|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By: Ilana Siyance
A Federal Appeals court in New York rejected landlords’ appeal to challenge the state’s rent regulation law.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, on Monday, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the Empire State’s decade-old authority to regulate rent prices on roughly 1 million apartments. In 2019, a law was passed in NYS making it harder for landlords to free up apartments for market rates or other uses. Landlords had challenged the 2019 state law, claiming it hampered their personal right to do business.
Judge Barrington D. Parker, writing for a three-judge panel, ruled that it is not an unlawful intrusion of property rights for the government to restrict landlords who voluntarily rent their apartments to the public. “The case law is exceptionally clear that legislatures enjoy broad authority to regulate land use without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s bar on physical takings,” wrote Judge Parker, in the ruling. The judge said that even with the stricter version of the law, enacted in 2019, landlords are not forced to rent their apartments out to tenants in perpetuity. They have the power to evict tenants for failure to pay rent, using the property for illegal purposes and for other lease violations.
Rent control was first introduced in New York over century ago, during World War I, in response to housing shortages. Landlords have often sought to challenge the constitutional legality of rent control over the years, but have always failed. The current case was filed by a consortium of local landlord groups and individual landlords led by the Community Housing Improvement Program and the Rent Stabilization Association.
As per Fox Business News, these landlords claimed that the state had moved so far adding new stringencies, that now would be opportune time to finally overturn the law. The plaintiffs said the 2019 law allows tenants to pass their rent-controlled apartments along to family members, friends, roommates or even caregivers after they leave, creating a “line of strangers” to which the landlord may not refuse to rent the unit except for lease violations and other misconduct.
The city and state’s lawyers countered, claiming that the current version of the law doesn’t force landlords to rent to below-market tenants forever— rather it just closes loopholes introduced in the 1990s, while restoring earlier versions of the law. The landlord’s case was always viewed as a longshot by legal observers.
Still the landlord groups, say they will try their luck in NYS’s Supreme Court. “We always expected these issues to be decided by the Supreme Court and are confident we will ultimately prevail, and finally compel leaders around the country to create real and fair solutions for our nation’s housing challenges,” a spokeswoman for the landlord plaintiffs said.
“Today’s decision is a victory for families that work day and night to keep a roof over their head. As we continue to address the nationwide housing crisis, we must spare no effort in protecting tenants and defending affordable housing options for New Yorkers,” said NY Attorney General Letitia James in a statement Monday, regarding the case. “We will continue to defend the constitutionality of our laws and fight to ensure New Yorkers can afford to live in their homes and communities.”
