Free Republic

The new Kingston Rent Guidelines Board made history Wednesday for the second time this year, approving New York state’s first rent rollback for stabilized tenants. The 15 percent reduction applies to renters of 1,200 apartments in 64 rent-stabilized buildings with leases between Aug. 1 of this year and Sept. 30 of next. On top of that cut, the board set a three-year lookback period for tenants to challenge their base rent if they believe it was higher than the fair market price. If a challenge succeeds, future adjustments would be applied to that lower rent. In July, Kingston became the...

Outside Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Murray Hill office, small landlords traded war stories Monday morning about New York’s rent relief program. “Three years and 18 months,” said one, double-fisting protest signs denoting how long he’d shouldered his tenants’ arrears. “I’m out $75,000 right now,” another said. “Three years. One house.” Terri, an organizer of the “landlords rights protest” who asked that her last name be omitted for fear of retribution, said her tenant hadn’t paid rent since November 2020. Tired of waiting, she’d agreed to settle, eating $40,000 of arrears in an agreement that should have seen the renter evicted in...

Tenants and advocates across the country are begging the federal government to implement a permanent rental assistance program and permanent eviction protections.

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – New York Attorney General Letitia James issued an advisory Monday to landlords, reminding them that they cannot raise rents if they accepted or plan to accept money from the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). Landlords who accept payments from the program, which was recently expanded in the state’s budget, are prohibited from raising rents for a year after they receive funds. Attorney General James is ready to take action to protect tenants if landlords fail to abide by these rules.

People who fled New York City during the coronavirus pandemic to live with relatives or to second homes are returning, driving up rental prices and ending the hopes of young people who want to live in their own apartment. The New York Times spoke with some of those tenants, including Chelcie Parry, who rented a studio for $1,750 in January 2021. On April 1, the rent went up to $3,450 — almost double from what she had been paying — and she had to leave.

An Airbnb user who never intends to leave. Tenants not paying enough rent to keep up buildings. A roommate temporarily renting a room who later decides not to move out. Under the Legislature’s misleadingly named “Good Cause Eviction” bill, these occupants can all remain in their apartments forever and the property owner has virtually no recourse.­ “No Eviction Ever” would be a better name for an absurdly vague, sweeping proposal that would place strict new limits on rent increases and evictions for nearly 1.6 million New York renters.

Top New York politicians demanded Monday that Congress impose new regulations on privately-run housing complexes that receive federal subsidies in the aftermath of the horrific Bronx housing tower fire that left 17 people dead — including eight children. The new rule would require landlords to install temperature monitors in buildings where tenants receive housing vouchers to ensure that apartments are receiving the required amounts of heat. FDNY officials believe the initial cause of the deadly fire was a space heater in a third-floor apartment at the high-rise at 333 East 181 Street — and several malfunctioning self-closing doors allowed the...

**SNIP** Bears is one of thousands of Americans who have been shortchanged by a yawning disconnect between two well-meaning policies lawmakers passed in response to the pandemic. One, a federal ban on some evictions, is set to expire Saturday. Another, a $46.5 billion emergency fund aimed at getting rent to tenants at risk of eviction, has been painfully slow to get off the ground, with some states and counties unable to spend even a dollar of the money they were provided months earlier. The expiration of the federal moratorium, following a last-ditch effort by congressional Democrats to revive it that...

A nightmare facing a couple who purchased a home for cash perfectly illustrates why having the government over-involved in the rental market is a disaster even for people who never meant to lease their property but are plagued by a squatter. A couple who bought a house in good faith, now find themselves mired in California’s labyrinthine tenants’ laws, exacerbated by the new COVID rules. Riverside is a large suburban area located about 50 miles east of downtown Los Angeles – although it’s still considered part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Tracie and Myles Albert, a young couple in...

Tenants continue to take advantage, abuse GTA landlordsHarpreet Kaur rented out the two-bedroom basement apartment in her Mississauga home to a tenant in December of 2019 with rent paid up until September of last year.That’s when things started to fall apart.First the tenant — a WestJet employee who lost his job during COVID — moved in a friend and both refused to pay the $1,700-a-month rent. Kaur, an optician, said the tenant promised to pay “something” by Oct. 7 and when he didn’t, the friend answered the door ordering her to get in touch by text from that day forward....

