HSTPA 2019 Summary: Rent Caps, Evictions, and Tenant Rights

New York’s Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA) made rent stabilization permanent, shut down the routes landlords used to deregulate apartments or push rents up sharply between tenants, and set statewide rules for security deposits, application fees, late fees, tenant screening, eviction notices, and overcharge claims. This summary of the HSTPA 2019 walks through what changed, what it means if you rent in New York, and where the 2024 Good Cause Eviction law picked up for market-rate tenants the original act didn’t cover.

Rent Stabilization Made Permanent

Before 2019, rent stabilization laws expired on a cycle and had to be renewed by the legislature. The HSTPA removed that sunset clause. For the roughly one million rent-stabilized households in the state, the framework no longer depends on the political weather every few years.

The act also killed luxury deregulation. Under prior law, a stabilized apartment could exit the system permanently once the legal rent crossed roughly $2,775, either on vacancy or because the household earned over $200,000. That gave landlords a powerful incentive to push rents past those lines. Both high-rent and high-income deregulation are gone. Apartments stay stabilized regardless of the rent level or the tenant’s income.¹

The vacancy bonus went with it. Since 1997, landlords had been entitled to a 20% rent bump whenever a stabilized tenant moved out, plus a longevity add-on of 0.6% per year when a unit hadn’t turned over in at least eight years. The HSTPA eliminated both.¹ The legal rent for the next tenant now stays close to what the last tenant was paying.

Caps on Building and Apartment Improvement Increases

Improvement costs used to be one of the fastest ways to move a rent toward the deregulation threshold. The HSTPA capped both categories.

For Major Capital Improvements, building-wide work such as a new boiler, roof, or elevator, the annual rent increase passed through to a tenant is now capped at 2% of that tenant’s current rent. The prior cap was 6% in New York City and 15% elsewhere in the state. The MCI increase now works as a temporary surcharge rather than a permanent addition to the base rent, and it must come off 30 years after it took effect.²

Individual Apartment Improvements, upgrades inside a single unit like kitchen cabinets or new bathroom fixtures, were originally capped at $15,000 in recoverable costs over 15 years. In October 2024 the rules changed. A two-tier system now allows recoverable IAI costs of up to $30,000 in the first tier and up to $50,000 in the second, with additional requirements at the higher level.³ The old three-IAI-per-15-year limit is also gone. If your landlord raises the rent citing IAI work, the HCR fact sheets are worth checking to confirm the claimed cost falls within the correct tier.

Preferential Rent Is Locked In

A preferential rent is a rent lower than the maximum legal regulated rent. Before the HSTPA, landlords could snap the rent back up to the full legal amount at lease renewal, which sometimes meant an overnight jump of hundreds of dollars. The 2019 law changed that. The preferential rent becomes your base rent for as long as you stay in the apartment, and the landlord cannot raise it to the legal maximum at renewal.⁴

The protection ends when you leave. Once you move out, the landlord can generally reset the rent to the legal regulated maximum for the next tenant. One exception matters: if you left because the landlord failed to maintain livable conditions, violating the warranty of habitability, the landlord cannot use that vacancy to restore the higher rent.⁴

Security Deposits, Application Fees, and Late Fees

The HSTPA capped the upfront cost of renting in New York. Under General Obligations Law § 7-108, a landlord cannot demand a security deposit greater than one month’s rent, regardless of credit history or income. Seasonal-use units and owner-occupied co-ops are the only exceptions.⁵

At move-out, the landlord has 14 days to return the full deposit or send an itemized statement explaining what was withheld. Miss the deadline or skip the itemization, and the landlord forfeits the right to keep any of it. The forfeiture is automatic once the clock runs out, even if the tenant genuinely caused damage.⁵ Before you move in, the landlord must also offer a walk-through inspection so pre-existing damage is on record.⁶

Application fees are capped at $20 or the actual cost of the background and credit check, whichever is less. If you bring your own credit or background report from the last 30 days, the fee must be waived. The landlord also has to give you a copy of any report they ran and the receipt from the screening company.⁷

Late fees can’t be charged until rent is at least five days past due, and the fee itself cannot exceed $50 or 5% of the monthly rent, whichever is less.⁷

The Tenant Blacklisting Ban

Real Property Law § 227-f makes it illegal to deny a rental application based on your involvement in past or pending housing court cases. Before the HSTPA, even tenants who won or had their cases dismissed often found themselves shut out of the market once their names surfaced in court databases.⁸

The law builds in its own enforcement. If a landlord obtained your housing court records, or asked a screening service for them, and then denied your application, the denial is presumed to be based on those records. The landlord has to prove otherwise. Civil penalties run from $500 to $1,000 per violation, and the Attorney General’s office has pursued landlords who continue to screen this way.⁹

Notice for Rent Increases and Non-Renewals

Real Property Law § 226-c applies to all residential tenancies statewide, not just stabilized ones. If your landlord plans to raise the rent by 5% or more, or does not intend to renew your lease, they owe you advance written notice. The required period depends on your length of occupancy:

Less than one year: 30 days.
One to two years: 60 days.
More than two years, or under a lease of two years or more: 90 days.

