Hi Everyone!
I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in Hells Kitchen since September 1st, 2014. I didn't know what RS apartment is and I was paying $2000 for 3 years. The landlord was trying to sell my building for a long time because of all the problems it had (we didn't have gas for two years and my celling is crumbling). The management company was run by my friend and her brother. in January I gave them 12 checks for the year 2017 though I noticed around March that the checks weren't being deposited. When I asked my friend she said that I can take back the checks because they are selling the building and that for now I will not need to pay rent and she even tried to give them back to me one time but I didn't take them. This whole situation seemed fishy to me so I asked another friend's husband who works in real estate and he told me that I need to get the history of my apt. Long story short... I got the History of the apartment and the last recorded rent is 1419.21 in 2014 and apparently the landlord never even registered me as living in the apartment so there is no record of me living there. Nevertheless, I was never provided with any rider that demonstrated the calculation on how they determined my rent from the last recorded rent. I was threatened that if I will not leave the apartment then the new owner will come in and raise my rent to $2600 and that I should leave the apartment. The landlord still till this day didn't deposit my checks although I did submit and overcharge claim against him and he replied with all this calculations that he supposedly did now which increase the rent to $1955. He tried to register the apartment now and report improvements and other b/s. Apparently I am not the only one that is suing him there are a few other tenants who sued him and won for the same exact thing and another two tenants are suing him now. He is a professional scammer but I am scared that he will get away with it. Now I received a rent demand notice from him even though the overcharge claim wasn't finalized yet and he's trying to evict me based on non payment which is exactly why he didn't deposit my checks.
What should I do? I am not even registered in the apartment though I do have a lease and was never provided with the rider.