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It is illegal to deny an apartment to a renter who uses a housing voucher or subsidy to pay the rent. Unfortunately, this kind of discrimination still occurs. According to Stephanie R. Rudolph, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society in an interview for Brick Underground, typically, you need an inc...

According to The City, an independent, nonprofit news outlet, in October, the city's Department of Social Services launched an online platform that was supposed to modernize its ability to process applications for city-funded rent assistance programs, but five months later tenants and many casewo...

There is a program in Stamford, Connecticut, where tenants pay below market rate rents for apartments in the city's luxury high-rises and are supposed to be treated exactly the same as tenants who pay market rate, but that's not happening according to CT Examiner. Housing and Community Developme...

According to NBC, New York City's eviction rate is rising, triggered by the January 2022 expiration of moratorium, protections, and rent relief programs for tenants brought on by the pandemic. Some programs like ERAP stopped taking applications which means evictions are going to increase. The n...

According to the Connecticut Center for Fair Housing, the state sees a record number of evictions in 2022, reporting over 21,000. Romanow, a staff attorney at the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, said tenant rights groups in the state will push for caps on rent, saying that are needed to give te...

According to Curbed New York, the housing market was out of control in 2022. After two years of COVID settlements, many of which we remember were somewhat less expensive but still expensive rentals, low apartment inventory, and high demand have combined to make the New York City apartment hunt so...

According to fox 5 New York, the New York City bill would prohibit landlords from conducting background checks on new tenants. At least 30 of the 51 council members have agreed to support the "Fair Chance Housing Act." Stanley Richards, Deputy CEO of the Fortune Society, supports eliminating cr...

The number of empty regulated apartments nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021, a state memo obtained by The City shows; New York City landlords are keeping tens of thousands of rent-stabilized units off the market a phenomenon tenant activists call “warehousing.”  We need to remember in 2019 a ma...

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr announce the creation of the office's first housing & tenant protection unit. According to the New York State Senate,  the areas of focus will be harassment of rent-regulated tenants, deed fraud, and defrauding of government subsidy programs by landl...

It seems that with high inflation, the cost of almost everything is rising, according to U.S News. But can landlords raise rents for tenants to offset these higher expenses? The truth is that they can, however, you must consider some things. To determine when you can legally increase the rents ...

Illegal Airbnb listings in NYC are still a major source of concern despite the already stringent regulations in place, a recent The Real Deal article announces. State law and city regulations are very clear, home rentals of less than 30 days are not allowed unless the permanent resident is prese...

According to a recent press release, New York Attorney General Letitia James continued her efforts to protect New York tenants by cracking down on “tenant blacklisting,” or when landlords use housing court records as a basis to deny a potential tenant's rental application. What is the blacklist? ...

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CHIP has clarified the requirement of the ERAP rider to be sent to notify tenants of the restrictions and protections that accompany an owner's receipt of ERAP funds. This notice must be sent once an owner accepts funds from ERAP. There is no formal notice published by the government; however, th...

Good morning and happy hump day!We have some good news for those of you that have applied for ERAP and are just waiting for those funds. Well, yesterday CHIP announced that the Senate and Assembly have pledged to put up to $1.25 Billion into the program as part of their one-house budget bills. Ho...

Similarly to New York, Connecticut's rental assistance program is also running out of funds. According to an article posted by the CT Mirror the program will run out of funds before it can assist the 20,000 applications that are still pending. The plan should be to use the $2.2 billion surplus to...

Happy February!According to OTDA over 304,657 applications have been submitted since June for the COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program. A report has shown that $587 million out of the $2 billion in rent assistance funds has been distributed. Applications after January 11, 2022 will be den...

As we all know the moratorium expired on January 15, 2022. Tenant activists were once again afraid of the tsunami of evictions that was going to happen, however, a lot of protections have been put in place to help tenants. CHIP has talked about how the courts have been delaying the execution of p...

New York State Supreme Court Judge Lynn Kotler has issued a preliminary injunction ordering the state to reopen its Emergency Rental Assistance Program (“ERAP”) portal. The ERAP portal is to reopen even though there are no new funds to back the program. However, the reopening of the ERAP portal w...

  Apartment hunting during the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed many tenants to find great deals on great apartments. Many landlords have offered a certain number of months free when signing a lease, and many others have drastically reduced the monthly rent amounts. These deals have s...

The City Council was unable to pass a bill that would have prevented landlords from running criminal background checks on potential tenants, due to lack of support. The bill, titled the Fair Chance for Housing Act, was introduced in August of 2020, but was just voted on this month.Many argue that...

Governor Kathy Hochul has recently announced the enactment of a law that will significantly increase protections for loft residents. This bill makes it unlawful for any loft owner to interrupt, deny, or discontinue essential services or create an uninhabitable environment in a multiple dwelling u...

           The State of New York announced on November 12, 2021, that it was no longer accepting applications for rent relief through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). At that time the $2.5 billion program had received over 280,000 applications and provided financial assistance to a...

Accessory Dwelling Units (“ADUs”) are typically accessories to an existing home. They are usually rentals, either an attached apartment to an existing house or a smaller, detached unit. However, Princeton, New Jersey has just passed one of the most progressive ADU ordinances in the New York metro...

  Before joining Moss and Tapia, I knew very little about landlord-tenant law, or even real estate law for that matter. Since beginning work in November I have learned quite a bit, but I know that I am still learning. However, as someone who recently moved to NYC and went through the appli...