what you can do, now!
*DOCUMENT EVERYTHING!
Document everything wrong with your apartment: keep pictures, screenshots of texts, videos, write down dates/times of what needed to be fixed in your apartments, and if it was ever fixed. Keep receipts of doctors appointments if you had to go to the doctor due to something wrong in your apartment.
Did your landlord ever tell you, "If you don't like your apartment, why don't you move?" New York state is a one-party consent state, so you can tape record conversations with your landlords without letting them know (as long as they are also in a one-party consent state. As they are in NY too, you can record without letting them know). It would be very helpful if you get anyone from the management company on a recording. If not, writing down this harassment and reporting it is the next best thing.
* Make sure the Office of the Attorney General and the New External Property Management Company Do Their Jobs.
Update: The NY Attorney General's links below no longer work.
On 8/5/22 NY AG Letitia James issued a press release stating that her office will oversee an Ink-appointed monitor and external property management company to ensure compliance with rent stabilization laws and manage their buildings, but we must ensure that the external management company and the Office of the Attorney General actually do their jobs and our apartments remain habitable. If not, contacting the press and the other politicians and organizations on this page will help.
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The AG's office is the one who went after Steve Croman (at the time, the AG was Eric Schneiderman), another predatory landlord. He ended up going to prison for a year and was ordered to pay tenants 8 million dollars.
Filling out the AG's Tenant Harassment Prevention Task Force Claim Form is the best way to trigger an investigation. Tenant harrasment includes the landlord not fixing things, or asking you to move out. Fill out the form online here. If you prefer to print out and mail in the form, you can get the printout here.
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Be sure to include cases of harassment (your landlords not fixing things, asking you move out) as well as financial fraud (not providing you with a lease, illegally trying to raise your rent, no longer registering your building as rent-stabilized), etc. In your email, please be sure to mention that Catherine Llopis, who is part of your building's management team, used to work for Steve Croman. This will help get their attention, as they are very familiar with Croman. Also be sure to mention all the landlords/management staff by name in your letters - since their portfolio of buildings all have different LLC names. When the AG's office gets complaints from all different buildings seeing the same names, it will be apparent to them that it's the same people behind all the different buildings, engaging in the same bad behavior.
The more people who do this, the better. The AG's office has stressed to us that its the accumulation of all these complaints that makes a difference. Several of us have already submitted our complaints, and if you chime in by filling out the form too, you only make the case stronger and protect yourself more. *The AG's office says NOT to send them one giant complaint form on behalf of your whole building - this will only count as one complaint, which isn't nearly as strong as getting a complaint from each person. So each individual should file their own complaint on their own. The more individual complaints they get, the more likely an investigation will be triggered.
If the AG's office gets enough complaints, they can then further investigate our landlords and even refer your case to another unit (such as the financial fraud unit.)
Having the Attorney General's Office open a broad investigation is one of the strongest ways we have of getting justice.
*Contact your state senator and your assemblyman:
Email your state senator, send them the documentation of all your landlord has done, and ask for assistance. You can find your representatives here (type in your address, and click enter), then scroll down until you see you "NY State Senator District" and "NY State Assemblyman District", or go here if you just want your state senator's name.
*Contact Governor Cuomo's Tenant Protection Unit
https://hcr.ny.gov/tenant-protection-unit
*CALL 311
Steps 1-4 above need to be done only once. But from now on, every time something needs fixing in your apartment, call 311 (you can call anytime, 24/7) and say "File a complaint against the Landlord." When an agent answers the phone, tell them every single thing that is wrong with your apartment- anything inside your own apartment or public areas, such as hallways, entrances, etc. Keep a record of the confirmation # they give you. The 311 agent will then forward this complaint immediately to the landlord and the HPD. If you prefer, instead of calling, you can file a complaint online here. A record of your violation can be found by going to this link and typing in your address.
Then an inspector will come to your apartment within a few days to see if your issue is fixed. If you are not home, you will receive a yellow card asking you to call and make an appointment for an inspector to come back. If your issue is not fixed, the building management will receive a fine. And each violation helps keep a public record of the landlord's practices and helps keep them on the Worst 100 Landlord List.
Calling 311 is pretty effective, but only up to a point- which is why it is so important to write to the AG and your state legislators. The landlords do try to fix things when they get a 311 call because they don't like the fines and racking up more and more violations, but it doesn't stop their predatory behavior long term. We all call 311 every single time we need something fixed, otherwise, nothing ever gets fixed in a timely manner. Every single time something needs to be fixed, the landlords stall and string us along or try to send unlicensed people. Calling 311 helps a lot.
*File a complaint with DHCR and/or request rent history through RentConnect
In February 2019, a new website called RentConnect was launched to help tenants. You can go here to file a complaint, request rent history or a rent reduction online.
*Check Out Justfix.nyc
Go to justfix.nyc. If you click on the"Search my Address" button, you can search your address and find your building's tax bills, HPD violations, DOB violations, and the link tab will show you all their other buildings. Sometimes it will say there are no more rent-stabilized units, and in some cases, this is incorrect, because the landlords failed to certify the apartment as rent-stabilized, even though it is.
*Talk to Your Neighbors
Talking to our neighbors is how we learned the landlords were playing the same dirty tricks on all of us (telling us we should move out, not fixing things, telling us they were stuck in traffic, falsifying documents to the city, etc.) It is great to keep each other informed.
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*Contact the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants:
The Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants: https://www1.nyc.gov/content/tenantprotection/pages/
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*Call NYSDHCR
Call NYSDHCR To ask for a rental history of your apartment for free. They will mail you a letter, which will include your rental history and if your building is still registered as rent stabilized. We have found that some buildings are truly rent stabilized, yet the city does not have the buildings registered as being rent stabilized. This is a form of financial fraud.
Press 1 for English, and 9 to speak with a person. HOLD TIMES CAN BE VERY, very LONG. You can also go here for more info and to file a request for rent reduction. The rent reduction you get may be very small, as in a few dollars a month. In many cases, not worth the hassle. That's why we recommend going straight to the AG's office, and then to your state senator, and finally calling 311 to get the best results.
*Go to Court:
Know that if you take your landlords to housing court, you will be put on a tenant blacklist, even if you are in the right. This is an unofficial list that many landlords look at before they rent to you - if you are in the list, they will likely not want to rent to you.
If you do take your landlord to court, get a letter from the court stating that you were in the right and that it is illegal for other landlords not to rent to you just because you took your landlord to court. This worked for someone we know - she brought this letter to her prospective landlord when he rejected her because she was on the blacklist; once she showed him the letter, she got the apartment. But we hope that, by complaining to the Attorney General's Office, she can sue for all of us, so that none of our names have to be directly implicated or affected, we can get our issues resolved, and hopefully a settlement.
*Write Reviews on Yelp, Google, complain with the BBB
If you look up your management company's LLC on Yelp, Google, etc, and you don't see an entry there, create one!
You can let the public know and warn future neighbors with Google reviews: When people are about to see an apartment, they often google it first. Go to google.com/maps, type in the address of the place where you'll write a review, click on "add a missing place", then add in your address name and the words Tenants Association - for example "123 Happy Street Brooklyn, NY 11218 Tenants Association." In a few days, Google will have created a new map entry for them, where reviews can be written. You will receive something in the mail confirming this is your address. You and fellow tenants can write reviews.
To add your building's tenant association to Yelp: Go here, then scroll down to "If you are not a business owner, and you would like to add a business to Yelp" - directly below that, you'll see "Go to the Add a Business form" - click on that and you can enter in the business name and in a few days, people can start writing reviews.