Did Rent-Controlled Tenants Waive Rights When They Agreed to Relocate?

April 24, 2020

LVT Number: #30719

The daughter of deceased tenants complained to the DHCR that landlord refused to offer her a rent-stabilized renewal lease as a successor tenant after her mother died in 2014. She claimed that her parents were rent controlled and that she had lived with them since 2007. Landlord argued that the apartment was unregulated. Tenants, the mother and father, had moved into the apartment in 2007 after relocating from another apartment in the building. Under the agreement, tenants received $4,300 plus a lifetime monthly preferential rent of $541.

The daughter of deceased tenants complained to the DHCR that landlord refused to offer her a rent-stabilized renewal lease as a successor tenant after her mother died in 2014. She claimed that her parents were rent controlled and that she had lived with them since 2007. Landlord argued that the apartment was unregulated. Tenants, the mother and father, had moved into the apartment in 2007 after relocating from another apartment in the building. Under the agreement, tenants received $4,300 plus a lifetime monthly preferential rent of $541. The agreement specified that the preferential rent would end when tenants left the apartment and wouldn't extend to any other occupant.

In 2014, the daughter and her father signed a two-year lease stating that the prior lease had expired and that they could extend for this additional term. The father died in 2016, and landlord refused to offer the daughter a renewal lease. The DRA ruled against the daughter, finding that tenants didn't retain their rent-controlled status when they moved to the subject apartment in 2007. The DHCR then denied the daughter's PAR because there was no proof that former landlord harassed tenants into surrendering their prior, rent-controlled apartment. Tenants freely entered into the agreement for the unregulated apartment for valuable consideration and waived their rent control status. The daughter then filed an Article 78 court appeal. The DHCR asked the court for permission to take the case back for further consideration.

The court ruled for the DHCR. The agreement between tenants and prior landlord didn't specify that tenants were forfeiting their rights under rent control or the right of any family member to claim succession rights. So more fact-finding was needed to determine whether tenants were fully informed that, by relocating, they permanently renounced their rights, and their daughter's rights, under rent control. 

Martinez v. Visnauskas: Index No. 451563/2019, 2020 NY Slip Op 30738(U)(Sup. Ct. NY; 3/9/20; Edmead, J)

Topics

More like this