New York:  “Landlord Faces Lawsuit for Harassment,” by Charles V. Bagli, The New York Times, January 28, 2010

State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced Thursday that he intends to sue a major New York landlord that he says harassed hundreds of tenants in rent-regulated apartments in Queens and Manhattan in a systematic effort to force their departure to create vacancies for higher-paying tenants.

The landlord, Vantage Properties, routinely filed eviction notices and other legal actions against working-class and immigrant families in tenements that the company had recently acquired to generate “substantial tenant turnover,” investigators and tenant advocates said. But most of the legal notices, the attorney general said in a letter to Vantage, contained “deceptive and misleading representations.” Investigators said the majority of those notices were eventually rejected by the city’s housing courts, although the company denied that.

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San Francisco: “Tenants’ Rights Proposal Passes Unanimously, Advocates Unhappy,” by Kimberly Chua, Mission Local, January 27, 2010

Supervisor Eric Mar’s amended legislation to protect families with children from being evicted during the school year was unanimously approved, but it was a bittersweet victory for many tenants’ rights advocates.

The supervisors gave 10 nods to Mar’s legislation at Tuesday’s board meeting, and Mayor Gavin Newsom will sign the legislation,  making it the first housing initiative approved in more than a year.

“We worked with Supervisor Mar and the mayor said he will support it,” said Tony Winnicker, the mayor’s communications director. “We were able to make it work and come to a consensus.”

The amendments allow landlords to still evict tenants during the summer, if the tenant has lived in the unit for less than 12 months, if the landlord owns only one unit or if the landlord has children under 18.

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San Francisco: “Rent wars: Court says landlord must make poor tenants rich,” by Lois Beckett, SF Weekly, January 25, 2010

In the history of San Francisco rent control wars, landlord Edward Litke may not have committed the most egregious violations. But he’s now on the hook for a huge payoff to some of his former tenants. Last week, the California Court of Appeals upheld a $1.2 million judgment against him in a wrongful eviction case involving a family who had lived in one of Litke’s apartments for more than 40 years.

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New York: “N.Y. Housing Complex Is Turned Over to Creditors,” by Charles V. Bagli, the New York Times, January 25, 2010

The owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the iconic middle-class housing complexes overlooking the East River in Manhattan, have decided to turn over the properties to creditors, officials said Monday morning.

The decision by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty comes four years after the $5.4 billion purchase of the complexes’ 110 buildings and 11,227 apartments in what was the most expensive real estate deal of its kind in American history.

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San Francisco:  Newsom vetoes eviction protection legislation, by Mike Aldax, San Francisco Examiner Under the Dome, January 23, 2010

Mayor Gavin Newsom has vetoed legislation that would extend “just cause” eviction protections to nearly all renters in San Francisco.

The legislation, introduced by Supervisor John Avalos, extends those protections — which are currently in place for tenants living in units built prior to June 1979 — to those living in units built after that time period.

Tenants in units built prior to June 1979 are covered by The City’s rent-control ordinance.

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