Best Lawyers For Tenant Rights NYC

by Amara Amy Digital Marketer

At Outerbridge Law P.C. in New York City, we represent local clients in landlord-tenant, real estate, and condominium or cooperative ownership matters. Our experience represents both landlords and tenants to advocate effectively for your rights.

As a tenant, you have specific rights according to the law. For example, you have a legal right to make with other tenants and form or join tenant organizations to protect your rights. Your landlord must allow your tenant group to have a meeting, at no cost, in any society or social room in your building. This is true even where the use of the room usually demands payment of a fee.

You have a right to privacy inside your residence. Unless there is an emergency, like a fire or flood, your landlord can only enter your rooms if the landlord first gives you consistent notice and enters at a reasonable time (usually during business hours). Also, the landlord can only enter your rooms to do the following:

Provide required or agreed-upon improvements or services;

Accordance with the terms of your lease;

or to show the rooms to prospective purchasers or tenants.

If you are disabled, you have a right to have your landlord give you reasonable services so you can experience equal access to housing. Your landlord must allow you to make reasonable structural changes to your apartment if they are necessary to allow you to fully use your apartment, like building a slope or installing grab bars in the bathroom. If you a disability as determined under either Federal, State, or New York City laws, you can have a right to an accommodation animal that would be medically helpful to you. This could be a guide dog, service animal, or emotional support animal. Under a new New York City Law, a home provider must reply to any request for such accommodation and engage in a cooperative dialogue. There have been related rules under the Federal Laws that a housing provider must join in what’s called the interactive process. In short, your landlord cannot only tell you no for no reason, and without a cooperative dialogue, when you ask an accommodation. And nothing in your lease can reduce your rights under these laws.

You have the right not to be separated against by your owner or potential owner on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, marital status, or familial status. In New York City, you are also guarded against discrimination on the basis of lawful attack, sexual adjustment, connection status, and immigration status, having AIDS or being HIV-positive, or being a recovering alcoholic. In New York City, you also have the right not to be separated against based on your lawful source of income, including income from social security or any form of national, state, or local public support, such as Section 8.

Your landlord cannot repay you for exercising your rights. For example, your landlord cannot try to remove you just because you made a good faith complaint to a government agency about health or safety problems, or because you tried to defend your rights under the lease, or because you engaged in a tenant organization.

You have a right not to be attacked by your landlord, including physical or verbal abuse, willful denial of duties, attempts to get you to move even for the payment of money, or repeated lawsuits against you. If your landlord lies or intentionally misrepresents the law to you, this may be granted a type of harassment. You have a mutual right to win legal fees from your landlord in any conflicts when your lease gives the landlord such rights.

If you are a tenant and want to know more about tenant rights you can schedule a consultation with our Lawyers For Tenant Rights NYC. You can contact us at 212-364-5612 or visit our website.