Ask Altagracia: Is my rent increase illegal? Do I qualify for Good Cause protection?

Tenants across New York City are asking this question after the state legislature passed Good Cause eviction protections in the spring of 2024. 

The law limits annual rent increases for most unregulated apartments to 5 percent plus the consumer price index, or 10 percent, whichever is lower. What you need to know is that the current rent cap for NYC is 8.82 percent, according to NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.  

Landlords must have “good cause” to evict you, which includes nonpayment of rent, breaking the terms of your lease, or interfering with the safety and comfort of other tenants. If a rent increase is considered “unreasonable” under the law, a tenant can use that as a defense in an eviction case for nonpayment, and challenge the rent increase in court. 

“An unreasonable rent increase is treated as an eviction for the purposes of the law,” said Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, an attorney and founder of Outerbridge Law who represents residential landlords and tenants and condo owners. “Once you’re above the threshold, you have to show why it’s reasonable.”

Who qualifies for ‘Good Cause’

Renters also don’t qualify for Good Cause if they live in a building with less than 10 units where the landlord also resides. Rent-stabilized units, public housing, and apartments located in condo and co-op buildings are not covered by the law. 

However, landlords are allowed to raise rent above the cap if they can prove that the increase is driven by certain kinds of costs. Those costs can include fuel, utilities, insurance, maintenance, the replacement or major repair of any structural, electrical, plumbing or mechanical system, or lead paint, mold or asbestos abatement in the building, according to the law. Owners must notify tenants that they are protected by Good Cause and provide justifications for rent increases above the cap in writing with a renewal lease. 

And there’s a second legal piece to Good Cause. Tenants are only protected by the law if their landlord owns 10 or more apartments across their entire portfolio. But owners often try to hide their identities behind LLCs, which can be linked with a rotating cast of corporate officers to obscure the real owner of the building. 

“The landlord-tenant [attorneys] are taking the view that you have to take into account everything that any landlord has a beneficial interest in,” Pierre-Outerbridge said, meaning even partial ownership of a building would qualify. “At some point somebody is going to take the view that you can’t play hopscotch from LLC to LLC.” She added that the courts haven’t set legal standards about whether landlords will have to produce documents on the extent of their portfolio. 

LLC owners have to report their names and addresses to the state thanks to a new law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul this year, but that information won’t be available to the public. The state’s confidential LLC database will only be accessible to law enforcement, by court order, or by permission from the LLC owners themselves. 

Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, Esq. is the owner of Outerbridge Law P.C. While Outerbridge Law focuses primarily on tenant representation, the firm is also well versed in landlord representation and represents all sides in landlord-tenant litigation and transactional matters such as month-to-month holdovers, nuisance cases, owner’s use cases, licensee cases, harassment claims, repair cases, tenant buyouts, succession claims, DHCR overcharges and rent reductions and more. With nearly 15 years of experience litigating in Supreme, DHCR, and Housing Court, Pierre-Outerbridge has finely developed her legal skills to deliver superior results to her clients and founded Outerbridge Law P.C. to drive this mission. To submit a question for this column, click here.

To contact Outerbridge Law P.C. directly, call 212-364-5612 or 877-OUTERBRIDGE, or schedule a meeting today.