Back in October 2012, State Appellate Division judges ruled 3-to-2 that Masako Mogi could stay in her $992-a-month studio at 409 E. Sixth St., where she has lived since 1980.
Her landlord had been trying to evict her for six years. The landlord's attorney offered records showing that Mogi used a below-average amount of electricity — evidence she spent most of her time in a second home in Vermont.
For her part, though, "Mogi testified that she often eats out, orders takeout or makes sushi, which doesn’t require much juice."
As the Daily News notes, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Appellate Division "used the wrong standard for evaluating the case and bounced the matter back." And now, a Housing Court judge ruled in favor of her landlord, who will, of course, be charging much more than $992 a month.
According to Streeteasy this morning, a 1-bedroom unit in the building is going for $2,800.
[Image via the Daily News]
If a person rents an apartment and stays at a boy/girlfriend's place half the time does that mean they have to give up their lease under current laws? Does this woman vote and pay taxes in NYC, if so she is a resident of that apartment. I would be on the side of the landlord if she were subletting her place but that was not mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteMy landlord hired detective attorneys to launch non-primary residence lawsuits in an attempt to harass tenants out of their rent stabilized apts. A lot of perfectly legal tenants just left rather than hire attorneys. Those who hired attorneys found Housing Court is pretty tenant friendly. Judges don't like to throw people out on the street, so they must have been pretty certain that's not gonna happen in this woman's case.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first things a tenant's attorney would ask for is a utility bill. A "nearly nonexistent electric bill" must have strongly suggested to the court that she's been living somewhere else. I get that, but I'm not a lawyer so I'm always confused when two different courts hearing the exact same evidence can come to such wildly different conclusions.
This deomonstrates the Landlords ARE watching you. But how did they get her electric records?
ReplyDeleteOf course I'm sympathetic to renters, but does someone who can afford a 2nd home really deserve a rent stabilized apt? I agree with the other poster, if she votes and pays taxes in NY, then this is her home regardless of how much time she spends in her apt.
I've wondered if the landlords can retrieve a record from the digital doorbells?
You can read the details of the case here;
ReplyDeletehttp://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20NYCO%2020121002327
Absolute must reading for anyone with a rent-stabilized apartment.
Technically you can own a home somewhere else and keep your rent stabilized apt if it's your primary residence, but I agree with nygrump that it's a bit against the spirit of the program. I'm short on sympathy if you keep a $900/month apartment and own a 5 br house on 10 acres in the Hudson valley. I guess if you fall into the latter scenario, be sure to leave your lights on while you're upstate because your landlord will be stealing your ConEd bill out of your mailbox!
ReplyDeleteWell there goes my whole Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Drunk Biscuit defense strategy, guess I'll have to start leaving the lights on while gobbling all those lard-laden nuggets of Southern culture.
ReplyDeletenygrump
ReplyDeleteRent stabilization laws were written to protect our affordable housing stock, so the unit is rent regulated, not the tenant. But the tenant has to follow the law and abide by his/her lease or the tenant can be evicted. In the old pre-1997 days, the apartment would remain rent regulated.
Nowadays, thanks to incessant weakening of rent regulations by Republicans in Albany (and vacancy decontrol in particular), when a rent stabilized unit is vacated, the landlord can spend money on enough "improvements" that he can legally take that unit out of rent regulation forever.
That's why I'm pretty disheartened over the final outcome of this case.
She likely submitted her utility bills to the court to prove that she resided in the apartment and that's how the landlord's attorneys saw them. I am not a fan of greedy landlords by any means but I also resent the well off people I know--and I know a few--who live in houses they own upstate in towns like Woodstock full time and keep their rent stabilized apartments in Manhattan so they can visit the city a few weekends out of the year. That's not what rent stabilization laws were created for. I have a rent stabilized apartment and I live in it full time. I couldn't even dream of buying a house outside of the city!
ReplyDelete@ 6:04 am
ReplyDeleteWhat you are describing is bullshit. It is not allowed by law and landlords know it.
Regarding the subtext in your comment: rent stabilization was was never meant to be a social welfare system. rent laws weren't written to specifically protect poor people, their main objectives were (a) to protect NYC's stock of affordable rental housing and (b) to relieve *all* tenants of the burden of abnormally high rents when vacancy rates are below 5%.
