Housing cases for tenant groups and homeowners

What I handle

• Rent overcharge and deregulation schemes affecting many apartments in a rent-stabilized building, including buildings that receive 421-a or J-51 tax benefits.
• Class and group actions for tenants where the same practice reached every unit, and the question is whether the building was lawfully regulated.
• City and State housing programs that took, transferred or changed the terms of people’s homes.
• Access to the courts for homeowners and tenants who face the loss of a home without a lawyer.

One tenant’s overcharge claim is often the first of several. If the same thing may have happened to your neighbors, their claims can often be brought together with yours, so tell me about the building, not only your apartment.

Reading

• Rent Overcharge Fraud After Burrows: Why Tenants Are Stronger Together. What Burrows changed about old overcharge claims, what a building can recover, and why these cases are strongest brought together.
• The Right to Counsel Nobody Was Deciding. How Fanfair v. Knipel made the Brooklyn foreclosure part decide homeowners’ requests for appointed counsel.
• Dorce v. City of New York. The class action over the City’s Third Party Transfer program.

How a tenant group gets started

1. Find your neighbors. A tenant association helps, but a handful of tenants in different apartments is enough to begin.
2. Request rent histories. Each tenant can ask the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal for the apartment’s rent registration history. Gather as many as you can.
3. Collect leases and riders, especially any rider about a preferential rent, and note when each tenant moved in and what each actually pays.
4. Make a simple list: unit, tenant, move-in date, registered rent, rent actually paid. Patterns show up quickly on one page.
5. Have the set reviewed before anyone files alone. Whether a building brings one case, a class action or separate claims is a decision best made together.

Matters

• E.D.N.Y. No. 17-cv-563

  421-a Tenants Ass’n v. 125 Court Street LLC

  RICO claims that a landlord evaded rent stabilization while receiving 421-a tax benefits.

• Civ. Ct. Kings County · 67 Misc 3d 28 (App Term, 2d Dep’t 2019), affd 214 A.D.3d 723 (2d Dep’t 2023)

  125 Court Street LLC v. Nicholson

  A landlord’s case against a rent-stabilized tenant in a 421-a building. The Appellate Term vacated the settlement the landlord had obtained and dismissed the landlord’s case, and the Second Department affirmed, holding that the tenant was induced to settle by the landlord’s material misrepresentations about its compliance with the rent stabilization laws, and that a settlement requiring more than the legal regulated rent is void. I represented the tenant in Housing Court, which restored her to her apartment in March 2024. Resolved.

• Sup. Ct. Kings County No. 513966/19 · 2024 NY Slip Op 05082 (2d Dep’t 2024)

  374-76 Prospect Place Tenants Ass’n v. City of New York

  Claims by a tenants association in the City’s Tenant Interim Lease program. The Second Department affirmed, with costs, the denial of the City’s motion to dismiss. I argued the appeal for the association.

• S.D.N.Y. No. 19-cv-2216 · 2 F.4th 82 (2d Cir. 2021)

  Dorce v. City of New York

  Class action challenging the Third Party Transfer program. In September 2026 the parties moved for preliminary approval of a proposed $60 million settlement for the Round 10 class.

• App. Div. 2d Dep’t No. 2023-05048

  Fanfair v. Knipel

  Class petition over unrepresented homeowners’ deemed requests for appointed counsel in the Kings County foreclosure part. Settled March 2024. Public-interest case.

All representative matters