Patterson wasn't the only tenant he threatened yesterday, either. A teenage boy living in Reid's Jamaica, Queens, building heard the commotion from the second floor and came out in his boxers to find Reid "bloody blade in hand." The landlord reportedly "rushed at the teen, and the boy quickly hopped a fence and called 911 from a neighbor’s home," his mother said. more ›

An ongoing dispute between a 62-year-old Queens landlord and his 48-year-old tenant turned tragic today when Eulith "Sonny" Reid reportedly bludgeoned Hettie Patterson with a machete before turning the blade on himself. Both were transported to Jamaica Hospital where they were pronounced dead. According to neighbors, Patterson may not have paid her rent in a few months—or possibly Reid was refusing to accept it in an attempt to force her out. more ›

The NY State Court of Appeals has decided on the years-lond dispute between landlords and their rent-stabilized tenants—the ones who pay less than $1,000/month for their apartments—over how much rents can be increased. And the court found in favor for the landlords, which means that 300,000 tenants may need to pay a lot in retroactive rent increases. more ›

A discontent tenant fatally stabbed his building super when he came to collect the rent on Friday. Super Shayne Sinclair was collecting overdue rent at a single room occupancy building on E. 51st Street in Flatlands when he was stabbed by the unidentified killer. "Somebody owed him some money and that's what he was trying to get. He left home to go look for a paycheck and he's dead now," a relative of Sinclair's told the News. more ›

A Queens landlord was brutally beaten with a metal pipe and held hostage by her tenant because he was short on rent, officials say. On Tuesday afternoon Yun Zhong Sun, 43, went to 22-year-old Jasuli Abdimutel's apartment to collect the rent. He welcomed her inside, but explained that he only had $340 in cash to give her. When Sun sat down on his bed to write out a receipt, Abdimutel allegedly "hit her over the head multiple times with a metal pipe, causing her to fall over on the bed and suffer multiple lacerations to the back of her head, forehead and her face," according to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown [pdf]. more ›

Like payphones, the Dodo and green benches, rent controlled apartments are disappearing, and people don't know how to deal. There are now fewer than 40,000 rent controlled apartments in NYC, a decrease of more than 20 percent over the last decade, and more than 60 percent in the last 20 years. Unlike rent stablized apartments, rent control refers to residential buildings constructed before February 1947; tenants (or their lawful successor) must have lived in their apartment continuously since before July 1, 1971, which means most of the tenants are the elderly. more ›

Hours after Patricia Wilson's body was found outside her Linwood Street apartment building in East New York, her landlord was charged with her murder. Jacqueline Wesley-Rosa, 49, was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon charges; police and neighbors say the pair had been engaged in a long-running dispute over rent and issues like trash disposal. Wilson's friend said, "It's a shock because...she's a very nice lady. Everybody will miss her, the whole block." more ›

Rafat Ali, founder and publisher of Paidcontent, recently moved into his Murray Hill rental, so he held a housewarming party. When he told his doorman he would be expecting guests, things got a little crazy. According to Brick Underground, the doorman eventually told him, “You think you’re better than us. I Googled you and because you sold your company for however many millions of dollars, you think you are a bigshot.” more ›

Yesterday, Jersey City authorities were able to defuse a homemade bomb in a vacated pizzeria on Palisade Avenue. Jersey City Deputy Police Chief Peter Nalbach said the bomb was "very rudimentary... If you watched 'MacGyver' as a kid you could probably figure out how to do it. But if it had gone off, there would have been major destruction." And police arrested the building's landlord, who allegedly was trying to set up the pizzeria tenant! more ›

A judge threw out the fixed price rent hikes the Rent Guidelines Board imposed on New Yorkers who live in rent-stabilized apartments — meaning that some 300,000 rent-control tenants who have been overpaying for the past two years might be reimbursed. The far-reaching ruling is a big victory for tenants and tenants advocates, and it could turn out costing landlords tens of millions of dollars. more ›

A Bronx renter stabbed his landlord to death after an argument about a spare mattress on Tuesday, according to police. The brutal crime occurred after suspect Omari Richards, 26, got into an argument with his landlord's fiancee over a spare mattress, the Daily News reports. Apparently, when the woman told Richards he couldn't use the spare bed because she needed it for her son, the suspect got angry and started shouting. "I heard [him] saying, 'She's a f------ liar,'" the fiancee said. more ›

East Village actor and director Sturgis Warner isn't just facing eviction from his apartment of more than 30 years — in a theatrical twist that adds insult to injury, he might get kicked out of his home by the producers of the Blue Man Group. In 2001, the moneymen behind the indigo-hued performance troupe purchased the building that houses their theater on Lafayette Street's Colonnade Row, where the 59-year-old thespian has lived in a fifth floor walk-up since 1978. Since then, the producers have been buying out tenants to convert the residences into their own apartments, a move that housing laws allow. more ›

Life in a notoriously squalid Chinatown boarding house only got worse after the city tried to bring the building at 81 Bowery up to code, the Village Voice reports. For years, poor immigrant tenants have paid around $100 a month for tiny cubicles on the kitchen-less fourth floor of the lodging house, where they share two shower stalls, a urinal, and four toilets. But after the city evacuated tenants last year because of fire code violations, the landlord tore down the tenants' handmade partitions, which blocked the sprinklers but had given residents a slight sense of privacy. more ›

Despite a lawsuit from landlords and building owners, the NY Times reports, "New York City’s tenant antiharassment law, which gave renters the right to sue their landlords in Housing Court for using threats or other disruptive tactics to try to force them out, was upheld in a State Supreme Court ruling filed Wednesday." Tenants' groups said landlords in gentrifying neighborhoods would use harassment tactics to push tenants out, but landlords, in their lawsuit, claimed it was impossible for city inspectors to determine whether harassment occurred. And speaking of landlords, the city's New York City Housing Authority overcharged tenants—thanks to a computer error—and threatened them with eviction! The Legal Aid Society said of the city's oops, "This is a population that, if they’re evicted from the Housing Authority, will enter the shelter system. The Housing Authority should have systems in place to protect these families, rather than subjecting them to the risk of eviction and homelessness." more ›

Last night, the Rent Guidelines Board voted to raise rents for rent-stabilized apartments: 3% for one-year leases and 6% for two-year leases. NY1 reports, "For tenants who have lived in their building for six or more years, the increase will be either $30 or $60, whichever is more." more ›

Rent-controlled tenants living in the artist studios above Carnegie Hall received eviction letters last week from the state, but at least one of the six remaining holdouts remains defiant. 96-year-old Editta Sherman has been fighting to stay in her $530/month rent-controlled, 800 square foot studio apartment ever since the concert hall announced its expansion/renovation plans last year. The Carnegie Corporation has offered to relocate the remaining tenants "to equivalent or superior apartments in the neighborhood, paying any differential in rent for the remainder of their lives," but Sherman tells the Post, "They'll have to drag me out. They'll have to use their bare hands." Unless, of course, the corporation can come up with the $10 million figure she floated in October as the price of her evacuation. more ›

building into a home--with a gym, nanny suite, etc.--for his family. The tenants questioned whether Economakis would really live in the building, suspecting he would rent it out at market rates or flip it for millions, and the situation raised questions about rent laws for years. In the summer, the Court of Appeals ruled that Economakis could evict them; the Post says the tenants "gave in because they weren't confident they would beat" their landlord in Manhattan Supreme Court. A tenant added, "I don't think we can afford Manhattan anymore." more ›