Copyright New York Daily News
New York City landlords who make life hell for their rent-regulated tenants could spend up to four years behind bars if a new bill co-sponsored by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg becomes law. At a press conference Thursday, the DA announced newly proposed state legislation that would allow prosecutors to charge landlords with class D felonies if they engage in aggravated harassment against rent-regulated tenants to induce them to move out so owners can raise the rent. Bragg said he was getting behind the bill because the city’s worsening housing crisis was a matter of public safety. “It exacerbates power asymmetries between landlords and tenants, and in various parts of our practice, where substantial power asymmetries exist, criminal activity often follows, with people targeting vulnerable populations for profit,” the DA said. “As New Yorkers, we’ve all heard horror stories of extreme forms of tenant harassment, especially against rent-regulated tenants. By making conditions unlivable, bad actors hope that rent-regulated tenants will just pack up and go.” Currently, landlords who harass two tenants in one building face the same potential punishment as landlords who address 10 tenants across 10 buildings — a class E felony, with no minimum prison term. The proposed legislation would create a new class D felony, aggravated harassment of a rent-regulated tenant, carrying a maximum prison term of four years. It would target landlords who engage in a “systematic ongoing course of conduct” across several properties, as well as landlords who reoffend after being convicted of harassing their tenants under current law. Landlords whose conduct “impairs the habitability” of a tenant’s rent-regulated unit, or who create or maintain conditions that endanger tenants’ health and safety, or who disturb tenants’ “comfort, repose, peace or quiet,” could face arrest on class D felonies, the proposed bill details. Bragg, State Sen. Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan), who chairs the Senate Housing Committee, and Democratic state Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who represents parts of upper Manhattan, introduced the bill in Albany on Wednesday. “The landmark Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 eliminated the loopholes that allowed rent-regulated tenants to be legally displaced through exorbitant rent increases and deregulation,” Kavanagh said Thursday. “Unfortunately, some unscrupulous landlords continue to employ harassment and other illegal means as they attempt to drive tenants out of their buildings.”
