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In keeping with his pro-tenant, pro-affordable housing policies, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has stated during his campaign that if he's elected, he would push hard for a rent freeze on stabilized apartments. It remains to be seen whether he’ll act on his statement.

This is the second year NYC has required buildings to report on their energy and water consumption and the first year large apartment buildings have had to do so. Local Law 84 (LL84) covers the biggest buildings in NYC--24,000 that are over 50,000 square feet. Recently, the city released the 2012 energy and water use data for all properties required to annually benchmark under LL84.

In the ongoing battle between New York State short-term rental laws and popular short-term rental Web site Airbnb, the latest defensive strategy by the company appears to be an information campaign using economic data.

Airbnb Inc., the short-term home rental service for travelers, was recently asked to provide information to New York's attorney general about its hosts who rent and sublet apartments. Airbnb allows people to rent dwellings on a short-term basis as an alternative to hotels. A 2010 New York law bars renters from subletting apartments for fewer than 30 days with some exceptions.

Lambda Legal recently filed a complaint against a New York City landlord for refusing to add a lesbian tenant's legally married wife to her rent-stabilized lease as is required by state and city law. After marrying her partner of 37 years in Iowa in 2011, the tenant provided a copy of her marriage certificate to the management company requesting to have her spouse added to the lease. In response to her request, the management company incorrectly told the couple that New York State does not recognize their marriage.

In a long-running effort to increase the rent at a Mitchell-Lama building on the Upper West Side, the owner, Trinity School, has succeeded in securing city approval to hike rents by as much as 13 percent in one year. This is more than three times the standard increase for rent-stabilized units this year. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which regulates Mitchell-Lama buildings with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, agreed to the plan.

Building Code Section 27-147 says that work permits are required for all building construction or alteration work, foundation or earthwork, demolition or removal work, or plumbing work. But it provides an exception for minor alterations and ordinary repairs.

A family is suing the owner after a kitchen fire sparked by a stove burned the family's 4-year-old girl and killed her older sister. According to court documents, two weeks before the fire, the building superintendent installed a new stove in the family’s fourth-floor apartment. According to the lawsuit, the superintendent positioned the appliance so close to the wall, it crushed the electrical cord, damaging it to the point where it ignited.

Recently, a judge ruled that tenants of a 921-unit rental building in Chelsea can proceed with a lawsuit alleging illegal rent hikes related to a tax abatement program as a class action. The case involved the same issues at the heart of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village case, where tenants claimed that then-landlords Tishman Speyer and MetLife had deregulated apartments while taking tax breaks for apartment improvements, known as the J-51 program. An appeals court found in 2009 that this was illegal.

You may be doing renovation work in your building that may disturb lead-paint surfaces this season. Exposure to lead paint, of special concern in homes built before 1978, can cause permanent damage to the brain and nervous system, including behavior and learning problems. Young children are most susceptible.