Gabrielle Vines lives in an apartment in Fort George that’s both cluttered and empty. There are giant storage bins filled with her grandmother’s possessions, an old washing machine that’s no longer in use and a closet stuffed with photo albums. But Vines has hesitated to make the space her own.
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Strict criteria to pass down a rent-stabilized apartment
Rent stabilization is a New York program that limits how much building owners can raise the rent for qualifying units. Family members — by blood, marriage or emotional and financial dependence — can claim succession rights for a rent-stabilized apartment, but only if they can prove they lived there with the tenant for at least two years immediately before their death or permanent departure. There are exceptions to the two-year requirement, including for people who are full-time students, like Vines was when she says she was living with her grandmother.
Vines doesn’t contest that she lived part of the week in her dorm. But she said she spent long weekends, holidays and spring break with her grandmother and sometimes slept over when she had time in the middle of the week. Vines provided Gothamist with medical records from 2022 and 2023 that list the Fort George apartment as her address, as well as food receipts from businesses in the neighborhood. She also shared screenshots of text exchanges with her grandmother from different points in 2022 where they coordinated plans for their time together.
But Adam Leitman Bailey, a real estate attorney not connected to the case, said a common benchmark for a primary residence is staying there at least 183 days a year. He said the student exception typically applies to people who were already living in the unit for an extended amount of time before enrolling in school.
“She’s got a losing case,” he said. “There’s no doubt.”
Sherwin Belkin, another real estate lawyer, said a family member can also establish that an apartment was their primary residence if they used the address on government documents, like a driver’s license or a voter registration.
“Prescriptions and magazines and those things are nice, but they’re not as weighty for most judges as publicly declared documents,” he said.
Deutch, the building owner, said it’s up to the courts and the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal to decide whether Vines qualifies to keep the apartment. Vines is due in court Wednesday for a hearing in her case. A spokesperson for the state agency said it doesn’t comment on pending applications for succession rights.
Legislators updated the state’s rent regulation laws in 2019 to prevent landlords from leasing rent-stabilized units at market rate when the tenant dies or moves out. Since the new laws took effect, Leitman Bailey said, it’s become less common for property owners to try to evict relatives in these situations. He said they don’t have the same incentives to vacate those apartments, because they can’t hike up the rent nearly as much as they once could.
“They can’t afford to pay their expenses. They can’t afford to pay the mortgage, the repairs, the super,” he said. “They believe the law is intended to bankrupt landlords.”
But he and Belkin both said there are a few reasons why a landlord might be inclined to pursue eviction if they believe a relative doesn’t qualify for succession. In this case, they said, the owner might also be able to boost his income if a new tenant with a housing subsidy moves in. Property records for the building show the owner is allowed to collect more than the rent-stabilized amount for tenants receiving rental assistance.
The monthly amount could vary, depending on what the paying agency approves. As of January 2024, the maximum amount the federal Section 8 program and the city’s own aid program would pay is $3,027. That’s more than three times the approximately $900 a month Vines said her grandmother paid. The property owner has not accepted Vines’ attempts at paying rent.
Deutch said if he brought in a new tenant, he would only be able to rent the unit for “marginally better than what it’s currently rented for.” He said there are some benefits he could get but declined to say what those benefits might be.
“When you start to manage as much as we manage, you do become part of these people’s families,” he said. “That’s a fortunate truth, but unfortunate in a sense, too, because at the end of the day, we need to be able to collect the rent in order to pay our bills.”
Vines said it would be devastating to lose an apartment with four generations of history. She said she can still imagine Venta-Perez cooking when she sits in the kitchen.
“I miss her so much,” Vines said. “I just want to make her proud. And I want to keep her around, and her spirit, for as long as possible.”
David Brand contributed reporting.