Tenants who believe they may be covered by New York’s new Good Cause Eviction Law can plug in their current rent to see the maximum rent that would be deemed reasonable. Anything above that, the landlord could have to justify in court.

When it comes to New York’s newly-minted Good Cause Eviction Law, there are a lot of unknowns.

In general, covered tenants in New York City should be able to stay in their apartments from year to year without fear of sudden upheaval, so long as they’ve kept up with their rent and lease terms. Tenants can also dispute rent hikes above a certain level—this year, 8.82 percent—though landlords can try to justify larger increases in court.

The law, which serves market-rate tenants, is also rife with carve outs, including a 30-year exemption for buildings constructed since 2009. Owner-occupied buildings with up to 10 units are also exempt, as are buildings owned individually or collectively by “small landlords,” who have a stake in no more than 10 apartments statewide, potentially across multiple properties. 

Tenants whose rent exceeds a specific threshold are also excluded from the protections. The threshold is pegged to the local Fair Market Rent, and varies based on apartment size. This year, it’s $5,846 for a studio, $6,005 for a one-bedroom, $6,742 for a two-bedroom, $8,413 for a three-bedroom, and $9,065 for a four-bedroom. 

Adding another wrinkle, even though the law took effect April 20, landlords aren’t obligated to notify tenants if they’re covered by Good Cause—in paperwork accompanying leases and housing court or rent increase notices—until Aug. 18. 

In an effort to help New Yorkers navigate at least part of this complicated terrain, City Limits has created a simple rent calculator. Tenants who believe they may be covered by Good Cause can plug in their current rent to see the maximum increase that would be deemed reasonable under the law. 

Anything above that, your landlord may have to justify in court. Just be mindful of the high-rent threshold—surpass it, and you’re out of luck. 

Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society, offered a scenario in which the tool might come in handy: a tenant lives in a building with at least 11 units that predates 2009 (you can check that here), and is notified of a rent increase over 8.82 percent, which is 5 percent plus the change in the regional Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 2022 to 2023.  

“Those people don’t have to do a lot of research into their landlords to figure out if they’re covered,” she said. “The first thing I would do is just write back to your landlord and say, ‘Hey, there’s this new law, I’m covered by it, this rent increase is too high.’”

Tenants in smaller buildings may have a harder time determining their landlord’s eligibility, given the prevalence of Limited Liability Company, or LLC, ownership. But Davidson suggested JustFix’s Who Owns What tool as a way to start exploring a landlord’s holdings. 

She also acknowledged that landlords may not be responsive to direct communication, and warned that tenants should be prepared to be sued for eviction, landing the dispute in a borough-based housing court. New York City’s Right to Counsel law is supposed to provide free lawyers to low-income tenants, but it’s currently stretched thin. 

“To the extent that you are faced with a very big rent increase that you think is unreasonable, and your landlord won’t speak to you, one thing you might do is put aside that additional money, so that when you go to court, if you do not win the case, you have the ability to pay your landlord,” she added. “That is, you know, the safest way to do things. Which not everybody can do.” 

The Good Cause law is also written in such a way that landlords can potentially justify an increase in excess of 8.82 percent. (Homes and Community Renewal will have to update that percentage threshold next year, on or before Aug. 1, 2025, reflecting the CPI change from 2023 to 2024 but not exceeding 10 percent.)  

Courts can consider “all relevant facts,” the law states, including property taxes, 

fuel, insurance and maintenance costs. Landlords can also point to “significant repairs” they’ve done to the building—non-cosmetic work like electrical and plumbing replacements and lead or asbestos removal. 

The law seeks to exclude bad faith attempts to raise the rent, stating that the work can’t stem from the landlord failing to maintain their building properly. 

That means it’s in a tenant’s best interest to keep a close eye on the conditions in their building, according to Davidson. “Is there a leak that starts small and they call their landlord and three months later their landlord comes and patches it up?” she said. “That’s obviously not how you handle a leak.” 

Lisa Faham-Selzer, who represents landlords at the firm Kucker Marino Winiarsky & Bittens LLP, predicted that this part of the law will be “heavily litigated.” 

“Let’s say I want to raise the rent 10 percent and they [the tenant] are saying that’s unreasonable,” she said. “And I say this is not unreasonable because I did all of this work and the building has not been in complete disrepair.” 

Rather than go to court, landlords might just increase rents by 8.82 percent across the board, she added: “I feel that every landlord is going to be compelled to raise the rent to the max threshold, right? Because what if next year it’s lower?” 

Faham-Selzer likened the Good Cause law to the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA), a multi-part 2019 law that made it more difficult for landlords to exit rent stabilization, a separate long standing regime that puts a hard cap on annual rent adjustments for about 1 million New York City apartments. 

“We litigated the HSTPA to figure out what the law should be interpreted as, we’re still litigating it to this day, and I think the same thing is going to happen here,” she said. 

In the meantime, she’s urging her clients to inform tenants of their Good Cause coverage status, before the notice rules officially kick in: “If my clients are drafting leases today they’re adding them onto leases today.”

