Authorizes an increase in the rent of a rent regulated housing accommodation when the tenants vacate and family members of such tenants renew the lease

BILL NUMBER:S3672

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 for rent regulated hous- ing accommodations upon succession of the tenants

Purpose

This bill would allow property owners of rent regulated prop- erties, 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. The bill also provides for a one time right of family succession.

Summary of provisions

This bill amends the emergency housing rent control law, the emergency tenant protection act of 1974 and the admin- istrative 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 so 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 entitled to initially succeed to the apartments that were previously occupied by a family member. It does, however, provide for a one-time only right of succession for family members, providing that after the initial renewal lease, no other family members shall be entitled to subsequent succession. This bill also allows 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

2011,2012: S.6472 Passed Senate

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

This act shall take effect immediately, with provisions.