A question about rent controlled/stabilized apartments in New York city..

Question

I've heard of people who have a rent controlled apartments and pay barely anything for rent because their grandmother used to live in the apartment 50 years ago. How is it possible for a family to maintain a rent-controlled/stabilized apartment even when the original tenant has moved away or died? How can one apartment remain in the same family for multiple generations? Is this even legal?

Answer 1

you can pass it along to a relative when you die if the relative was living there with you when you died.  You cannot just give it to anyone, you have to prove that you lived there (for 3 years or so, not sure of the actual number).  The original thinking was that if you lived there with your parents and they died, then you would not have to move.

Now it is out of control.  People have been in these places so long they feel that they own them and they are entitled to all of the benefits of ownership.

PS, there is a difference between stablized and rent controlled, but in this case, they work basically the same

Answer 2

I was asking that in 1976, when a friend of mine had an apartment on the Upper East Side for $140 a month, and we lived in a dump in Queens for $300.  I can understand how it might be able to go to a second generation, but if someone who is 75 got the apartment in 1960, how could anyone believe he's still there.  There were tons of huge apartments in Jackson Heights with 3 bedrooms, and one little old lady, while we were a family of four stuffed into what was basically a one bedroom apartment with a tiny little 7 X 9 room the kids shared.  But for that lady to go to a smaller, more manageable apartment would cost her 10 times as much.  So she was financially forced to stay there, when she wanted to be out of there as much as we wanted her out of there.  That's how Monica on Friends got her place...it was her grandmother's rent controlled apartment.