MORE ON RPL 235 BB

As reported earlier, this new provision, which was signed into law on November 29, 2017, requires a valid certificate of occupancy to be disclosed prior to the execution of a rental agreement or lease between a landlord and a tenant, effective immediately upon enactment.

According to the Justification provision in the Senate Bill S6636 - Details:

"Some tenants may assume that when a landlord is offering a place to rent, that those housing accommodations are safe and up to code. However, that isn't necessarily the case. In fact, some landlords are seeking additional profits by allowing more tenants into a house or building than would otherwise be allowed. For example, a landlord may take a two-family house, which was once only home to two families, and instead make illegal conversions inside the two-family house such that five or six families are living there. These illegal conversions present not only the obvious concerns of the safety of those individuals living there, but they also cause our neighborhoods and schools to become overcrowded because our city planners are assuming that a two-family house only has two families in it, and not five or six. This bill would protect tenants by requiring landlords to disclose whether a certificate of occupancy is on file, if the building is required to have one, for the property being rented and that it is valid. Alternatively, landlords could provide a copy of the certificate of occupancy to the tenants."