Rent Subsidized - Owner/Occupied Eviction

I think mimi - the woman who lives part time in Argentina - tried this.

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/10204

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/12910

eastsideaptsearch, unless you're talking about buying a building and evicting a rent-regulated tenant, the answer is you can't. I.e., if a coop unit or a condo unit, no provision ... conversion from rental was a "noneviction" plan, and tenant was specifically protected from such action as part of that plan.

By the way eastsideaptsearch, why would you want to do this? You just want to pick some old lady or elderly man that you don't deem deserving and get into ligitation with that person, threaten that person's home of the last 40+ years, cause extreme anxiety for someone in his or her later years in life who has contributed to her community by being there in bad times along with the good, and ultimately "win" an apartment where your calculus is cheap apartment + litigation costs where the courts favor the tenant = cheaper apartment for eastsideaptsearch?

Maybe the landlord is just getting tired of being robbed every month, and wants to put a stop to the madness already.

Can't say I'd blame him.

Unless the landlord has owned the property for several decades, they knew what they were getting into when they bought the unit, so I can't say I feel sorry for them.

Owning a rent controlled apartment is like buying a cup of coffee and being told when and how much you can drink from the cup.

no, it's more like buying cup of coffee you can't drink and have to pay an additional fee for someone else to drink it.

If you all really want to help the downtrodden landlords, then put your money where your mouth is. Associate membership of the RSA is only $100 per year, and anyone can donate to their PAC and Legal Fund: http://rsanyc.org/membership_form.php.

Really, an apartment where someone lives is like a cup of coffee?

The coffee analogy is great, except you're missing the fact that all of the rules are published in big bold letters on the coffee stand, and you have an attorney advising you in your transaction, and still go ahead and buy the coffee anyway. Boo hoo.

>The coffee analogy is great

Yeah. How do you like it, light and sweet for NYCMatt? Black and pink for alanhart?

Or you go for a cup of coffee, and the deli guy hocks in it. He says "Oops, here're your options: take this one for half price (the container itself is still good,) or buy a fresh one."

But every day the deli guy has done that, and you still went to that same deli, right? And the deli guy is actually handicapped, and you want to get him fired.

>And the deli guy is actually handicapped, and you want to get him fired...
instead of just going to a different deli.

Bingo. Unless you like having unpalatable choices to whine about.

Can I play?

You walk into a fancy coffee place. There are lots of options on the menu board, but you're reluctant to pay $4.50 for a cup of coffee. At the bottom of the menu, there's a 25-cent cup of coffee, with the note, "See Owner for Details."

You inquire, and the owner tells you the two-bit coffee comes in a cracked cup (fixable, at your expense). That seems OK - you're handy - and you're ready to go for it when the owner adds that you have to take Elaine in the deal. "Who's Elaine?" you ask. She's the handicapped, 68-year-old niece of the former owner of the building. Part of the deal when the coffee place moved in was that they had to give Elaine 10-cent coffee for the rest of her life. Overall, it's been a good arrangement for both sides: Elaine gets her daily coffee, and her deal was factored in when the coffee guy bought the building, so it hasn't kept him from turning a profit. (At the time, a dime was the going rate for coffee; so having Elaine as a steady customer was actually kind of nice, until the price of coffee shot up.) The problem is, Elaine has lived longer than he expected, and the cash drain has gotten bigger over the years, so he'd like to unload the obligation; hence the 25-cent offer.

You're puzzled. "I don't get it. I share my coffee with Elaine?"

"No," the owner replies. "You don't share. She gets the coffee until she dies. And if her daughter moves back to New York before Elaine dies, and starts sharing the coffee, you have to honor the same deal with her."

At that point, if you still do the deal, you can't really complain about Elaine drinking "your" coffee.

Elaine looks older than 68.

Also, Elaine's coffee is never really hot and she doesn't get to use sugar.

West81st makes the best analogies.

"Niece of the former owner" is a telling point. It's tough getting rent rolls with names, but the few I've come across look like family trees of the owner or former owner. E.g., the Apthorp.

Let's say the landlord has a vacancy of a stabilized place. She'll take the vacancy increase, maybe tart the place up to get an improvement increase, yet the rent might still be under market. (Outside Manhattan, of course, it could well be *over* market.)

So who gets the apartment? The nephew or cousin or in-law gets first dibs. Only when the clamoring relatives are taken care of does she have to choose among friends' kids, then among nice reasonable people with some connection or other, and finally the rest. All cozy and friendly, and nobody on either side is complaining.

huntersburg - Exactly. Her coffee is SUPPOSED to be hot - that was part of the original deal - but the coffee guy admits that he's been serving her lukewarm, watered-down coffee for years. "After all, what does she expect for ten cents?

"The cracked cup was my lawyer's idea," he goes on, warming to his topic. "The contract didn't say anything about the condition of the container, so we figured that was worth a try. But the old battleaxe just patched it with duct tape. Now how does that look to my market rate customers - a shabby old woman with a duct-taped cup sitting in my classy shop? The least she could have done was fix it properly. If it weren't for her and her kind dragging the place down, I could charge my regular clients $6 a cup.

"She found a waterbug in her coffee once. She actually called 311 on me. Can you imagine? Ten-cent coffee for life, and she has the nerve to complain about a little bug! You know what the bureaucrats did? They cut the price to five cents for a whole year."

The actual case law deciding such claims is mixed. You would need to talk to a
knowledgeable landlord-tenant attorney about your situation, such as one at
Rosenberg & Estis or Borah Finklestein, they're experts in owner-evictions.

I have to say, you don't really know NY until you meet a lawyer from Finklestein, Borah, Schwartz, Altschuler. Goldman Sachs and Weil, Gotschal & Manges people may be more notorious and attract more press, but if assholes had their own Olympic competition, I wouldn't discount them.
Honestly, eastside, unless you have some major rage and are looking to waste time and money to make it grow, I wouldn't bother. The only way it works is if you are buying the place for your grandchildren.

I love West81st's posts. It's like getting a great bedtime story in the middle of the day. :-)

It can be a long process:

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2008/11/11/lengthy_tenement_battle_settled_as_residents_take_buyout.php