Two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of rent stabilization in New York went to oral arguments in the Second Circuit Wednesday.
The suits — one brought by landlord groups the Community Housing Improvement Program and the Rent Stabilization Association, the other on behalf of mom-and-pop owners Dino, Dimos and Vasiliki Panagoulias — argue that the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 violates two constitutional amendments.
The parties argue that the law violates the Fifth Amendment’s “takings clause,” which says
the government cannot seize property without compensating owners. The plaintiffs claim that the law eliminated an owner’s ability to use a rental unit for anything but stabilized housing, which amounts to a physical taking.
Another argument is that the law ignores the 14th Amendment’s “due process clause” because it doesn’t fulfill its stated purpose of promoting affordable housing. The 2019 reform ended a rarely used provision that allowed landlords to deregulate units based on their tenants’ income being too high.
