New York, NY Rental Property Rules: Rent Control (2026)

The rent stabilization law of 1969, Local Laws 16 and 51 of that year, took over regulation of post-1947 multiple dwellings that state rent control never reached. Administrative Code § 26-503 gives the statute its short title, and § 26-504 fixes who it covers: Class A multiple dwellings with six or more units, not owned as a cooperative or condominium, completed after February 1, 1947. That section carves out several classes: units financed or insured by a public agency, buildings that received a certificate of occupancy after March 10, 1969, transient or residential hotels operating as such on June 1, 1968, units not used as the tenant's primary residence, and units that became vacant on or after June 30, 1971, unless the owner drove the tenant out through harassment or a service cutoff.

Section 26-504(b) is the ETPA hook: it pulls in "other housing accommodations in class A or class B multiple dwellings made subject to this law pursuant to the emergency tenant protection act of nineteen seventy-four," the 1974 state law New York City opted into to extend stabilization beyond the original 1969 building stock. None of that coverage runs without the standing emergency finding in Sections 26-501 and 26-502: the council must keep declaring that a "serious public emergency continues to exist in the housing of a considerable number of persons" in the city, or stabilization coverage has nothing to attach to. " Each reaffirmation folds the original 1969 and 1974 findings forward instead of restating them from scratch.