The old RE argument was that rent regs hurt the housing stock and the local economy. After failing to convincingly make that case, mouthpieces for the RE industry came up with the Mia Farrow argument: rent regulations subsidize rich tenants.
Rent regs do benefit some more affluent tenants. Again, they were written to eliminate the unfair advantage that landlords have over *all* NYers looking for apartments in an overheated market, they were written to protect everyone, not just poor people.
I don't understand why Ken is saying @6:04s post is bullshit. He doesn't think there are people who have rent stabilized apartments they barely use because they are upstate? I know a few people who do that, too. They've left the city but don't want to give up the Manhattan crash pad. It isn't the case with the majority of rent stabilized renters but it happens.
ReplyDeleteIt's bullshit because the law does not allow it and landlords know it and now you do too, 12:22. Rent stabilized renters are allowed a weekend house but cannot live in it for more than half a year. If they do and they're caught and it's proved in court, they get evicted. End of story.
ReplyDeleteThe laws that used to protect NYC's affordable housing stock have been decimated over the past 30 years and so that in 2014 available affordable NYC rental housing stock is practically nonexistent. If you want to have a conversation, let's talk about that. What I'm not interested in is taking cheap shots at the tattered remains of what used to protect us.
If you can afford a second home you shouldn't be rent stabilized. It's as simple as that.
ReplyDeleteI can't understand how you can defend rent stabilization or rent controls of any kind. It's a totally insane policy which is completely arbitrary and creates a system of haves and have nots. Live rent stabilized long enough and you can afford that second home.
You tell me why this woman is entitled to an effective 24000 dollar a year subsidy? Please also explain what her paying that little rent does other than raise the rent for everyone else?
I have two friends btw with a rent stabilized apartments in Stuy town/PC village. They are actually both very successful lawyers. One just moved to Westchester but is keeping his one bedroom apartment, because obviously at the price he is paying. The other makes over 2 million dollars a year and has four other homes outside of New York.
And in my own building there are several more cases, not quite as extreme, of people you could only describe as affluent at worst paying wildly below market rent.
Again, rent stabilization makes the people who have it rich and the people who don't poorer.
Ack, who needs another rent stabilization argument....
Unfortunately, we have people on both ends of the system--landlords and tenants--taking advantage of a system meant to keep rents affordable for the middle class who live in the city. If this bothers you, please come out the next time there is a protest. It is great to vent here but more important to make sure the politicians hear your concerns.
ReplyDeleteThis case went on for 6 years and cost the landlord plenty. The woman for the most part lives out of town and uses the apartment as a convenience. What should have happened was, she should have negotiated a buyout with the landlord years ago and been done with it. Would have been cheaper and easier for both landlord and tenant, the apartment could have been rented to someone that actually needs it, only the lawyers are for the worse.
ReplyDelete11:06 PM
ReplyDeleteNYC instituted rent laws for a reason.
NY needs rent regs if they want the city to remain an attractive place for middle class families who rent to put down roots and stabilize neighborhoods. Otherwise, they'll just move to the suburbs where they can buy houses with fixed rate mortgages so they're not left subject to the vagaries of the NY landlord.
When I moved here in my 20s, rent regulations were still pretty strong and it was a much different situation than now. My first apt was my own, a small one bedroom. Soon after that I got a two bedroom with one roommate. The next two bedroom I got is the one I'm still in years later.
Thanks to the decimation of rent regs in the late 1990s (Google: vacancy decontrol), families hardly ever move into our building any more. The apts are too expensive now. Instead we get young kids piling 3 or more into a two bedroom and converting the living room to a bedroom.
If you know anything at all about rent regulation and how it is passed (and how that led to it's eventual demise), you would understand that the dynamics that led to its demise have changed. On the local level we have a new mayor who is a strong supporter of rent regs (he practically ran on it) and even more importantly, the GOP stranglehold on the State Senate that directly led to the demise of rent regulation could end in the very next election cycle. Where things go from there is up to tenants. I'd personally like to see rent regs return to the kind of force for affordability that they were when I first moved here.
It will work out for the woman in the end. She was spending nearly $1,000 a month to keep an apartment she rarely spent time at in the city. But now she will save at least $12,000 a year on rent and on the rare occasion when she leaves her home in Vermont and visits the city, she can stay in a hotel and will still likely be shelling out way less than the $12,000 a year she was spending on an apartment she didn't live in. That's not chump change. She can do a lot with that money. I would take a few nice vacations a year.
ReplyDelete