Landlord Group Sues the City Over a Law Meant to Stop the Harassment of Tenants
By FERNANDA SANTOS
The city’s largest landlord group is challenging a five-month-old law that seeks to prevent tenant harassment, saying that the City Council overstepped its authority and that harassment was a subjective notion, not meant to be part of the city’s housing code.
Unlike housing code violations like moldy walls or a lack of heat, harassment is not easily verified, said Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel of the group, the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners and managers in the city. Because a landlord’s action might be misinterpreted as harassment by a tenant, Mr. Posilkin said, it was like asking “inspectors to look into the mind of a landlord.” [P6: Same damn excuse racists use after switching us from a "disparate impact" to a "hostile intent" standard...which is asking for mind-reading.]
Under the new law, landlords can be taken to court for threatening tenants, interrupting essential services like heat and hot water, filing baseless court actions or using other tactics that “substantially interfere with or disturb the comfort, repose, peace or quiet” of a unit’s lawful residents.
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