Support bill to end Frankensteining NOW - just a few days left

The NYS Legislature will hold a special session beginning June 20th. Among bills they may discuss is the one that could END FRANKENSTEINING of rent-stabilized homes.  The bill, S2980C/A6216B, has already passed the NYS Senate.  

Let's keep these altered apartments affordable.  Tell your Assembly Member and Speaker Carl Heastie that we NEED A6216B NOW!

The bill will

• Ensure that new apartments including any rent stabilized space are entirely rent stabilized
• Set the first rent for such newly-created apartments by combining the previous legal rents.  Where a rent stabilized unit is expanded by adding common-area space (like a bit of hallway), the rent would change by the same percentage as the stabilized apartment's area is changed.  
• Include in the new base rent Individual Apartment Improvement and Rent Guidelines Board increases but NOT where the vacancies resulted from fraud or harassment. 

The bill has other sections that are also important:

Succession:  Succession will be possible even where the tenant named on the lease continues to sign lease renewals or pay rent after actually moving out. 

Substantial rehabilitation: Landlords will have just 1 year from substantially rehabilitating a building to apply to the NYS Division of Housing & Community Renewal (DHCR) to regulate, and landlords who claim to have substantially rehabilitated a building earlier will now have 6 months to register it.  The State's housing agency will deny deregulation if the owner harassed the tenants in the five years leading up to the substantial rehabilitation, or if the building in fact was not deteriorated and didn't need the rehabilitation.

Fraud = unlawfully deregulating (including for an illegal increase) an apartment, or failing to register as rent stabilized any apartment for which the landlord is getting J-51 or 421a tax benefits.  (There are some exceptions.)

Failure to register: Owners can't collect increases until an apartment is properly registered.  If the owner doesn't register after a DHCR notice, there will be a fine of $500/unit for each month registration is late.