Tenant's Overcharge Complaint Subject to Four-Year Lookback Period

Rent-stabilized tenant complained to the DHCR in January 2019 of rent overcharge. The DRA ruled for tenant and directed landlord to refund $10,588, which included triple damages. The overcharge occurred after the January 2015 base date, when landlord attempted to revoke tenant's preferential rent after passage of HSTPA, which made preferential rents permanent for the tenants in occupancy who had been granted them by landlord.

Tenant appealed and lost. Tenant claimed that he had filed his overcharge complaint in 2015, not 2019, and that the base date therefore was in 2011. But the DHCR had no record of an overcharge complaint filed by tenant in 2015. And the January 2019 overcharge complaint was subject to a four-year lookback period since HSTPA hadn't yet been enacted when the complaint was filed. Tenant hadn't shown that there was a fraudulent scheme to deregulate the apartment or other reason to look back beyond the base rent date. A mere increase in rent, as claimed here, wasn't a sufficient basis to establish fraud. 

Guzman: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket No. MM110022RT (3/28/24)[2-pg. document]