City Councilmembers and the de Blasio administration are set to discuss a compromise version of a bill that would require property owners seeking building permits to first demonstrate that they had not harassed their tenants. The proposed law, Intro 152-A, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilmember...
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman recently announced the initial financing for nearly 600 new low-income apartments across the city, paid for by $10 million in settlements with property owners who violated the law. The new homes will serve formerly homeless New...
Gov. Cuomo recently announced the first results of an ongoing investigation that uncovered the illegal removal of central heating systems in over two dozen rent-regulated buildings in New York City, impacting 145 tenants. The owners of these buildings, who are required by law to pay for and...
New York City recently hired Diana Leyden as the city’s first taxpayer advocate, a new position created by Finance Commissioner Jacques Jiha. Leyden is a law professor from Connecticut and has run a free income-tax clinic for low-income taxpayers in Hartford for the past 16 years....
The 421-a tax abatement program, which grants subsidies to developers who offer low-income units in new buildings, has expired. The program’s future depended on negotiations between the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New...
Airbnb recently released a massive dataset about its business in New York City. The data on thousands of hosts in the city includes statistics such as host earnings, the types of listings, and how often people rent out their homes. This is the latest action the company has taken to counter the...
ProPublica, a nonprofit with a focus on investigative journalism, recently conducted an analysis of government data on nearly 15,000 rental buildings receiving the 421-a and J51 tax subsidies as of 2013. About 40 percent—or 5,500 buildings—weren’t listed as rent stabilized, yet...
As the New York City Council considers new rules to regulate apartment sharing sites such as Airbnb, the home-sharing startup’s public policy blog recently released a statement or “community compact” pledging to “promote responsible home sharing” and acknowledging...
Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) recently introduced a new bill that would ban owners from checking applicant’s credit scores to decide whether to rent to applicants. The legislation would also prevent owners from considering other factors such as medical debt, consumer debt judgments...
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration intends to spend $1 million on ads to promote the unprecedented rent freeze enacted in June by the Rent Guidelines Board for New York’s rent-regulated tenants. The city will pay for ads on the subway, in newspapers, on the radio, and online. The...
Rent-stabilized tenants of an East Village apartment building recently submitted audio and video recordings to housing court depicting the owner’s agents as engaging in a campaign of harassment to force them out. The evidence is part of a months-long dispute at the building between the...
The massive Stuyvesant Town apartment complex is prepped for sale, five years after its owners defaulted on the mortgage. CWCapital Asset Management, which is currently in charge of the property, is looking to sell. A sale of Stuyvesant Town, home to about 30,000 New Yorkers, would end the...
