Transit touts rights stuff
City rolls out tenant reg info blitz
The city launched a new campaign to educate renters about their rights Monday — five months after Albany lawmakers enacted some of the strongest tenant protections in years.
The city’s PR blitz will include ads in subways, bus shelters and online, and will run until mid-December.
“This campaign will arm New Yorkers with the knowledge to fight harassment and stay in their homes,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement.
The ads depict scenarios between renters and landlords in the form of short dialogues.
One advises that brokers can’t charge an application fee in excess of $20. Another points out that security deposits cannot exceed one month’s rent.
Under the state’s new landmark rent laws, which went into effect in June, landlords must provide tenants with notice if they plan to raise rents more than 5% and are limited in how much they can hike rents in connection to building upgrades. They are prohibited from evicting tenants without the proper warrant or a court order, and evictions can now be more easily reversed.
“Today marks an important step in the administration’s longstanding efforts to ensure New York City tenants are protected and can continue to call this city home,” said de Blasio’s Public Engagement Board director, Omar Khan. “This kind of targeted proactive outreach, paired with the advertising campaign launching today, has a meaningful impact on the New Yorkers who are most at risk of facing abuse.”
As part of the campaign, members of the Public Engagement Unit will go doorto-door to brief tenants about the new laws. The unit became shrouded in controversy in April after the Daily News reported ex-staffers’ claims it engaged in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.
Critics of the new pro-renter laws attacked de Blasio’s campaign as using “taxpayer money for political posturing.”
“The mayor should be trying to mitigate some of the harmful and unintended effects that he has acknowledged will result from the legislation he is touting,” said Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association.
Freund suggested de Blasio could have instructed the city’s Rent Guidelines Board to allow rent increases on vacant leases.
“Some apartments may now go for years without even a meager guideline increase,” he said.
Jay Martin, director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, described Hizzoner’s new campaign as a misplaced priority.
“De Blasio should be focusing on improving conditions for the thousands of NYCHA tenants the city has failed for decades, or providing property tax relief to the small building owners who were devastated by the new rent regulations,” he said. “Instead, he is playing political games with taxpayer money.”