Mayor de Blasio has scheduled a noon press conference to sign the tenant right to counsel bill into law.

As we blasted in our email alert yesterday, the New York City Council, passed almost 20 anti-owner bills Wednesday under the banner of tenant protection. Among the more egregious was a bill creating a rebuttable presumption that owners are guilty of harassing tenants if an essential service is “interrupted,” contacting the tenant at work without prior written approval or contacting them outside of 9-5 weekdays. Full details of all the  new legislation will be in the September New York Housing Journal.

In other action, the Council approved a major rezoning of midtown east to encourage new office construction, although the benefits may be long in coming.

Finally, in an action packed session, the Council extended the law barring smoking in common areas of multiple dwellings to smaller 3-10 unit buildings. Previously, only buildings over 10 units were covered. Further, every building will have to adopt a smoking policy and notify residents of the rules, if any, annually and with leases or purchase agreements, beginning one year after the Mayor signs the bill—which is expected shortly.

Meanwhile, Council members keep coming up with new ideas to increase operating costs. A bill is being introduced to require buildings with more than 100 units to have a translator on staff for any language spoken by more than 10 percent of the tenants.

If your mortgage is set to adjust to Libor in 2021 or later, you have a problem. Libor won’t be available. Check your mortgage documents and make sure new mortgages provide for a mutually agreed rate.

Amazon isn’t content to just deliver to your building anymore, they want to provide a package reception facility. They are offering storage boxes, but haven’t announced pricing yet.

Those foreign buyers you hear so much about? Canadians buying in Florida, according to a recent report. And New York isn’t even in the top five states for foreign buyers, 60 percent of whom become residents, not absentee owners.

If you need help with a Quitclaim deed lawyer, you should contact a real estate lawyer. A quitclaim deed is a legal document that transfers a person’s interest or rights in a property. It is important to have an experienced lawyer to draw up yours, as they can help ensure that the document is valid and properly executed.

New York City says it has stepped up recycling enforcement this month. Let us know if you are getting more recycling violations. Email info@chipnyc.org.

It’s summertime, and the City Buildings Department is turning its attention to outside space, issuing a reminder that balcony screens, quote aluminium balustrades Sunshine Coast or enclosures need to have a permit, and suggesting, surprisingly, that rooftop terraces and recreation areas need enclosures.

REBNY launched its expanded residential listing service Tuesday, with the capacity for brokers to syndicate listings to Realtor.com and other sites, but not Streeteasy.

Ten X Commercial this week issued a residential vacancy forecast of 11% for the New York metro area by year-end 2018, based on a projected 40,000 new apartment completions and flat or declining job growth. It’s a theory.

The Bronx Borough President, Wednesday, announced $7 million in capital funds would be directed to 10 apartment development projects to fund 1589 “affordable” units. That works out to $4,405 per subsidized unit on top of other benefits the projects are receiving.

Median rents and median asking rents are two different things. A report by RentHop analyzing asking rents citywide (with a neat interactive chart) found the median asking rent for a two bedroom on the lower east side was $3,495—134% of median income and three times the actual median rent in the neighborhood.

ABO members can register this month for free show passes and discounted education programs at the International Builders Show scheduled January 9-11^th in Orlando. And, ABO members have until August 25^th to file for additional rebates on products they’ve bought from April thru June from 50 manufacturers such as Lutron, Delta, Carrier, and Sherwin Williams.

Today is the last business day to submit 2017 NYC Boiler Inspection filings in person. Electronic filing will be required beginning August 14^th.

Effective August 1^st, the City Department of Sanitation will be enforcing new commercial recycling rules adopted last year. Stepped up residential enforcement can be expected while the inspectors are out. Look for an article detailing all the changes in the September New York Housing Journal.

An unwritten rule requiring proof of an access agreement with effected adjacent properties before the City Buildings Department will issue a permit is being reported by law firm Tarter, Krinsky, & Drogin.

The State Attorney General’s office is now requiring documentation to allow review of rent histories of regulated apartments before approving co-op or condo conversions, delaying decisions while records are gathered, according to law firm Herrick.

The Governor signed legislation, Tuesday, increasing the income level for eligibility for the Senior Citizen Homeowners Exemption (which applies to co-op and condo owners) to $50,000—the same as the current SCRIE level.

The New York City Housing Authority hasn’t been doing required lead paint inspections, according to a Daily News story yesterday about a probe of the agency by federal prosecutors.

The City Council Land Use Committee gave approval to a plan for rezoning midtown east for higher density office construction, almost guaranteeing eventual adoption. The City would tax the sale of new air rights transfers under the plan at 20% or $61.49 per foot, whichever is greater.

Prospect Lefferts Gardens is the toughest zip code in the City to add residential density, according to a BuildZoom analysis. Barely 500 units were added between 2000 and 2015. Number two area, Sunnyside, actually lost almost 500. But it turns out all you need to get new housing is for government to welcome it. New Rochelle has opened its doors.

