New York Governor David Paterson recently introduced a package of proposed legislative amendments to modify and extend the state’s rent laws for eight years, reduce the rate at which apartments become deregulated, provide additional protections for tenants, and address a recent Court of Appeals decision that resulted in uncertainty about the status of thousands of deregulated apartments. The proposed legislation would:
- Reduce the rate at which rental units are deregulated by increasing the high rent vacancy and high rent/high income thresholds.
- Require owners of properties affected by the court decision Roberts v. Tischman Speyer to give their tenants notice of their new status within 90 days of the statute’s enactment, and pay any overcharge within six months of that date.
- Require owners to notify tenants of individual apartment improvements (IAI) that result in rent increases, and to describe the improvements. The amendment also enables tenants to challenge the IAI.
- Extend the period to review the tenant’s rent history in order to correctly determine the legal rent.
- Extend the laws covering rent regulation for eight additional years, until June 15, 2019.
