Prior Landlord's 1956 Decontrol Report Set Aside

Tenant claimed that she was rent controlled. The DHCR ruled against tenant, finding that tenant’s building had three apartments and was decontrolled in 1956 based on owner-occupancy decontrol. Tenant also hadn’t challenged the apartment status between 1969 and 2003. Tenant filed an Article 78 court appeal, claiming that the DHCR’s decision was arbitrary and unreasonable. The court sent the case back to the DHCR for reconsideration, finding that the 1956 decontrol report was insufficient to prove decontrol. The DHCR then ruled for tenant and set her rent at $450 per month, the amount she was paying in 2002. Under applicable rent-control law provisions, if tenant’s apartment was decontrolled due to owner occupancy in the 1950s, the apartment remained decontrolled after 1962, even if it was again rented to tenants after 1962, which was before tenant moved in. Before May 1, 1962, under the State Rent Act, there was no question that the owner-occupancy exemption continued if the apartment was later occupied by a single family of residential tenants. The question then became whether landlord proved the apartment was decontrolled by owner occupancy in the 1950s. But tenant submitted a letter from prior landlord stating that she and her husband owned the building from 1955 to 1968, lived on the second floor, and that tenant’s apartment was rented to a prior tenant. Landlord questioned whether prior landlord remembered correctly and pointed out that same prior landlord filed the 1956 decontrol report that the court had ruled couldn’t be considered. But landlord otherwise had insufficient proof that the apartment was decontrolled.

Counihan: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. WG220006RP (3/31/10) [11-pg. doc.]