Client Story # 4

Tenants get three and a half years of free rent.

A small building landlord announced to her tenants that she needed all of them to move out. That same day in December, she turned off the boiler. Freezing and distraught, the tenants called our firm.

We found out that the apartments were unsafely constructed without any permits whatsoever and that the original apartments were rent stabilized. Because of the illegal construction, and the lack of the required certificate of occupancy, the landlord had in fact lost the statutory right to collect rent.

Our firm offered the tenants a plan that was affordable and effective; they agreed to pay a monthly fee, and in exchange we would represent them in all litigation with the landlord. Since the tenants were not obligated to pay rent until the landlord fixed the violations, the tenants’ rent savings was three times the amount of the fees they paid. In the meantime, we were successful in forcing the landlord to restore the heat.

We had anticipated that the landlord would move quickly to file the required plans, but instead she engaged in a quixotic effort to evict the tenants. Over the years, she commenced actoins in housing court, civil court, and federal court. In each case, the landlord was defeated.

Eventually, we negotiated a lucrative cash settlement for all the remaining tenants to move out, but only after the tenants had lived rent-free in their Manhattan apartments for a whopping three-and-a-half years.