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New York City and State officials recently announced the creation of a multi-agency task force aimed at finding and penalizing bad landlords. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman spoke of the task force as an unprecedented collaboration among city agencies that investigate building and housing code compliance, and state agencies that investigate and criminally charge harassment. The attorney general vowed to use his authority more aggressively to bring criminal charges against landlords when warranted.

Carl Heastie was elected speaker of the New York State Assembly on Feb. 3, making him the first African American to hold the powerful position. Heastie, a Democrat from the Bronx, succeeds Sheldon Silver who resigned after being charged with allegedly taking nearly $4 million in payoffs and kickbacks. The charges include accepting nearly $700,000 from a law firm for referring two large developers who benefited from tax-abatement programs. He has denied wrongdoing and has said he would be vindicated.

Lower Manhattan councilwoman Margaret Chin is proposing a bill that would require owners the HPD suspects of bad behavior to place 10 percent of a building's rent rolls from a five-year period into an escrow account. The city would use the money in the event it needs to swiftly relocate displaced tenants. The department is already allowed to recover the costs of tenant relocation from landlords, but Chin's bill would allow the department to pick up those costs up-front.

HPD recently halted plans by an owner of an Upper West Side residential building to convert 69 rent-stabilized apartments into high-end apartments. The denial occurred after an administrative law judge ruled that the owner was harassing rent-stabilized tenants in a building that also has 131 market-rate apartments. The Colorado-based owner had ignored residents’ requests for basic maintenance and invented unpaid rent claims, wrote the judge of the city Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings in the Jan. 5 ruling.

A Manhattan judge recently ordered an Upper West Side rent-controlled tenant to stop renting out her apartment on Airbnb. Records show that the tenant, a mostly unemployed 62-year-old, was taking in around $78,000 per year renting out bedrooms in her four-bedroom apartment, while paying $53,724 in her own rent.

Regulations that went into effect in July 2012 require building owners to end their use of dirty heating oil by the time their current three-year boiler permits expire or June 30, 2015, whichever comes first.

The renewal of the city's rent laws will be a major issue for debate in the 2015 New York State legislative session. The rent laws are controlled by the state Senate, which is currently in Republican hands. Democrats from New York City will try to protect and strengthen the rules, while Republicans who lead the state Senate are expected to try to roll back the restrictions.

A recent fire in a Brooklyn apartment building claimed the life of a tenant and injured 16 others. According to the FDNY, the apartment had been illegally divided into cramped, dangerous living spaces.

The fire was sparked by a faulty refrigerator wire. And according to the owner, a second-floor tenant, without his consent, had created 11 illegal small rooms in his apartment. After the blaze, the Department of Buildings ordered the remaining residents to vacate.

Recently, an owner took a street-side Christmas tree vendor to court, after the vendor set up shop outside of his residential building. The owner had received complaints from residents in his building.

The state's highest court recently ruled that rent-stabilized tenants can file class-action lawsuits against their landlords to recover rent overcharges. Owners had argued that because the rent stabilization law allows tenants to receive punitive damages of up to three times the amount of the overcharge, lawsuits had to be filed and argued individually.