments while older people have enough space for four kids. My college aged son has been on her lease since High School when he stayed with her during the week to shorten his commute. I guess it will become his eventually. Works for me. But I think destabilization would be more fair.
4:38: I’d love to see that link/citation for the Boston study posted again. I too am skeptical of the often repeated and oversimplified assertion that a just and affordable housing market distribution will necessarily emerge once rc/rs is dismantled.
3:50
Ah, you’re back. But you still haven’t produced a single article by an economist, or a study by an economic think-tank, that supports the claim that rc/rs is “actually accepted as naving a negative impact on the cost of renting in NYC”. Instead, you suggest we consult any economics textbook. I think, however, that if such documentation could be found, you’d be supplying it. Some months ago, during the last thread about rc/rs, I posted a study which shows that after rent controls were eliminated in Boston, rents went up across the board. And that’s just what would happen in NY.
10:29.
To clear up any misconception. R/C in NYC is actually accepted as having a negative impact on the cost of renting in NYC by almost universally every economist. By any Economics 101 test book and under the supply and demand section, NYC will often be used as an example to show that R/C tenancies actually reduce the supply of afforable rentals, which increases the cost of rentals for everyone who is not residing in a r/c apartment. If want sites, just go to Barnes and Noble, and open every text book on economics.
You can also look up the legislative minutes which amended the r/c laws to limit the passage to a family member only once, thereby gradually removing r/c from the City. This proposition is again discussed during those discussions.
Capitalism. Survival of the fittest. It works. Why is it that people feel that they are entitled to a low rent?
I don’t think that is the technical definition of Capitalism.
But by those questions, why should a landlord or developer get subsidies? We don’t? Maybe if people had the same breaks these guys get then it wouldn’t matter. Subsidies by their very nature ( though I think important) are not “letting the market” decide. So a better question is why should a building owner and landlord be untouchable, when their products are crappy, and they don’t do their job?