Squadron says, ‘No mas’ to mass evictions by owners

Easy way for politicians to score points with tenants, now that the money for this kind of project has dried up anyway.

this is crap. If you pay millions ofor a building for personal use -- so be it. People's sense of entitlement to stay in a unit that they do not pay the taxes on is outrageous.

The building in the news was built as a multiple-dwelling. If the owner wants a single-family house, he should buy one. Similarly, if I want to operate a sewage-treatment plant, I would not expect to have any right to convert a single-family house to that use just because I own it.

Just because somebody pays rent -- it is NOT a right to stay there.... If you buy the building -- you can turn it into a storage closet if you see fit...

Actually, you're quite wrong. By law, rent-regulated tenants have a right to stay under specified conditions. The family didn't buy the building before WWII and then had the rules changed on them, so what they bought was what it was -- a rent-regulated multiple-dwelling building. And then they introduced litigation that they knew the tenants couldn't afford to participate in, and used that as leverage to buy them out. And almost certainly their objective was to turn the building condo a few years later anyway.

You try buying a residential building on Fifth Avenue in the 60s or 70s and see if you're allowed to turn it into a Manhattan Mini-Storage (storage closet). Fail.

I'm with alanhart. Are the rich going to declare legal war on middle class people in order to displace them from their apartments? This stinks. The city should not be turned into the suburbs. Aren't there enough big apartments in the city for the rich to buy without these guys trying to convert multiple-dwelling units into single family homes? Let these stupid rich people buy some land out in the suburbs and rot out there. They can build 100,000 square foot homes in the burbs and have themselves taxed to death, for all I care.

Alanhart -- I thought the rule was if you bought the building with the intent to turn it into the single residence then the multiple dwelling rule was void....

The rule is void if the tenants move out. If the tenants want to stay, you don;t get your SRO. Kylewest may be able to clarify this more accurately.

manhattanfox -- you're mostly right. I believe the law was changed in recent years to make it easier to reunify town houses that had been cut up, but it was sloppily written (or deliberately written) so that it had no limits as to what constitutes the owner's family, whether they would live together in one large apartment or could occupy several units, what the original use of the building was, or maximum square footage. There's also, I think, a ridiculous clause allowing the use to be changed once again after only three years, with no penalty to the owner or compensation to the people whose leases were taken away.

The family in question was pursuing a test case of that law and how it would be construed by the courts. But the intention of the law was clearly not what they were trying to do, or you'd suddenly find 15-story buildings being emptied, barely renovated as a single-family residence, and then warehoused until 3 years after the final eviction, and condoed.

Agree with Alanhart - badly written law. It applies to the case in the Village (Economakis) as well as much smaller dwellings in which the landlords genuinely need the space. You could argue that no-one should ever, ever buy a multi-family and rely on the owner occupancy exception because they are already getting a discount on the purchase price, but they do...

On a personal level, I have thought about buying a small apartment building (not townhouse). There was a building on the UWS - around 40 units, mostly one bedrooms, that went for 5m about 4 years ago. Definitely some RS/RC tenants, but it would have been interesting to have pursued owner occupancy for a few units, in the hopes of getting a whole floor unit or a duplex.

I know, I know - 407PAS - I am "destroying" apartment stock here.

If someone wants to throw tenants out of the building, there is nothing to stop them. There are plenty of back alley "eviction specialists" in Jersey that you can hire.