As is made eminently clear in a recent news report focusing on rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, landlords’ creativity is on clear display when it comes to their attempts to outs tenants and jack up the rent.
They can do that, of course, but only subject to clear rules and processes set forth under applicable local and state laws, and subject to a tenant’s corresponding legal rights.
As reported in the above-cited media expose, what has emerged as flatly — and sadly — interesting are the machinations engaged in by bad-faith landlords to kick renters out while ostensibly complying with all regulations.
When in fact they’re not. And when in fact they’re engaging in sleight-of-hand maneuvers and/or cavalierly flouting tenants’ legal protections by resorting to trickery and outright lies.
Here’s one such oft-reported tactic that the aforementioned article notes is commonplace “among predatory landlords who own rent-regulated units:” simply refusing to cash the timely written checks of tenants and then taking them to court months later for nonpayment.
And here’s another ploy in the cited “arsenal of strategies:” taking tenants to court for so-called “chronic rent delinquency” even in cases where there was just a single late payment.
Tenant advocates say that they routinely see such ploys, along with a universe of other bad-faith landlord behaviors aimed at forcing renters out in order to materially up the rent ante on a successive tenant.
Some landlords will turn recalcitrant in making necessary repairs, hoping that renters will just give up and move. Sometimes they will effect repairs in a multi-unit complex, but only in premises that are not rent-stabilized.
In certain instances, too, landlords will provide notice that they are moving into a rent-stabilized apartment, which they have the right to do. After a tenant dutifully leaves, though, they never make the move.
A host of other underhanded strategies are additionally detailed in the above article.
Here’s an antidote to such behavior for any adversely affected renter: timely consultation with a long-tenured and proven NYC tenants’ rights attorney, who can spotlight and stop such practices pursuant to legal representation that aggressively promotes a client’s best interests.
