Why George Pataki Needs to Be Turned Out in November:
Running Rent Administration as an Enemy of Tenants
by William Rowen

Most tenants want no trouble from their landlords. Landlord trouble tends to snowball. But landlords give them trouble anyway, and Governor George Pataki helps them, despite all the provisions in the rent laws that are supposed to help tenants, or punish landlords for violating the rent laws. He does it at his executive agency, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

DHCR procedures are intended to enforce scores of prohibitions against landlords who trouble tenants. But it rarely works that way, because over time administrative enforcement and penalties have been watered down, and tenants’ rights curtailed. And all this apparently because a special-interest group of businessmen called “landlords” have the support of the state government in office—namely, George Pataki. Here’s how its done by Pataki’s DHCR:

Case Dismissed!

Since Pataki became governor, the DHCR has closed tens of thousands of tenant complaints of unfair rents, overcharges, lack of services, and lease violations. Most of these cases have been closed without a finding on the central issues raised by the tenants.

DHCR has used a number of bureaucratic devices to accomplish this. One is send out a notice demanding that the tenant supply very complex information in a short time. The notice declares that the case will be decided on the information already in the file if the tenant does not respond. If the tenant does not respond in time, the DHCR then decides against them solely on that basis. Overcharge complaints and fair-market-rent appeals are the types of cases usually affected by this DHCR swindle.

Another tactic used by DHCR in complaints of lack of services is to find specific services to be trivial, or “de minimis.” Also, DHCR severs specific items from the complaint by referring the tenant to some other branch of government for relief. Both tactics violate the law, but few tenants are able to challenge them because they would need a lawyer to do so. If any items remain on a tenant’s complaint, the landlord merely has to clear those to avoid a rent reduction and rent freeze, the statutory penalties for a finding of lack of services.

Face Eviction

The DHCR public-information hotline ((718) 739-6400) at Gertz Plaza in Queens and the District Rent Offices are routinely used to discourage tenants from complaining either to DHCR or their landlords. Tenants are told that the landlord has the right to increase the rent for so-called apartment improvements, or MCIs, and that they cannot do anything about it.

If the landlord demands more money because the rent was paid late, the tenant is told it is lawful, although late charges are defined as an overcharge in the law. If a tenant asks if they have to sign a lease that they believe is improper, he or she is often told that tenants can be evicted if they don’t.

Complaint forms are usually hidden away from public view. When tenant associations request multiple copies so that several tenants in a building can file complaints, DHCR turns stingy. Tenants asking for a rent-registration printout are denied any information in the DHCR computers from more than four years back.

Tenants who are unlucky enough to pay $2,000 or more a month in rent are routinely told that the agency has no jurisdiction over them because they are deregulated by law, even when the rent may be unlawfully high. Coming in September: How Pataki makes rents soar for his real-estate buddies.