MFY Aids Tenants Suing Slumlord for Creating Illegal SRO

MFY is representing a group of tenants at 80 New York Avenue in Brooklyn who are suing their landlord for renting out individual rooms in apartments, alleging illegal deregulation and rent overcharges. In a scheme proliferating in many gentrifying neighborhoods, landlords convince single adults desperate for an affordable place to live to co-sign a lease. Tenants say the group lease is a cover for a living arrangement that looks more like an illegal rooming house. The exposé in The Gothamist shows how in 2014 the eight-unit building was entirely rent-stabilized. Eighteen months later all but three apartments are rented by the room, at rents three to four times the rent-stabilized rate.