A group of Big Apple landlords who collectively house over one million New Yorkers are suing to put the kibosh on Gov. Cuomo’s Tenant Protection Unit.
The group, which includes the Rent Stabilization Association, claims the two-year old TPU repeatedly violates state rental laws, including conducting unconstitutional audits on individual apartments, according to the suit filed on Monday.
The TPU also lets tenants stop paying rent in some cases without court approval, and gets rid of the four year statute of limitations relating to rent over-charge complaints.
Under rules adopted earlier this year, tenants can file a complaint against a landlord at any time, which means the property owners have to keep voluminous amounts of paperwork on every renter in case they get sued years from now, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, claims that the TPU shouldn’t even exist, since it was established by Cuomo and not the state legislature.
“There is nothing in the state’s legislatively enacted rent laws that allows for the creation of the TPU or any of the other recently adopted regulations. This is symptomatic of over-reaching by the executive branch of government into the legislative branch,” the landlords said in a joint statement announcing the 75-page lawsuit.
“We believe the state is now trying an end around – bypassing the legislature and attempting to unilaterally and unlawfully create the TPU and to adopt regulations which have no legal authority to support them.”
Aaron Sirulnick, Chairman of RSA, said the TPU’s onerous regulations will make it hard for landlords to provide more affordable housing, which is one of the top goals of Mayor de Blasio’s administration.
“At a time when the preservation of affordable housing needs to be encouraged, … [the] regulations only serve to make that goal more difficult to accomplish,” said Sirulnick.
The state’s Housing & Community Renewal office, which operates the TPU, did not return an email for comment.
