Orange County Court Strikes City of Newburgh's Good Cause Eviction Law

Several landlords together sued the City of Newburgh and sought a judgment declaring that Newburgh Local Law 6 of 2021 was invalid. Local Law 6 provided that no landlord could evict a tenant except for good cause as further defined in the law. The law prohibited eviction of a tenant with either no lease or an expired lease except where the tenant had failed to pay rent due and owing--except where a rent increase was unconscionable or imposed for purposes of circumventing the intent of the good cause eviction law. Among other factors Local Law 6 permitted a court to consider were: (a) the rate of the rent increase relative to the tenant's ability to afford the increase; (b) improvements made to the unit or common areas serving the unit; (c) whether the increase was precipitated by the tenant engaging in the activity described at RPAPL Section 223-b(1)(a)-(c); (d) significant market changes relevant to the unit; and (e) the conditions of the unit or common areas serving the unit. The law created a rebuttable presumption that a rent increase was unconscionable if the rent was increased in any calendar year by more than 5 percent.

The court ruled for the landlords and pre-empted Local Law 6. The court made a number of points concerning conflicts between Local Law 6 and state law provisions contained in the RPAPL and RPL. RPAPL Section 711(1) provides that a landlord may sue to evict a tenant when the tenant continues in possession of a premises after the expiration of his term without the landlord's permission. The RPAPL expressly permits a landlord to evict a tenant where a lease has expired. The RPAPL does not require a landlord to show "good cause" after a lease expires in order to succeed in a special proceeding to evict a tenant. The RPAPL also doesn't give the court the authority to expand the terms of a lease agreement between two parties if the landlord can't show good cause. But Local Law 6 expanded the rights of a tenant, imposing a "good cause" requirement as a prerequisite to eviction when a tenant had no valid lease, in direct conflict with the RPAPL. Local Law 6 also conflicted with RPL Section 228, which grants a landlord the right to end a month-to-month tenancy upon 30 days' notice to the tenant and contains no requirement that the landlord demonstrate good cause before ending the tenancy. 

Local Law 6 also barred a landlord from bringing a nonpayment proceeding otherwise authorized by RPAPL Section 711 without first rebutting the presumption that such a rent increase wasn't "unconscionable." Local Law 6 altered substantive provisions and procedures of existing state law by imposing prerequisites to the commencement of an eviction proceeding that are not required under state law. Local Law 6 therefore was in direct conflict with state law and was thereby preempted by the court. [Download case]

HYH Newburgh, LLC v. The City of Newburgh: Index No. EF001050/2022 (Sup. Ct. Orange Co.; 11/29/22; Sciortino, J)[7-pg. document]