Bill Forcing Disclosure of Rent-Stabilized Info to Take Effect

A new City Council law will force NYC landlords who oversee rent-stabilized units to be more transparent with tenants beginning on Jan. 23, namely by putting key information about how to obtain an apartment’s rental history in the lobbies or entrances of their buildings.

The measure is intended put a halt to the practice whereby unsavory landlords try to secretly push rental hikes on stabilized apartments at a higher rate than allowed by the Rent Guidelines Board law. It usually comes as an apartment is being turned over and a new tenant moves in, unaware of the base rent of the previous tenant. Some unscrupulous landlords claim that units–or even entire buildings– are deregulated and charges rent at market rate when they should still be covered by rent stabilization laws which allow for much lower annual rent hikes.

The rent caps on stabilized apartments are set by the Rent Guidelines Board, an agency whose nine members are selected by the mayor.

According to the new law’s official legislative description, the NY Rent Transparency Act would require certain landlords that have rent-stabilized units in their buildings to “post a sign informing tenants that their building” contains said units.

Furthermore, the signs will have to include instructions on “how tenants can submit inquiries to New York State Homes and Community Renewal [DHCR] to find out if their units are rent-stabilized,” as not all units in a specific building may be. Tenants should expect to wait up to 20 business days to receive a reply from the state agency.

Owners of buildings with rent-stabilized units are already supposed to “submit an annual filing”—and then “provide each tenant with a copy of the information that pertains to their unit.” The signs must remind tenants of this fact.

The signs must be written in both English and Spanish, and landlords that fail to post such signs will face civil penalties.

Currently, tenants can also retrieve information about whether their building is rent-stabilized by searching the “Rent Regulated Building Search” online database, which is maintained by Homes and Community Renewal. Much like the signs that will be posted in building lobbies, however, this database does not specify which individual units are rent-stabilized.

The NY Transparency Act was co-sponsored by multiple Manhattan representatives before being enacted into law last May, including Gale Brewer, Christopher Marte, Erik Bottcher, and Shaun Abreu. Its lead sponsor was Council Member Sandy Nurse, who represents a swath of northern Brooklyn.

During a hearing last year, Nurse elaborated on why she had introduced the bill: “Many tenants living in rent stabilized units don’t know how to determine their legal rent, and in turn, bad landlords have gotten away with illegal rent overcharges and have illegally deregulated units and whole buildings.”

If tenants are aware of how much they genuinely owe, legislators and advocates say, it logically follows that it is far more difficult for landlords to surreptitiously charge them rental amounts that exceed their rent cap.

Interestingly, then-Mayor Eric Adams neither signed nor vetoed the bill, which means that it automatically became law after a 30-day period expired.

There are roughly one million rent-stabilized units in New York City, out of a total of 2.3 million rental units citywide. The law that instituted the city’s current rent-stabilization program was passed in 1969 and was amended on the state level in 2019. Cea Weaver, the controversial head of the city’s Office of Tenant protection, who was recently appointed to the post by Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an outspoken critic of landlords. She was involved in lobbying for the pro-tenant changes at the state level in 2019.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised to “freeze the rent” on these stabilized units, namely by appointing Rent Guidelines Board members who would vote for a zero percent rent hike. But Mamdani has yet to seat a favorable majority on the board.