The New York City Council yesterday passed legislation providing for free real estate lawyer legal representation in housing court for all tenants earning under 200% of federal poverty levels (200% is currently $24,120 for an individual, $49,200 for a family of four). If signed by the Mayor, as expected, the plan would be fully implemented by July 31, 2022, but would apply to public housing tenants as early as this October.

After legal challenges prevented Mayor de Blasio from giving an across the board water rate credit to single family homeowners last year, the Mayor, last Friday, announced expanded credits for low income and senior homeowners and a new Multifamily Water Assistance Program which will give a $250 credit to about 40,000 “affordable” units that have regulatory agreements with the City.

The costs of garbage removal could be rising, or at least shifting, as the City has hired a consultant to explore a “pay as you throw” plan.

The eleventh time was the charm for Westchester County’s effort to end federal scrutiny of its local zoning. HUD has finally accepted a report by consultants that says town zoning that prevents multifamily development in large parts of the county is not racially discriminatory. The County Executive has insisted for years that the issue is economic, not racial, and that the County doesn’t control local zoning in the first place.

The metro New York region will see 27,000 new apartments completed this year, up from over 16,000 in 2016. Long Island City alone will add the most of any neighborhood, 3,700 units, followed by downtown Brooklyn and Jersey City, according to a report by RentCafe this week.

Mayor de Blasio’s latest assault on rats includes a proposal to prevent building owners in targeted areas from putting garbage out for collection before 4 a.m. on pick-up days and Increased organics collection requirements for multifamily properties.

The House subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development approved a fiscal 2018 budget proposal with $6.9 billion more than the President requested, but not necessarily enough more to continue all existing subsidies. The New York Housing Conference estimated that 14,000 voucher tenants around the state could lose funding.

No good deed goes unpunished when it comes to reporting illegal Airbnb apartment rentals. New York City apparently sees nothing wrong with fining building owners who report tenants breaking the law. Meanwhile, Newsday reports that Airbnb bookings near Jones Beach have quintupled since 2014 to almost 20,000. It is hot outside. A quick check for mid-week availability in August showed 300 units in elevator buildings listed.

The New York City Planning Commission, Monday, approved a major rezoning of Far Rockaway for higher density development. The proposal now goes to the City Council. They better hurry before Rockaway washes away.

City assessors did not visit 54% of the properties they were supposed to before valuing them, according to an audit by the State Comptroller issued yesterday. The investigation also found almost 100 global changes made to the Finance Department’s computerized assessment program with no record of who authorized them or why. Coincidentally, four potential City Council Speakers just signed a letter urging Mayor de Blasio to stop fighting a lawsuit claiming that City property tax assessments are unfair and discriminatory. Admit it and fix it, they say.

Rental and sales brokers are seeing their listings models attacked on all sides this week with Streeteasy and the Real Estate Board at war over competing platforms, and sites such as Nestio and Joinery trying different ways to cut out brokers entirely.

Mamaroneck building owners and tenants can expect to be surveyed by HUD on their experience with a Small Area Fair Market Rent pilot program. The test resulted in higher rents in the two affected zip codes than the rest of Westchester County. Other test areas being surveyed had a mix of higher and lower rents in their regions.

Mayor de Blasio, yesterday, trumpeted building or preserving 77,651 units of affordable housing since his election. But the actual number of new units completed so far is 4,145.

The State Legislature (probably temporarily) adjourned this week, but couldn’t leave Albany without passing a bill, to require rent stabilized lease riders to include information about ancillary service charges and describe them. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the rider already shows those items and amounts. If signed by the Governor, however, the rider will have to be revised within 120 days.

Mayor de Blasio’s plans for higher density housing in East Harlem were opposed by Community Board 11 at a raucous meeting this week. The  Board wants lower density and more units affordable to lower income tenants in exchange for approval, but protesters at the meeting opposed any change that might gentrify the neighborhood.

Some City Councilmen want to double the density of Airbnb guests permitted from two to four. The idea is to help B&B owners, but it isn’t clear how it squares with the Council’s general opposition to illegal occupancies. Several Long Island towns are taking the opposite tack. They now prohibit rentals for less than 14 days and want to raise the minimum to 30 days to discourage Airbnb hosts.

A Crown Heights building owner was found guilty, Tuesday, of three misdemeanor counts of illegally evicting tenants. The unusual case was brought by the State Attorney General in 2015. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo launched a statewide multi-agency investigation of property owners using immigration status to harass tenants after an electrical contractor reportedly sent Queens tenants in a building he was working in a threatening letter.

Ossining, in Westchester County, is considering adopting Rent Stabilization although the consultant hired to review housing options noted that it depresses property taxes, encourages people to misuse space, and doesn’t have anything to do with tenant need.

