"Landlords and tenants appear to be far apart on what the legal rents should be for thousands of apartments in the beleaguered Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes on the East Side of Manhattan," according to an article by Charles V. Bagli in The New York Times.
The article said that "lawyers for the tenants and the company that controls the massive complexes, CW Capital, acknowledged that after a year of talking they were unable to settle claims arising from a 2009 Court of Appeals ruling that the owners have wrongfully deregulated 4,400 apartments and raised rents while receiving special tax breaks from the city."
"While the court ruled in favor of the tenants on the principal issue of deregulation," the article continued, "it left it to a lower court to decide exactly how much each apartment's rent should be, and how much each overcharged tenant should receive in rebates, if any. The two sides had reached a temporary accord that lowered rents, but that agreement expired" yesterday and "although settlement discussions continue, Alexander Schmidt, a lawyer for the tenants, said in a statement, 'We are not optimistic.'"
"Landlords are arguing that the rollback to 2006 is only the first step," the article said, "in arriving at what the legal rents should be today. They contend that they are entitled to every conceivable bump in rent allowed under the city's Rent Guidelines Board. If the apartment...was vacant twice during the intervening years, the landlord under this argument would be entitled to raise the rent by 40 percent - 20 percent each time - from $2,800 to $3,920. During the four years, the landlord would also have been able to raise the rent by 6 percent, or $235.20, according to rent regulations, which would bring the legal rent in 2010 to $4,155.20 a month. Not only is that more than the rent charged today, but it is also a number that would absolve the landlord of having to pay a rebate."
The article said that "lawyers for the tenants and the company that controls the massive complexes, CW Capital, acknowledged that after a year of talking they were unable to settle claims arising from a 2009 Court of Appeals ruling that the owners have wrongfully deregulated 4,400 apartments and raised rents while receiving special tax breaks from the city."
"While the court ruled in favor of the tenants on the principal issue of deregulation," the article continued, "it left it to a lower court to decide exactly how much each apartment's rent should be, and how much each overcharged tenant should receive in rebates, if any. The two sides had reached a temporary accord that lowered rents, but that agreement expired" yesterday and "although settlement discussions continue, Alexander Schmidt, a lawyer for the tenants, said in a statement, 'We are not optimistic.'"
"Landlords are arguing that the rollback to 2006 is only the first step," the article said, "in arriving at what the legal rents should be today. They contend that they are entitled to every conceivable bump in rent allowed under the city's Rent Guidelines Board. If the apartment...was vacant twice during the intervening years, the landlord under this argument would be entitled to raise the rent by 40 percent - 20 percent each time - from $2,800 to $3,920. During the four years, the landlord would also have been able to raise the rent by 6 percent, or $235.20, according to rent regulations, which would bring the legal rent in 2010 to $4,155.20 a month. Not only is that more than the rent charged today, but it is also a number that would absolve the landlord of having to pay a rebate."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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