Tenants who believe they are covered by Good Cause but are nervous about how to proceed should start talking to their neighbors, said Esteban Girón, an organizer with the Crown Heights Tenant Union. 

“When you’re acting as one unit, just like if you’re doing collective bargaining with labor [unions], you can share information,” he said. “You can have a lawyer come in and talk to your whole building.” 

This moment is both exciting and frustrating for tenants who can now fight large rent hikes for the first time, according to Girón. 

“I think there’s potential for a sort of budding of a new phase of the tenant movement,” he said. But facing a large rent increase that’s “presumed” unreasonable—even though a judge could be convinced otherwise—isn’t as reassuring or straightforward as an explicit maximum allowable adjustment, which is what stabilized tenants get. 

The language in the law—“it shall be a rebuttable presumption that the rent… is unreasonable”—just “doesn’t sound as sexy as a right,” Girón said.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Emma@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The broker that put the more-than-century-old Lowry Apartments on the market this week said Thursday that two other Madison Equities properties — the Degree of Honor Building on Cedar Street and Seventh Place Apartments — will not be listed for sale, at least not in the immediate future.

All three buildings are largely residential, multi-family apartment structures.

“Right now the decision is not to market those,” said Abe Roberts, a senior vice president with Marcus and Millichap, the Minneapolis firm acting as the broker for the former Lowry hotel at Fourth and Wabasha.

Madison Equities, believed to be the largest property owner in downtown St. Paul, has advertised the majority of its downtown holdings following the death in January of longtime company principal Jim Crockarell. His widow, Rosemary Kortgard, has declined public comment on the decision.

Constructed in 1905, the 11-story Lowry Apartments was listed for sale separately this week from 10 Madison Equities commercial properties that went on the market a week ago.

Those commercial properties, which include six downtown office buildings, two parking ramps, the Handsome Hog restaurant on Selby Avenue and the vacant lot next to it, have been bundled together for sale to a single buyer, if one comes forward. CBRE is representing Madison Equities’ commercial portfolio.

“This is a separate offering,” Roberts said of the Lowry sale. “Most likely, there will be a different buyer for the multifamily properties than the office portfolio, hence why they are listed separately. I would expect a similar sales timeline for the office as the multifamily.”

Related Articles

YWCA St. Paul repositions itself as a center for community engagement, access to health

Owner of Minneapolis-St. Paul-West St. Paul Mexican restaurants charged with tax crimes

MN Supreme Court denies new trial for man convicted in fatal St. Paul fender-bender shooting

Horace the stinking corpse flower to bloom at Como Park Zoo and Conservatory — for just 2 or 3 days

Twin City Model Railroad Museum celebrates 90 years this Saturday

By MARK SHERMAN (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that authorities do not have to provide a quick hearing when they seize cars and other property used in drug crimes, even when the property belongs to so-called innocent owners.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices rejected the claims of two Alabama women who had to wait more than a year for their cars to be returned. Police had stopped the cars when they were being driven by other people and, after finding drugs, seized the vehicles.

Civil forfeiture allows authorities to take someone’s property, without having to prove that it has been used for illicit purposes. Critics of the practice describe it as “legalized theft.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the conservative majority that a civil forfeiture hearing to determine whether an owner will lose the property permanently must be timely. But he said the Constitution does not also require a separate hearing about whether police may keep cars or other property in the meantime.

In a dissent for the liberal members of the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that civil forfeiture is “vulnerable to abuse” because police departments often have a financial incentive to keep the property.

“In short, law enforcement can seize cars, hold them indefinitely, and then rely on an owner’s lack of resources to forfeit those cars to fund agency budgets, all without any initial check by a judge as to whether there is a basis to hold the car in the first place,” Sotomayor wrote.

The women, Halima Culley and Lena Sutton, filed federal lawsuits arguing they were entitled to a prompt court hearing that would have resulted in the cars being returned to them much sooner. There was no suggestion that either woman was involved in or knew anything about the illegal activity.

Sutton had loaned her car to a friend. Police in Leesburg, Alabama seized it when they arrested him for trafficking methamphetamine.

Sutton ended up without her car for 14 months, during which she couldn’t find work, stay current with bills or keep her mental-health appointments, her lawyers wrote in court papers.

Culley had bought a car for her son to use at college. Police in Satsuma, Alabama stopped the car and found marijuana and a loaded hangun. They charged the son with marijuana possession and kept the car.

The Supreme Court decision means months or years of delay for people whose property is taken, said Kirby Thomas West, co-director of the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse at the libertarian Institute for Justice.

“Meanwhile owners of seized vehicles will scramble to find a way to get to work, take their kids to school, run errands, and complete other essential life tasks,” West said in an email.

Justice Neil Gorsuch was part of Thursday’s majority, but in an opinion also joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch said larger questions about the use of civil forfeiture remain unresolved.

Noting that civil forfeiture has become a “booming business,” Gorsuch wrote the court should use a future case to assess whether the modern practice of civil forfeiture is in line with constitutional guarantees that property may not be taken “without due process of law.”