Landlords using warehousing loophole to spike rents

GOTHAMIST

How landlords continue to use a rent loophole to spike regulated rents

While the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act cracked down on several of the most common ways landlords raised rents on regulated apartments, such as bumping the rent by 20% once the units became vacant, the law didn't directly address one workaround: combining a regulated unit with a market rate unit to make a bigger, expensive "Frankenstein" apartment. State regulators said back in the spring of 2020 that they knew about the practice, but nothing has yet to be done about it, as landlords continue to combine units that now cost three times what they did as regulated apartments.