HOYLMAN QUESTIONS DHCR COMMISSIONER ON REPORT SHOWING 200,000 RENT-STABILIZED APARTMENTS ARE NOT PROPERLY REGISTERED WITH THE STATE

NEW YORK – During a Joint Budget Hearing on Housing yesterday, State Senator Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) questioned NYS Homes & Community Renewal (DHCR) Commissioner James Rubin on a recent report showing thousands of landlords are flouting New York’s rent-stabilization laws. The report -- published last year by ProPublica -- exposed a nearly 200,000 unit gap between the number of rent-stabilized apartments identified by the City’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) and formally registered with the State’s DHCR.

Footage from the hearing with Commissioner Rubin can be found here.

During the hearing Senator Hoylman expressed concern that thousands of people are currently “at risk of being overcharged” and “evicted without the due process afforded to rent-stabilized tenants.” Senator Hoylman went on to ask Commissioner Rubin how the city and state would work to “get a handle on these apartments that are obviously taken off the rolls.”

Earlier this year Senator Hoylman and Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal introduced legislation to crack down on landlords that would increase the penalty for overcharging a rent-stabilized tenant to five times the amount of the overcharge, plus interest, for a landlord’s first violation, and ten times the amount of the overcharge, plus interest, for any subsequent violations. The current penalty is triple the amount of the overcharge for every offense, regardless of repeat offender status.