Authorizes rent increase for rent regulated housing accommodation when family member of prior tenant executes a renewal lease for the same housing accommodation

BILL NUMBER:S5046

Title of bill

An act to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, the emergency tenant protection act of nineteen seventy-four, the emergency housing rent control law and the local emergency housing rent control act, in relation to rent increases upon succession

Purpose

This bill would allow property owners of rent regulated properties, in instances where a family member has succeeded to the prior tenant's tenancy, to obtain vacancy increases and other increases which would have been authorized had the succeeding tenant not been a family member.

Summary of provisions

This bill amends the emergency housing rent control law, the emergency tenant protection act of 1974 and the administrative code of the city of New York to authorize property owners to treat instances where family members succeed to the tenancy of a rent regulated apartment upon the permanent departure of the initial tenant as a vacancy for the purposes of rent increases. This bill amends the provisions of the Rent Regulation Reform Act which permits these increases upon the second, as opposed to the initial, succession.

Justification

In every rental situation outside of rent control and rent stabilization, a property owner who enters into a lease with the person named in the lease knows that the lease obligations terminate with the death or departure of the tenant and that no other persons have any rights to continue in occupancy. Family members or others who seek to remain in occupancy may do subject to the consent of the property owner and are subject to any and all rent increases and other lease terms as may be agreed upon between them.

The rules under rent regulation are different. Persons who qualify as family members of the named tenant are, assuming they meet various legal qualifications, entitled to succeed to a tenancy and are insulated from the vacancy and other lease increases to which any other new tenant would be subject, and to which a property owner would ordinarily be entitled, if such persons were not family members. Under current law, those persons who succeed to the tenancy of the lessee family member are subject only to the same renewal lease increases that the family member would have been charged. In those instances, property owners are deprived of the vacancy and other increases they would otherwise receive if succession did not occur.

This bill does not affect the rights of persons to continue to succeed to the apartments that were previously occupied the rent regulated family members. Those rights continue unchanged. This bill does, however, allow property owners to obtain the vacancy and other lease increases they would have obtained had the family members not succeeded to the apartment.

Legislative history

New Bill

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

This act shall take effect immediately.