Stuy Town-Peter Cooper Village tenants group win lawsuit securing rent regulation for their units
Jan. 6, 2023, 8:34 p.m.
Blackstone Group has sought to rent the units for market rate because it no longer participated in the J-51 tax break program.
Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village tenants won a critical decision against their landlord this week, securing rent-regulated status for Manhattan’s largest apartment complex.
Private equity firm Blackstone, which bought the buildings of approximately 11,000 apartments in 2015 for $5.4 billion, had sought to rent half of the units for market-rate beginning July 2020, while keeping the other half stabilized for 20 years.
The tenants’ association for both complexes, which were completed in 1947, sued the Wall Street company, citing the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. The measure mandated that any rent-regulated apartment stay that way.
Blackstone argued that previous court decisions permitted them to deregulate the units once the investment group stopped receiving property tax benefits under the J-51 program.
But state Supreme Court Judge Robert Reed wrote that Blackstone’s arguments were “based on a misconception of the law.”
“It does not imply the existence of an automatic deregulation mandate that goes into effect upon the expiration of enrollment,” the judge ruled.
Susan Steinberg, president of the tenants' group, lauded the victory.
“We're getting a lot of emails from people who are congratulating us and, you know — ‘this is fantastic, wow, didn't think it would happen, now I can stay in my apartment,’ — People are happy,” Steinberg said.
The decision this week was the latest in a series of years-long legal disputes between tenants and its owners.
After this story was first published, Blackstone issued a statement on the court's decision.
"We have not issued a single rent increase above those legally allowed under rent stabilization so this ruling has no impact on our tenants," the company's spokeswoman Jill Kary said. "We have invested more than $300 million into the property, materially improved service levels and voluntarily kept 5,000 apartments affordable, and our commitment to residents is unchanged."
This story was updated to include a statement from Jill Kary, SVP of public affairs at Blackstone.