Rent-Stabilized Tenant's Daughter Gets Apartment

The daughter of rent-stabilized tenant claimed succession rights and rent overcharge. The DRA ruled for the daughter, finding that she had established succession rights, and ordered landlord to refund $4,725, including triple damages. Landlord appealed and won, in part. Landlord claimed that the succession claim was tainted by fraud. But the DHCR found that: (a) the daughter proved her familial relationship to tenant--her father-- with a birth certificate; (b) the daughter proved that tenant had died in November 2010; and (c) that tenant’s earning statements from 2008 and W-2s from 2009 and 2010 listing the apartment as her address were sufficient proof that tenant lived in the apartment for two years prior to tenant’s death.

It didn’t matter that someone else signed tenant’s mother’s name to the July 2008 renewal lease because tenant claimed succession rights from her father, and the fact that tenant’s husband owned a home in Jamaica, N.Y., from February 2007 to February 2016 didn’t diminish the daughter’s succession claim. There was no proof that she was married or that she lived in the husband’s house during the relevant time period. So the daughter was entitled to a renewal lease. But the rent overcharge wasn’t willful. When the daughter signed a vacancy lease that landlord gave her, she produced a Georgia driver’s license.

BHN1 Greene LLC: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. EQ210011RO (9/26/16) [6-pg. doc.]