N.Y. Landlord-Tenant Wars Spur Both Sides to Seek Help

City Council Weighs Two Harassment Measures

NEW YORK -- In a city of skyrocketing rents, where tenant advocates charge that landlords are increasingly trying to move tenants out of rent-regulated apartments in order to significantly raise the rents, the landlord-tenant wars are becoming ferocious.

Traditional landlord tactics such as turning off heat and hot water are being joined, housing advocates and tenants say, by taking tenants to court repeatedly on baseless charges, such as nonpayment of rent when rent has been paid or illegal residency even if the tenant has the right to live in the apartment.

These allegations have prompted the New York City Council to consider two bills to allow accusations of harassment to be settled in housing court. One bill would give tenants the right to sue their landlords for harassment. An alternative bill, with less support, would give landlords the right to sue problem tenants for harassment.

The difference in the bills echoes a difference in perception over what is going wrong. The first bill sees landlords as harassers, using an arsenal of tactics to make tenants' lives miserable. The competing bill sees bad tenants as just as much of a problem, filing frivolous complaints against honest landlords to prevent their own eviction.

"We want to give tenants the power of the law to fight intimidation," said Councilman Daniel Garodnick, one of the sponsors of the first bill, Introduction 627, which has the backing of 34 of the council's 51 members. The issue is so contentious that Councilwoman Maria Baez of the Bronx, who introduced the rival bill, Introduction 638, to protect landlords, withdrew her support for it after an angry protest by housing activists outside her office.

City housing officials acknowledge that they have no hard data on the numbers of cases of harassment between landlords and tenants. But council members, housing advocates and tenants report anecdotally an increase in cases of landlords harassing tenants.

Representatives of landlords say incidents of harassment are rare. They say that a new law is unnecessary because 10 existing laws deal with similar issues and that the state housing agency has been hearing harassment cases for years.

"We don't need another law that is going to allow frivolous cases to go forward," said Frank Ricci, director of government affairs for the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents New York City landlords and which he said opposes both bills but finds Introduction 638 "more palatable."

But housing advocates said that no other law allows tenants to take their landlords to housing court to deal with cumulative harassment, rather than problems on a case-by-case basis, and that the state housing agency has been unable to cope with harassment claims.

Charges of harassment by landlords have been swirling around New York ever since the city started phasing out rent control decades ago and allowing landlords in certain circumstances to deregulate apartments after they became vacant.

In the early 1970s, state officials urged tenants to form councils to present complaints of harassment to "reasonable" landlord leaders, who would persuade their colleagues to not undertake harassment. The city also tried to use shame on harassing landlords, publishing their names bimonthly.

But the problem only grew. In the mid-1980s, 12 landlords and 17 gang members operating as "apartment vacaters" were convicted of harassment in 33 Manhattan apartment buildings they were trying to empty, including by threats of assault and by moving drug users and prostitutes into the buildings.