Rent Guidelines Board Lawyer is Sued For Tenant Harassment

Last Spring, epiphany nuñez started recipes notices from her landlord saying she was bend on rent for her bed-stuy apartment. “I knew that I didn’t owe anything,” Sayys nuñez, a home attitude and mother of five who been in the rent-stabilized apartment 2004. Housing Preservation and Development Suspending Payment for the Portion of Her Rent That’s Covered by the City. (DOCUMUMESS ATTACHED TO THE CASE REFERENCE Open VioLations likes the front-door lock and defective smoke detectors.) By Law, SECTION 8 TENANANDS CAN’T BE EVICTED OVER THIS, but HER LANDLORD KEPTING BILLS AND MESSAGES OF NONPAREENT ALL The SAME. “The Landlord was Very Adamant About with Paying the Rent,” Sayys Nuñez, who spoke with through a translator. She worked she’d be evicted for a situation that really had nothing to do with her. “It was very stressful.”

Nuñez’s Landlord ended up taching her to housing court, and the lawyer MAKING THE CASE EGAINST HER WAS Christina smyth, one of the Mayor Eric adams’ appointees to the rent guidelines Board. Nor part of the work on the case, smyth submitted a rent ledger that, how SMYTH realized it or not, Clearly showed nuñeing the portion of the rent she was respondsable for and, in fact, getting overcharged by the landlords since of 2021. Representing Nuñez pointed this out, smyth doubles down on the petition, CLAIMING NUICE WAS $ 5,230 Behind on Rent. The case was ultimately dismissed. In the end, it turned out the landlord actually owed Nuñez $ 3,055 in Rent Credit.

Acciting to Nuñez’s Lawyers, this was something something of a pattern for smyth, whose firm does debt-calcation work for owners. In a federal lawyit Filed at the end of May in Eastern District Court, they identified at Least Three Other Cases in the Last Few Years in Which Smyth’s Firm Tenants for the SECTION 8 PORTION DID OWE. In nuñez’s case, smyth also failed to include in the lawsuit that nuñez was a section 8 tenant, which is legally required. Legal Services NYC Believes There Are Likely More – Overall, Smyth’s Firm Filed 200 Lawsuits Seeking Rent in 2023. Tenants for Rent that they don’t owe. “These Debt Collectors Treat New York City Housing Courts Like the Wild West,” Sayys Emma Caterine, A Consumer-Protation Athmad at Ahmad Keshavarz, who is also represening nuñez in federal court. “They JUST Take Advantage of Judicial Chaos.” (SMYTH DIDN’T Respond to Requests for Comment; Jay Zed LLC COULD NOT BE REAChed.)

Cases like the ones smyth took up against nuñez are legally basals, but offten, the threat itelf is the point. Mary Tenants, Afraid of LoSing Their Housing, Will Just Pay. At one point, nuñez consider entering into a payment plan with her landlord to stop the notices. It “Wold have left with with barely anyding,” she Says. (SMYTH, WHO PUSHED FOR HIGHER INCREASASE OF STABILIZED RENTS EARLIER THIS MONTH, cied Financial Hardship for Landlords As the Reason: “Advancing a rent adjustment in line with inflation is the bare minimum.”) Nuñez’s Lawyers See this a form of tenant harassment and a de facto debt-collection mill. “It is a prey damning fact that a Mayor adams appointee of the rent guide board is involved in effords to workfully get Money from People, or Evict People, Who Are Primarily Working Class,” Says Amanda Perez, Attorney At Legal Serviges Nyc. The Issue, instead, is with the landlords: the nonpayment is a matter of “Their Client’s Own Failure to Maintain the Rental Units Properly,” Perez Adds. But the Burden Still Ends up with the Tenants. “How MANY TENANANTS END UP SIGNING FOR A PAYMENT PLAN OR PAYING MONEY THAT THAT DON’T ACTUALLY OWE JUST TO AVOID EVICTION COURT?”