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Rent Stabilization

All tenants have rights in New York City - but those rights vary depending on the type of housing you live in.  

Find fact sheets for tenants on the NYC Rent Guidelines Board website: and on the NY State Homes and Community Renewal site

Your rights are based on the law.  That includes statutes (passed by the state or city legislature and signed into law by the governor or mayor), the regulations that are used to apply the statutes, and the court decisions that interpret them both.  

New York City rent regulation is governed primarily by three STATUTES (passed by the state or city legislature and signed by the governor or mayor into law) :

2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. This landmark bill, among other things, 
  • Ends the deregulation of rent stabilized apartments because the rent is high. 
  • Ends "vacancy bonuses" - rent increases just because an apartment is vacant.
  • Limits security deposits to 1 month's rent and requires landlords to give it back within 14 days after the tenant leaves. 
  • Keeps any "preferential rent" as the legal regulated rent as long as that tenant lives there
  • Limits major capital improvement increases to 2% of the tenant's current rent each year (ending after 30 years) and imposes a "schedule of limited costs."
  • Requires owners to try to re-rent an apartment if tenant breaks a lease - so tenant isn't on the hook for the full lease amount. 
  • Limits individual apartment improvement increases no more than $83 or $85 over 15 years for no more than 3 improvements.
  • Extends from 4 to 6 years the time a court can look back to see if a tenant is being overcharged. 
  • Extends rent regulation statewide to all cities, towns, and villages that opt-in to the Emergency Tenant Protection Act (see below).
  • Limits an owner to taking only 1 apartment for personal use
  • Keeps rent regulated apartments that are rented by nonprofits. Homeless people are treated as tenants under the law. 
  • Requires that the State's Division of Home and Community Renewal publish an annual report on rent regulation 
  • Strengthens case against retaliatory evictions.
  • Extends notice and payment periods for eviction, including for month-to-month tenants.
  • Lets judges give tenants up to a year to move. 
  • Bars tenant blacklists.
  • Creates the crime of unlawful eviction.
  • Bars eviction plans in co-op and condo conversions.
  • Gives mobile home renters the possibility of rent-to-own and rent protections against evictions. 
1974 (State law) Emergency Tenant Protection Act, governing apartments in buildings with 6 units or more built before 1974.

1969 (City law) Rent Stabilization Law, governing apartments in buildings with 6 units or more built before July 1969.


But landlords are trying to get around the 2019 law in part by reconfiguring ("Frankensteining") apartments - combining vacant apartments next door to one another, or above and below. The new apartment creates a new base rent.  In order to do this combining, landlords often hold empty rent stabilized apartments off the market.  They warehouse them. We need legislation to stop this.  In 2020, there were about 70,000 empty rent stabilized units (despite 90,000 homeless people!) in New York City according to a study by CHIP, a landlord group. 

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