Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg signed off on the city’s first law enabling tenants to sue landlords in Housing Court for systemic harassment. Previously, tenants had to take landlords to court for each and every violation, such as failure to provide hot water or letting so much water leak that floors collapse. The so-called Tenant Protection Act is primarily aimed at landlords who are trying to force tenants out of rent-regulated apartments in order to bump the......

Nothing makes our skin crawl like reading stories about bedbug infestations. The notorious nocturnal bloodsuckers are almost impossible to get rid of, attack you under the comfort of covers, and can leave you covered with welts. Yesterday, the Daily News took a final 2007 look at the bedbug epidemic that leaves no corner of the city untouched. In 2004, 537 complaints were phoned in to 311 regarding bedbugs; however, in the fiscal year ending......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on 20th Ave. and the Whitestone Expressway in Queens, a slashing on Van Siclen Ave. and Linden Blvd. in Brooklyn, and three people were shot (one homicide) on Hoe Ave. in the Bronx. Just when you thought crime in Newark could not possibly get worse, a witness in a major drug trial was murdered before he could testify. Cops believe that his killing was facilitated by a......

Tomorrow, a new state task force will convene to talk about the threat of mold to the health of New Yorkers and what can be done about it. The New York State Toxic Mold Task Force was formed at the urging of health experts, who are concerned that there isn't enough being done to combat an organism that wrecks properties and endangers the lives of tenants and homeowners. According to state senator Liz Kreuger representing......

Some fun website fun related to 47 East 3rd Street. The owners, Alistair and Catherine Economakis, have wanted to convert the 60-room, 11,575 square foot East Village tenement into a single-family residence since 2005, but there have been obstacles called tenants. And not just any tenants - these are rent-stabilized tenants (the 15 units rent for $600-1200/month) - and soon the two sides were embroiled in a 2+ year court dispute. To catch you......

A state appeals court ruled that a couple can evict tenants at 47 East Third Street so they can turn the 11,575 square foot building into their private home. A five bedroom home with library, gym, and nanny's suite. The five-story building had 15 units, with many tenants that had rent-stabilized rents of $600-1200 a month, and last year, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge found there would be an "inescapable consequence" of converting the building......

Sometimes people just don't like dogs, and one of those people is Jeanne Farley. Farley is suing her apartment's management company to, as she tells the Daily News, "get rid of the dogs and play by the rules." Sixty-four year old Farley has a fear of dogs (cynophobia) points out that the rules at Penn South does have a ban on dogs and her lease says "no animals of any kind" (!!) are not allowed.......

Erich Fuchs and his neighbors are angry with their landlord. They think that he's been gussying up the building in which they live, 230 Riverside Drive, so as to raise the rents. That's an understandable issue to have, but then Fuchs went and took it to a gross new level. He poured a bucket of urine onto a construction worker from his 10th-floor balcony. Think about that. He poured a bucket of urine from......

Carol Mayse, Senior Housing Court Clerk...

Is your apartment infested with bedbugs, while your landlord doesn't do much about it? Take heart in the case of Peter Young: A judge ruled that Young had to pay only 55% of his rent during the infestation, after Young's landlord sued him when he stopped paying rent because of the "unacceptable" bedbug situation. Young lives on Ludlow Street, in a $1,025/month studio managed by Ludlow Properties. The Post reports that Housing Court Judge Cyril......