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Among the many amendments made to New York’s rent stabilization laws by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) were new provisions making attorney’s fees mandatory for tenants represented by counsel who make successful rent overcharge claims. At the same time, there is no provision in the amended laws for an owner to recover attorney’s fees in the event that it successfully defends against an overcharge claim. As amended, Rent Stabilization Law §26-516(a)(4) and ETPA §12(a)(1)(d) each now provide that:
In a second decision concerning rent overcharge issued on April 2, 2020, New York’s highest court ruled that rent-stabilized tenants were entitled to bring overcharge claims against building owners either before the NY State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) or before a court. In Collazo v.
On April 2, 2020, New York’s highest court issued an important set of decisions in four consolidated cases concerning rent overcharge of rent-stabilized tenants. Here, in Regina Metropolitan Co., LLC v. DHCR et seq., the Court of Appeals had been asked to decide the proper method for calculating the recoverable rent overcharge for NYC apartments that were improperly removed from rent stabilization during receipt of J-51 tax benefits. This issue had come up repeatedly since the Court’s 2009 Roberts v. Tishman Speyer Properties ruling.
Following a 2018 court ruling that Rent Stabilization Code (RSC) §2526.1(a)(3)(iii), as amended in 2014, does not have retroactive effect, the DHCR has reversed its prior position that the amended RSC provision applied retroactively to determine legal rents after owners had followed the prior RSC provision to set negotiated first rents after an extended vacancy or temporary exemption from rent regulation.
As part of the amendments to the Rent Stabilization Code issued in January 2014, the DHCR changed the way it treats “immediately hazardous” violations, also known as Class “C” violations, that are in effect during the processing of an owner’s application for rent increases based on major capital improvements (MCIs). Immediately hazardous violations typically reflect conditions that pose a threat to life, health, safety, property, the public interest, or a significant number of persons so as to warrant immediate corrective action.
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