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Roughly 50,000 apartments throughout the city are rent regulated again and more than $2M will be returned to tenants who were overcharged by landlords, following an investigation by the state’s Tenant Protection Unit.
The TPU, set up by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, found the landlords of over 4,800 buildings had been improperly removed from the city’s roster of rent-regulated apartments, or were not charging tenants the rent mandated by state regulations.
In January the TPU announced it had uncovered an additional 50,000 apartments in over 4,000 buildings that would also be returned to rent regulation, after their landlords were found to be violating their affordable housing credits, DNA Info reports.
Delsenia Glover, a leading member of the Alliance for Tenant Power, tells DNA Info that while the TPU’s actions are a step in the right direction, they don’t go far enough.
Her organization estimates there are about 1 million apartments with roughly 2.5 million residents that should be rent regulated but aren’t. Stronger tenant protection legislation is needed to fix the problem, she says, not just stronger enforcement.
“The issue is we have to stop rent-regulated apartments leaving the system in the first place,” she says.
If the 421-a situation is any indication, that might be a pretty tall order. [DNA]
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