US: Warren Says Commercial Real Estate Loans Pose Danger, Bloomberg, February 11, 2010
I also wrote about this in my blog post, Happy New Year! For Tenants Nothing’s Changed.
New York: “Landlord to Pay $1 Million Over Treatment of Tenants,” by Christine Haughney, The New York Times, February 11, 2010
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday that he had reached a $1 million settlement with a large New York City property owner that became a lightning rod for complaints about landlords’ treatment of tenants in rent-regulated apartments.
Under the settlement, the landlord, Vantage Properties, must stop harassing tenants in its 9,500 apartments in Queens and Manhattan with “baseless legal notices” and “frivolous housing court evictions,” according to a statement from Mr. Cuomo.
San Francisco: “Building garages becomes harder,” by Joshua Sabatini, San Francisco Examiner City Hall Watch, February 10, 2010
New rules making it more difficult to build garages in three San Francisco neighborhoods were approved Tuesday and could open the door for similar restrictions elsewhere in The City.
Citing a number of recent tenant evictions followed by garage applications, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu introduced legislation that would make it more difficult to construct a garage — even prohibiting one in certain cases — in the North Beach, Chinatown and Telegraph Hill neighborhoods.
San Francisco: “Four CitiApartments affiliates file for bankruptcy,” Reuters, February 10, 2010
Four real estate entities owned by San Francisco’s biggest landlord, the Lembi Group, filed for Chapter 11 protection in a California bankruptcy court on Monday, according to court documents.
The entities are affiliates of Lembi Group’s CitiApartments Inc, the largest apartment owner in San Francisco. The four entities collectively own 16 residential properties, which were collateral for a $132.4 million loan.
The four entities that filed for bankruptcy are Hermann Street DE LLC, LRL Citi Properties I DE LLC, Sutter Associates DE LLC and Trophy Properties I DE LLC.
New York: “Stuyvesant Town Tenants Hire Lawyers to Explore Bid,” by Oshrat Carmiel, Bloomberg.com, February 8,2010
Tenants of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Manhattan’s biggest apartment complex, retained the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP to advise them on a possible bid for the developments.
The firm is handling the case pro bono, according to a statement released today by the Tenants Association.
“We’re trying to determine our destiny here,” Al Doyle, president of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association, said in a telephone interview. “We want to make sure in any case that we’re treated fairly.”
US: “Innocent victims of the subprime crisis,” by Sasha Abramsky, Guardian UK, February 6, 2010
“What happens often is that after a foreclosure, a broker or an agent comes to the house and, as though the law didn’t exist, tells renters the house has been foreclosed and they have to leave,” says Judith Liben, senior housing attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
The law Liben is referencing is the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, passed in spring last year and intended to remain on the books until 2012. It was intended to mitigate the collateral damage from the foreclosure epidemic by making banks give tenants on month-to-month leases 90 days notice before evicting them following the home owners’ foreclosure; and by ensuring that tenants in good standing with year, or multi-year, leases couldn’t be evicted mid-lease following a foreclosure. The new owners would, according to this act, have to honour the terms of the lease, keep up repairs on the property, and repay the tenants’ security deposits upon completion of the lease.
