Tenant's Rent Frozen at Base Date Rent

Rent-stabilized tenant complained of rent overcharge. The DRA ruled for tenant, froze tenant's rent at the base date rent of $1,800 per month due to landlord's failure to file rent registrations, and ordered landlord to refund $42,993, including interest and triple damages. Landlord and tenant both appealed and lost. Landlord claimed that tenant's complaint should have been treated as a fair market rent appeal, with no applicable triple damages. But any rent overcharge in this case resulted from rental events that occurred after the base rent date. Landlord also claimed that it didn't know that in 1990, the DHCR ruled that the building was part of a horizontal multiple dwelling and therefore rent stabilized, but this didn't matter. Tenant claimed that the DRA should have applied the default method to set the legal rent because there was a fraudulent scheme to deregulate the apartment. But any rent registration errors resulted from landlord's ignorance in entering the apartment into the DHCR's rent registration system, and weren't proof of a scheme to fraudulently deregulate the apartment. Also, the base date rent was less than prior tenant's rent, which didn't indicate fraud.

Maresca/El-Taieb: DHCR Adm. Rev. Docket Nos. FN210049RT, FO210026RO (2/21/18) [10-pg. doc.]