Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Is your landlord creating "Frankensteined" apartments?

It's time to close the "Frankenstein" loophole in the 2019 rent laws!

Landlords love to warehouse vacant rent stabilized apartments in the hopes of combining it with a neighboring apartment or otherwise changing the perimeter - to create a new, "Frankensteined"*  unit that will have a new rent history and possibly a new, much higher base rent. 

This is a big loophole in the bar on deregulating apartments in the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Law.  It's not clear what the base rent stabilized rent for the new unit will be since it has no history and there's no legislation (or even DHCR regulation) about it.  

So this loophole is an incentive for landlords to harass neighboring tenants out.  

Help us close the loophole!  Join the End Apartment Warehousing Coalition, and contact your state legislator and Governor Hochul


*Frankensteining requires making one or more vacant apartments into a completely different new unit with a different perimeter, generally including a different entry location.  So just adding dividers or knocking down a wall between kitchen and living room won't do create a new unit.  

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