DHCR Reasonably Denied Landlord Request to Amend Rent Registration
LVT Number: #32488
In 2019, landlord asked the DHCR for permission to amend its annual rent registration summaries for 2016 and 2017 by removing an apartment from the total rent-stabilized units and adding it to the total number of permanently exempt apartments. The DHCR ruled against landlord, who had argued that the apartment hadn't been rent stabilized since 2002 and that it made a clerical error in its 2016/2017 registrations. The DHCR ruled that rent registration amendments seeking to remove an apartment from rent-stabilized status for any claimed reason weren't permitted because such request went beyond the scope of a registration amendment application proceeding limited to ministerial or clerical errors such as misspelling a tenant's name or listing an incorrect lease term [see LVT #31632].
Landlord then filed an Article 78 court appeal, claiming that the DHCR's decision was arbitrary and unreasonable. The court ruled against landlord, who appealed and lost. Although RSL Section 26-517 did not set forth procedures to amend rent registrations, RSC Section 2528.3 provided procedures for annual registration amendments without giving specific guidance to the DRA in deciding whether to grant or deny a particular rent registration amendment application. In this case, landlord sought to wipe clean what it claimed were inadvertent clerical errors in its 2016 and 2017 registrations through subsequent amendments. But the DHCR found that while there was no rent-paying tenant in occupancy who would be put on notice of the changes, this could detract from the legitimacy of the registrations. The DHCR also pointed out that prior to a 2014 amendment to the RSL restricting registration amendments, the significant number of registration amendments filed had the effect of corrupting the purpose of the registration database as a contemporaneously created history of rents. So the DHCR's interpretation of the RSC provisions at issue here was rational and reasonable.
Matter of LL 410 E. 78th St. LLC v. DHCR: Index No. 159153/21, App. No. 17382, Case No. 2022-01875, 2023 NY Slip Op 00954 (App. Div. 1 Dept.; 2/21/23; Kapnick, JP, Oing, Kennedy, Pitt-Burke, JJ)