In recently released guidance, HUD tells owners that turning down tenants based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair...
Mayor de Blasio recently announced two new appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB). The two appointments – former United States Magistrate Judge Kathleen Roberts and Mary Serafy – have years of experience in both the public and private...
A state appellate court recently dismissed the city’s Commission of Human Rights’ $185,000 claim against an owner, finding that the landlord was just in denying a paraplegic tenant a wheelchair ramp to her first-floor Astoria apartment because the...
Last December, Airbnb released a massive dataset covering November 2014 through Nov. 1, 2015, about its business in New York City. The data provided information on thousands of hosts in the city including statistics such as host earnings, the types of listings...
Evictions by city marshals have decreased 24 percent since Mayor de Blasio took office, down from 28,849 in 2013 to 21,988 in 2015. And evictions decreased by 18 percent last year even as the number of cases filed by owners for nonpayment of rent declined by...
At a recent public hearing, Anne-Marie Hendrickson, a deputy commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), said proposed New York City Council legislation requiring landlords to register their rent-regulated...
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) recently released the new list of residential buildings that have been placed into the agency’s Ninth Round of the Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP). The AEP is aimed at increasing...
As the 421-a tax break program was set to expire on Jan. 15 of this year, developers pushed applications through the city's Department of Buildings. A total of 7,781 permits were approved for 299 different projects, which represents the third highest...
According to a recently filed lawsuit, owners are seeking damages against one of their tenants who had an illegal Airbnb sublet. In May, a Department of Buildings inspector found that tenants at the owner's five-story, 21-unit building, were illegally...
Recently, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered 50,000 housing units to be returned to rent-regulated status. He has charged that owners getting a major tax break from New York State have illegally deregulated apartments. Cuomo, who issued his order on Jan. 6, said that...
A new bill in Albany would set tougher fines for owners who overcharge their rent-stabilized tenants. The bill by Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, both Democrats, would increase penalties against landlords to five times the amount of the...
The city’s Department of Buildings responded to New York’s building boom in 2015 with a significant increase in the number of stop-work orders issued at unsafe construction sites. There were 8,326 stop-work orders as of Dec. 18, which represents a...