If the landlord does not give proper notice, the existing lease terms continue until the notice period actually runs.¹⁰

Eviction Timeline and Tenant Protections

Before filing a non-payment case, a landlord now has to serve a written rent demand and wait 14 days. The old rule allowed oral demands with no set waiting period, and written demands required only three days. The extra time gives tenants a window to pull funds together, apply for rental assistance, or clear up a billing dispute.⁶

Once a case is filed, more safeguards apply. Court papers must be served at least 10 days before the hearing. Paying all rent owed before the first court date stops a non-payment case. A warrant of eviction has to be served at least 14 days before removal. And when a court finds a lease violation rather than non-payment, the tenant gets 30 days to cure before eviction proceeds.⁶

Under RPAPL § 753, judges can stay an eviction for up to one year in hardship cases. Courts weigh serious illness, worsening health, children enrolled in local schools, and other circumstances that make relocation especially damaging. The tenant has to act in good faith and keep paying rent during the stay, and the judge also considers the hardship to the landlord.¹¹

Self-help eviction is now a crime. A landlord who changes locks, removes belongings, or cuts off utilities to force a tenant out is facing criminal liability, not just a civil claim.⁶

Duty to Mitigate on a Broken Lease

If you break your lease early, the landlord can no longer sit on the empty apartment and bill you for every remaining month. Real Property Law § 227-e requires reasonable efforts to re-rent the unit at fair market value or the rate you were paying, whichever is lower. Any lease clause trying to waive that duty is void. You can still owe money for time the apartment sits vacant despite a good-faith effort, but you can’t be charged for months the landlord chose not to fill.

Rent Overcharge Claims

If your landlord has been charging above the legal regulated rent, you can file an overcharge claim with the Division of Housing and Community Renewal or in court. Under CPLR § 213-a, the statute of limitations is six years, up from four. The six-year look-back also applies to reconstructing the legal rent, so DHCR or the court can trace records back six years from the date of your complaint to find where the rent went off track.¹²

The default penalty is treble damages: three times the amount overcharged. A landlord can bring that down to the overcharge plus interest only by proving the overcharge wasn’t willful, and the burden is on the landlord. Reasonable attorney’s fees are also recoverable.¹³

Landlords now have to keep complete rent records for the length of the tenancy plus six years. Under the old system, records could be destroyed after four years, which erased the evidence tenants needed. When records are missing, DHCR and the courts can reconstruct the rent history from what’s available, and gaps tend to be resolved in the tenant’s favor.

Succession Rights in Stabilized Apartments

If you live in a rent-stabilized apartment with a family member who holds the lease, you may be able to take over the tenancy when they die or permanently leave. You generally need to have lived in the apartment as your primary residence for the two years immediately before the tenant’s departure. For seniors 62 and older, or people with disabilities, the co-residency requirement drops to one year.¹⁴

“Family member” is defined broadly. It covers traditional relatives (spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, and in-law equivalents) and also anyone who can show emotional and financial interdependence with the tenant. Sharing household expenses, mingling finances through joint accounts or credit obligations, attending family events together, naming each other in wills or powers of attorney, and holding yourselves out to others as family all count. No single factor is required, and evidence of a sexual relationship is neither required nor considered.¹⁴

Temporary absences don’t automatically break continuity. Military service, full-time schooling, hospitalization, and employment-related relocations are recognized interruptions. If you’re living with an aging parent or long-term partner in a stabilized unit, keeping your name on utility bills, tax filings, and insurance records strengthens a future succession claim.

Good Cause Eviction for Market-Rate Tenants

The HSTPA itself focused on the rent-stabilized system. New York extended some protections to market-rate tenants through Good Cause Eviction, which took effect on April 20, 2024. It applies to tenants in unregulated apartments not already covered by stabilization or another government rent program.¹⁵

Under Good Cause, a landlord cannot evict a covered tenant without a legally recognized reason, such as non-payment, lease violations, or nuisance behavior. The law also sets a local rent standard defining what counts as an unreasonable increase: local inflation plus 5%, capped at 10%. An increase above that is presumed unreasonable and can be challenged. In early 2025, the New York City area inflation rate was 3.79%, putting the local rent standard at 8.79%.¹⁵

The exemptions are wide. Good Cause does not apply to landlords who own 10 or fewer units statewide, owner-occupied buildings with 10 or fewer apartments, co-ops and condos, buildings built on or after January 1, 2009, units already covered by rent stabilization or another government rent program, or units renting above 245% of the Fair Market Rent. Seasonal homes, dormitories, and units provided as part of employment are also excluded.¹⁵ If you rent from a larger landlord in an older building at a moderate rent and you’re not in a stabilized unit, Good Cause likely covers you. If your landlord owns just a handful of apartments, it probably doesn’t.

1
New York State Homes and Community Renewal. Fact Sheet 5 – Vacancy Leases in Rent Stabilized Apartments
2
New York State Homes and Community Renewal. Apartment (IAI) and Building (MCI) Improvements
3
New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal. Operational Bulletin 2024-2 – Individual Apartment Improvements
4
New York State Homes and Community Renewal. Rent Regulation HSTPA Presentation
5
New York State Senate. New York General Obligations Law 7-108
6
New York State Senate. New Rights for Tenants – Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019
7
New York State Senate. New York Real Property Law 238-A – Limitation on Fees
8
Office of the New York State Attorney General. Attorney General James Stops Bronx Landlord from Illegally Blacklisting Tenants
9
New York State Senate. New York Real Property Law 227-F – Denial on the Basis of Involvement in Prior Disputes Prohibited
10
New York State Unified Court System. Landlord Rent Increase of At Least 5 Percent Residential
11
New York State Senate. New York Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law 753 – Stay in Premises Occupied for Dwelling Purposes
12
New York State Senate. New York Civil Practice Law and Rules 213-A – Residential Rent Overcharge
13
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. 9 CRR-NY 2526.1 – Determination of Legal Regulated Rents, Penalties, Fines, Assessment of Costs, Attorneys Fees, Rent Credits
14
New York State Homes and Community Renewal. Fact Sheet 30 – Succession Rights
15
NYC Housing Preservation and Development. Good Cause Eviction