I’ve been writing about the looming eviction crisis since early in the summer. This entirely predictable disaster has been obvious to anyone who has been paying attention ever since the pandemic broke out. A well-intentioned “eviction moratorium” effort by the government to prevent renters from finding themselves out on the streets after government shutdowns eliminated their jobs did little or nothing to prevent the damages sustained by landlords. It also never answered the question of what would be done about all the back rent that was going to come due when the moratoriums expired. These challenges are already taking their...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — With millions of people suddenly out of work and rent due at the first of the month, some tenants are vowing to go on a rent strike until the coronavirus pandemic subsides. New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and St. Louis are among many cities that have temporarily banned evictions, but advocates for the strike are demanding that rent payments be waived, not delayed, for those in need during the crisis. The rent strike idea has taken root in parts of North America and as far away as London. White sheets are being hung in...

A recent thread on bedbugs abruptly disappeared because it wasn't news. Still, the care and feeding of tenants is a topic of some interest, and at least one person in that thread complained about tenants who muck up your property with bedbug infestations and then demand that you fix the problem at your expense.I've had to deal with this problem myself, and it might be worth sharing the results of my extensive research into ways to avoid the costly expedient of either whole-residence heat treatment or sulfuryl fluoride fumigation. This is only a list of a few products that appear...

The great things about liberals is that even though most have never run a business, they all know exactly how businesses should be run.  It's as if all those courses they took at Amherst or Yale on women's studies, art history, and neo-colonialism gave them an intuitive sense for market forces, and exactly how much businesses should pay employees, exactly how much in taxes businesses should pay, and how to run every aspect of their companies. It's hardly surprising, then, to find an exposé in the Washington Post focusing on Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.  Hannity spent millions of dollars to...

Known as the "first in time" rule, the mandate forces landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant, rather than choosing the best fit from among prospective tenants.

Technically Incorrect: The owners of a Salt Lake City apartment building change the tenancy agreement and give tenants five days to like the building on Facebook. Or else. There's something forced about Facebook relationships. If someone "friends" you, you feel duty-bound to reciprocate. Even if that person is, well, entirely unknown to you. That forced feeling can go too far. As KSL-TV reports, residents of an apartment building in Salt Lake City, Utah, say they found a curious piece of paper stuck to their doors. Headlined "Facebook Addendum," it had fascinating stipulations. It insisted that tenants had five days to...

A family of four in New York City makes $497,911 a year but pays $1,574 a month to live in public housing in a three-bedroom apartment subsidized by taxpayers. In Los Angeles, a family of five that’s lived in public housing since 1974 made $204,784 last year but paid $1,091 for a four-bedroom apartment. And a tenant with assets worth $1.6 million — including stocks, real estate and retirement accounts — last year paid $300 for a one-bedroom apartment in public housing in Oxford, Neb. In a new report, the watchdog for the Department of Housing and Urban Development describes...

Have a Landlord Question. Holding Back Securty Deposit Because of Damages... and received a demand to pay and threats of lawsuit. From only one of the tenants, the one without a job. I have had tenants for over 30 years and have never held back monies, but these people cause a lot of inside damage, as well as damages to septic piping with their truck, engineering is waiting til spring to fully assess. Help!

A landlord has blocked off his plush £1m home with ten skips to stop his tenants from leaving without paying the £15,000 he claims they owe him. Businessman Simon Everingham says he has been in a constant battle for £3,000-a-month rent since the occupants of his four-bedroom 18th century farmhouse in Markington, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, fell behind with the payments last November. He barricaded the American tenants Dan and Christina Herring in by blocking the drive on Monday and the fight to stop them leaving continued today. They work at the controversial Menwith Hill U.S. spy base nearby but...

A client, who's a landlord, called saying his tenant refuses to pay because a letter arrive informing the tenant that because his landlord hasn't been paying the mortgage they should now start paying this company representing the bank. According to the tenant, the letter came certified mail and had legal documents with it. Client is current on his loan and immediately called up the bank to ask what was going on. The bank said they didn't know anything about this notice. The tenant called the number on the notice. The "customer service representative" asked for the tenants name, bank account...