The Rockland County Rent Guidelines Board on Monday approved increases of 0% for one year renewals and .5% for two year renewals, effective October 1st. New York City, Westchester and Nassau guidelines are all set to be voted this coming Tuesday. CHIP Executive Director Patrick Siconolfi testified at the New York City public hearing and faced a barrage of questions from tenant reps on the Board. His testimony highlighted the Board’s basic math error in considering gross income, including MCIs and Individual Apartment Improvement Increases, but ignoring capital expenses in computing profit margins. In questioning, he surprised the Board with proof of the increased and uncounted cost of compliance.  The City Council is passing a housing related bill into law an average of every two and one half weeks this year vs. every two and one half months in 2000, he noted.

There are 188 vacant storefronts on Broadway in Manhattan, with 55 of them north of 155th Street, according to a survey by the Borough President’s office released Monday.

President Trump is naming Lynne Patton, an event planner with no housing experience and questionable academic credentials, to run HUD Region 2, according to yesterday’s Daily News.

The New York Metro Area is on track to add about 100,000 apartments by 2030, but needs 278,000 according to an analysis released this week by the National Apartment Association. The New York apartment industry and residents add $3.5 billion a day to the economy, the report said.

Long Island needs more apartments too. The Long Island Association reported this week that the critical 20-34 year-old population increased by 36,000 from 2010 to 2015 after falling by almost150,000 in the prior 20 years.

Nassau County’s Rent Guidelines Board is having hearings June 20th and 26th, but apparently won’t decide final guidelines until September, playing havoc with required advance renewal offers.

What does even the threat of rent control do to multifamily property values? Offering prices for apartment buildings dropped 25% before a recent rent control referendum was defeated in Santa Rosa, California…if they could get an offer.

Property taxes overall will go up 6.6% under the Fiscal 2018 budget approved by the New York City Council, Tuesday. The Council added $200 million in estimated property tax revenues above the Mayor’s executive budget proposal–for a total increase of about $1.6 billion. The class 2 tax rate was set at $12.729, slightly lower than the current year’s, but will raise more due to assessment increases.

The City is issuing more violations according to a Furman Center study on the State of New York City’s Housing in 2016. There were 236 housing code violations per 1,000 privately-owned rental units in New York City in 2016, up about 3 percent over 2015, the report said. The study also looked at poverty in different neighborhoods and found that the share of households earning under $40,000 grew 3% from 2000 to 2015, while the share earning between $40,000 and $100,000 declined 3%.

One third of the 4500 audited tenants in low income units of 80/20 developments no longer meet the income requirements for new tenants, according to a study by the State Comptroller’s office. Some households earn more than $250,000 and “Each of the households with incomes of more than $250,000 paid rents of less than $1,000 per month, with the lowest monthly rent being about $780,” the audit found. “… it is not clear that New York State’s low-income households optimally benefit from the Program because many affordable units are occupied by tenants with relatively high annual incomes,” the report concluded. On top of that, the audit focused on four buildings with 363 subsidized units that received at least $427 million in tax incentives, or $1.17 million per subsidized unit.

No one can deny those units are in demand. 93,000 people applied for 104 new subsidized units at Essex Crossing in the latest housing lottery.

New York is not alone. The National Low Income Housing Coalition just released a report showing that a 40 hour per week minimum wage worker cannot afford a two bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States. In New York City, a person would have to work 130 hours at minimum wage to afford a two bedroom, 135 hours in Westchester, and 149 hours per week in Nassau/Suffolk.

Elected officials, however, keep discouraging new subsidized projects in their own neighborhoods. The most recent failure: a 72 unit project planned in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn with 18 subsidized units that would have been “too big and too dense,” for the local councilman.

Mayor de Blasio, as expected Tuesday, signed legislation requiring apartment buildings to maintain minimum winter night time temperatures of 62 degrees between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., beginning October 1st.

The bill was one of more than two dozen new laws signed, including several providing for more community input and delay in Board of Standards and Appeals decisions on zoning variances.

Operating rental housing in the City may get more complex every day, but the Mayor himself blew a simple building registration requirement because he forgot to sign the form.

And so-called housing advocates, including many elected officials, were out in force this week rallying against proposals for new privately built housing with 50% subsidized units because they weren’t 100% subsidized.

Meanwhile, HPD yesterday issued a Request for Proposals for development of 850 units on four city owned cites.

New York City Rent Guidelines hearings begin next week, as do Rockland and Westchester County’s. Rockland has a meeting at 7 p.m. June 12th in the Finkelstein Library in Spring Valley, with a vote June 19th at 7 p.m. in Haverstraw Town Hall. Westchester hearings begin Monday at 7 p.m. in Mt. Vernon City Hall and wind up June 27th at 7 p.m. in White Plains City Hall. The DHCR hasn’t posted the full hearing schedules for Rockland or Westchester online yet and hasn’t announced any schedule for Nassau.

How bad does a tenant have to be to get evicted as a nuisance? One housing judge accepted the testimony of 14 other tenants in 364 93rd Street LLC v. Clementine, only a year after the case began.