Learn About Your Tenant Rights in Astoria This Thursday

Most of us are renters in this city, and when landlords lag on pest control, delay plumbing issues or hike up rent, it’s hard to know exactly what our rights are as tenants.

Luckily, Assemblymember Aravella Simotas and the Central Astoria LDC are hosting a presentation to make sure you are informed of these rights. It’s this Thursday, Oct. 17 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Dellamonica Center on Broadway.

The presentation will be based around the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which was passed this June and is said to be one of the “most sweeping changes in rent regulation in NYC since WWII.”

Since the document itself is a bit steep, I’ve copied some of the more discernible elements from this Forbes article:

• “Previously, NYC landlords could convert rental properties to condominiums or co-ops if at least 15 percent of the units were purchased by tenants. Now, the majority of units (at least 51 percent) must be purchased by tenants in order for a rental property to be converted. Essentially, a building’s fate is now in the hands of its tenants, not its owner.“
• “Extended rent regulations won’t expire every four to eight years”
• “High-income deregulation was repealed”
• “Landlords can no longer raise ‘preferential’ (below regulated) rent prices at lease renewal, and the maximum rent increase for building improvements was lowered from 6 percent to 2 percent in New York City.”

Experts at the presentation will surely put this into even more understandable terms and will help you know exactly how it affects you.

Assemblymember Aravella Simotas has been representing the 36th District in NYC for eight years. Throughout her time in the New York State Assembly she has focused on “protecting survivors of violent crime, making quality education more accessible and affordable for students” and more.

The Central Astoria Local Development Coalition is a “a not-for-profit community organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the neighborhood of Astoria.” They provide a wide range of assistance to local businesses and residents, as well as organize cultural programming initiatives.

All the info you need is below, let us know if you attend and what you learn!

One Comment

Joe October 16th, 2019

The new rent regulation laws are a sham and actually will hurt renters and the city. They de-incentivized all proactive repairs to the largely 100-year old rent stabilized building stock so you can expect these apartments and buildings to deteriorate and only repaired when they get bad enough to warrant a violation. Quality of life will go way down and outages way up.

Fort the first time in the last 40+ years landlords are actually leaving exiting tenant apartments vacant as opposed to being forced to invest to repair and still have to rent at way below market rents, actually resulting in less affordable housing apartments available.

In short, politicians look good to the people by protecting them from the big bad landlords, when in the long term will actually hurt the people. It’s actually the smaller-mid sized business that own the lower-rent rent stabilized apartments that are hurt most (and driven out of the city) and the larger bigger businesses and developers that own the non-rent stabalized stock remain unaffected (conveniently those lining the pockets of these same politicians re-election campaigns).

Additionally, housing values have already gone down as money moves out of this sector and region, which will drive the property tax base way down (which is by the way, disproportionately like 50% of NYC income is derived by property taxes), resulting in budget shortfalls and cutbacks. Conveniently that will be like 5-10 years from now and the current politicians that are to blame will lose all accountability by then. Basically business as usual in NY.

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