Rent Restoration Date Follows Date of Notice to Tenant that Vacate Order Had Been Lifted

The DRA reduced tenant's rent to $1 per month based on a fire that rendered tenant's apartment uninhabitable effective Sept. 1, 2015. The DRA later granted landlord's application to restore rent based on restoration of the apartment. Tenant appealed, claiming that the rent restoration date ordered by the DRA was incorrect. The DHCR ruled for tenant. DOB lifted the Vacate Order by notice dated May 18, 2016. But there was no proof that landlord advised tenant of this, so the first notice tenant received that the apartment was habitable was the copy filed with landlord's rent restoration application served on the tenant by the DRA on Sept. 30, 2016. So the effective date of the rent restoration must be Oct. 1, 2016, instead of May 18, 2016, as previously ordered. 

Slater: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. FS210041RT (6/8/18) [3-pg. doc.]