Articles Posted in Landlord and Tenant

Recently in the news are stories about squatters taking over properties in New York.  A recent blog post addressed the question of who is legally defined as a squatter, and how such a person could be evicted.  The reason for this prior analysis is that, under then-current New York law, anyone occupying a property for at least thirty days was legally considered a “tenant” and had to be evicted through the Court system, most often in the local landlord-tenant Court.

Allowing such persons the same protections under the law as actual tenants (generally meaning those who had a lease and were paying rent to the owner) caused property owners serious problems.  Under the prior law, a person could enter the premises without the consent of the owner, remain there for at least thirty days, and be considered a tenant for the purposes of eviction law.  The owner would then have to hire experienced counsel to first issue a termination notice to the “tenant” who entered the property without his consent.  After the expiration of the termination notice, if the occupant failed to vacate, an action in landlord-tenant Court would have to be commenced.  Such an action, under the law, requires approximately two weeks prior notice to the “tenant.”  Once in Court, a tenant is allowed an adjournment to obtain counsel if requested.  Further adjournments, depending on the Court’s caseload, would be likely.  As a result, the “tenant,” who entered without the owner’s consent, and was not paying rent to the owner, could stay for quite some time before the Court finally allowed an eviction to occur.  The expenses of such legal proceedings, as well as the actual eviction conducted by the Marshal, would have to be paid by the owner, with little chance of recovering such sums from the squatter.

In light of these unjust outcomes, New York has now passed a new law that excludes squatters from the protections of the landlord-tenant laws.  The law now defines a squatter as someone staying at a property without permission from the owner or a representative for the owner.  It states that a squatter is not to be considered a tenant, and is not entitled to the legal protections of a tenant.   As a result, if someone is illegally occupying property, the owner can contact the police to remove the squatter, rather than having to evict him through the Court system.

A recent case was filed in Supreme Court, Queens County by a group of corporations under the umbrella of the LeFrak Organization – one of the largest landlords in Queens.  The lawsuit was brought as an Article 78 proceeding.  An Article 78 proceeding is a lawsuit brought against a New York State official, or New York administrative agency, in which the plaintiff seeks to overturn a decision made by the official or agency on the grounds that it violated New York law.

The plaintiffs in this action seek reform of the handling of housing court cases in Queens County, in which long delays have been the rule, rather than the exception.  New York housing courts have jurisdiction over eviction cases, which can be brought as summary proceedings.  As the name “summary proceedings” suggests, these cases are meant to be brought in an expedited matter, and are supposed to be heard and resolved more quickly than actions brought in New York Supreme Court.

Under current New York law, housing court cases are required to be scheduled by the Court for an appearance in Court between three and eight days after a tenant responds to an eviction petition.  If the tenant fails to respond, or fails to appear on the return date, the landlord-tenant court is supposed to issue a warrant of eviction, as well as a judgment in favor of the landlord.

A recent article in the New York Post reports on the tragic story of a New York City landlord who claimed he was “under pressure” and had “a lot of issues” with his tenants, namely, that they were late paying rent.  Unfortunately, the landlord responded to the situation by murdering his tenants, for which he has now been arrested and is in police custody.

Obviously, this is the wrong way for a landlord to handle tenants who have not paid their rent.  What should the landlord have done instead?  This blog post will discuss the proper manner in which non-paying tenants should be dealt.

Almost all tenants are required to pay rent when leasing property, such as an apartment or a house.  To simplify, we will discuss residential, rather than commercial tenants, in this post.

As the moratorium on eviction cases in New York State due to the COVID-19 pandemic fades into memory, our firm has resumed regular operations regarding landlord-tenant law.  In general, this means eviction cases when a tenant may have stayed past the expiration of his lease (known as holdover actions), and those when a tenant is in violation of his lease, usually due to failure to pay rent (non-payment actions).

The question this blog post will address is what happens at the end of an eviction action that allows a tenant to be removed from the premises.  In order to evict any tenant, the Court must issue a Judgment and a Warrant of Eviction.  This can occur in several ways.  The first is if the tenant fails to appear in Court, and the Court then issues a default judgment against the tenant.  Conversely, if the tenant does appear, the case may eventually go to trial before the Court.  If the landlord prevails at trial, again, the Court will allow entry of a Judgment against the tenant.

Finally, it is possible that the parties will agree to a settlement of the action.  Usually, that is through the execution of a Stipulation of Settlement.  In general, a Stipulation is a compromise of the case.  The tenant may agree to leave the premises at a future date certain.  For example, if the case is brought in early January, the attorneys for parties may agree that the tenant may vacate the property on or before March 31^st.  There may be other aspects of the case that are addressed in a Stipulation of Settlement, such as any rent arrears due from the tenant.  The agreement may allow the tenant to pay such arrears over time, and, assuming he complies with the payment terms, the landlord may withdraw his case when full payments are made pursuant to the Stipulation.

Recently in the news are proposals by the Biden administration regarding policies to allegedly protect rental tenants.  According to the stories, multiple federal agencies are strongly considering taking actions that are designed to strengthen tenant protections and encourage rental affordability.  Of course, experience has shown that well-intentioned government actions often do not have the intended results, and often worsen situations that they are designed to ameliorate.

Due to the extreme reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is currently a shortage of residential housing, especially in large cities.  This is likely a result of the various eviction moratoriums during the pandemic, which resulted in tenants remaining in housing without paying rent.  The effects of these moratoriums, even if they are no longer in effect, continues to the present day.  Local landlord-tenant courts are still trying clear the backlog of eviction cases that occurred during the moratorium, especially in large cities such as New York.  As a result, new renters are finding that, due to a shortage of supply, rental units have increased greatly in price, as the law of supply and demand has superseded governmental regulation.

The government is proposing executive action to direct the Federal Trade Commission to issue new regulations defining “excessive” rent increases, as well as other protections for renters, such as forcing landlords to wait at least thirty days before commencing eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent.