How New Rent Laws Could Restrict The Murders Allowed In Your Unit

By Murder House | June 15, 2019

Over the past few weeks, New York State lawmakers in Albany have been working on an ambitious series of rent-control measures that could extend and build upon existing protections to tenants in rent-regulated or otherwise vulnerable living situations. Signed into law just yesterday by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the legislation would see sweeping changes to landlord-tenant relationships, making it harder for apartment owners to deregulate rent-control agreement and stagnating year-to-year rent increases to a “fair” amount. But by far the most important of these detrimental new housing rules is a proposed bill to reign in the amount of murders landlords can allow in their properties.

The existing laws regarding the permissible killings in New York City apartments (set forth in 1971) grant landlords at most twelve murders in their rental units. Though as many realtors are aware, several loopholes in the fine text could allow for up to twenty-six, a loophole real estate agencies and brokers regularly take advantage of. Not only will the bill passed by Democratic State Senate leaders close that loophole, but it will limit the murder rate in all New York State apartments to one every two years.

Here’s five ways these changes might affect your rental units, and moreover, the New York City housing market on the whole:

1. Death Threats For Late Rent Will Not Be Taken Seriously

Landlords have long been allowed to use intimidation tactics and death threats against their lessors in the event of a late rent payment. Though not all of them follow through with these death threats, the new caps on murder would almost certainly render them moot. If a tenant knows he/she moved into an apartment because the previous renter had his head bashed in with a broom handle, for instance, they will know that legally the landlord could not murder them in their sleep for a late rent check without incurring significant fines. Unfortunately, late rent is just another thing Democratic Socialists are okay with.

2. Eviction Will Be Virtually Impossible

Similarly, if a tenant absolutely needs to be removed from the rental agreement for being unlawful, unsafe, or poor, the avenues for eviction are severely limited if killing them off is no longer an option. What’s left is to evict a tenant through legitimate legal battles in the courts, for legitimate reasons, which no honest landlord would ever think to pursue.

3. Reduced Number Of Available Units In The City

It’s common sense. The fewer people there are being killed, beheaded, stabbed, shot, impaled, or worse in New York City apartments, the less available these apartments will become. This can lead to a couple of unintended consequences. The first is that the demand for vacant apartments would increase dramatically, making it harder than it already is to find an apartment in the city where recent murders have occurred. Then, the increased demand would economically necessitate an increase in rent rates, which would also be prevented by the new laws. This would mean people in search of an apartment would be able to find one at a reasonable price, a circumstance many economists and real estate experts say would decimate the tristate area housing market. People living comfortably in their units for long periods of time, without the fear of being brutally slain in the middle of the night, is not an economically viable situation.

4. Reduced Incentives To Renovate Apartments

At Murder House NYC, we believe that every death is a new opportunity. Every time a tenant dies, that’s your excuse to give the blood-caked walls a fresh new coat of paint, or replace a broken old refrigerator housing human remains with a new, energy efficient one. If murders don’t happen on a regular and frequent basis, there’s no incentive for buildings or owners to invest in making their property better. Building conditions will deteriorate, and soon tenants will be living in dilapidated, rat-infested squalor, without even the sweet release of murder to look forward to.

5. Less Passive Income For You, The Landlord

If there’s one thing you as the landlord should know about these dangerous new laws, it’s that the checks you passively receive from tenants as your primary source of income are going to dwindle down to nothing without the omnipresent threats to the lives of your hard working tenants.

Don’t let this bill threaten your livelihood when it’s your job to do that to others. Call your NYS representatives today.