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Recently, the Supreme Court asked New York City and State to file answers to an owner's petition to be heard. The owner contends that New York City's rent laws constitute a “taking” of his property without just compensation, a violation of his constitutional rights. If the owner has his way, the nation's highest court may soon be examining New York City's rent stabilization laws for the first time since the 1920s.

The City Council is hoping to apply more pressure on building owners who convert residential apartments into illegal hotel rooms, proposing new fines for repeat violations that could soar as high as $25,000.

In a decision that affects all residential buildings in New York City, a Bronx Supreme Court recently ruled that front entrances must be made handicapped-accessible at the request of a disabled resident, unless doing so would be physically impractical and cost prohibitive.

A recent audit from city Controller John Liu discovered that the city had paid out $11.8 million through the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program in recent years to nearly 4,000 dead people. Either their apartment owners or relatives had been cashing in on the oversight.

Recently, a settlement deal was reached between the Pinnacle Group, a large New York City landlord, and its rent-regulated tenants, who claimed in a class-action lawsuit that they had been subjected to harassment, unlawful rent increases, and aggressive eviction attempts during the real estate boom. They claimed that the owner had skirted the state's rent regulation and other housing laws and had violated federal racketeering laws.

A New York State appellate court ruling handed down recently may have broad implications for tenants across the city. In a decision that could benefit potentially thousands of New York City residents, the court held that a landmark 2009 ruling involving illegally deregulated apartments should be applied retroactively.

Three Brooklyn owners of distressed properties were arrested recently for failing to comply with court orders directing them to correct hazardous housing violations on their properties and failing to appear in court, according to the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

A Kings County Housing Court judge issued warrants of arrest for the owners. The owners' buildings are in HPD's Alternative Enforcement Program, which is designed to improve conditions in the city's most blighted buildings.

In the past few months, Manhattan rents have continued to rise and vacancy rates have hit a new low, according to reports released on July 8 by Citi Habitats. Manhattan's apartment vacancy rate was 0.72 percent in the second quarter, the lowest vacancy rate that Citi Habitats has seen since it started tracking vacancies in 2002. The last time the rate was nearly this low was in second quarter of 2006, when it was 0.76 percent.

In a statement released by his office recently, Mayor Bloomberg outlined how the city plans to deal with dangerous illegally converted apartments. A multi-agency task force, chaired by Chief Policy Advisor John Feinblatt, developed a risk assessment model that will be applied to illegal conversion complaint records weekly. The model generates a targeted list of illegal conversions at high risk for a fire, and the locations are inspected within 48 hours by a joint inspection team, which vastly improves the chances for access.

City fire and building officials will search for new ways to target landlords who unlawfully subdivide their properties, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the wake of an April 25 Bronx fire that killed a family of three living in illegal subdivided housing.