view of entrance hall from first floor to ground floor in my apartment building

Harlem

Manhattan

Hall and Stairs

The following was written about an apartment building in southwest Harlem
where I lived for 22 years.
Since then I have moved to a different apartment in Harlem.

My landlord recently repainted the hall and stairs inside my apartment building for the second time in the last 8 years.

Although it needed it, the true purpose of repainting the hallway was to make the interior of the building look better to prospective tenants in order to help justify the increased rent in the overpriced small apartments. The four floor walkup (no elevator) building also has a ground floor that is a few feet below  sidewalk level, thus the building has five floors. Four apartments (two studios and two one bedrooms) are on each floor for a total of twenty apartments.

For several years, when tenants move out, the landlord also renovates the apartments. Studios are remodeled by carving out a space in the apartment and enclosing it with a wall and door in order to call them one bedrooms, although the size of the apartments remain exactly the same as before. As a result, the former studios have the tiniest bedrooms imaginable and are not nearly the same size as the actual one bedrooms in the building.

The landlord's goals are:

a.) get the rent high enough from tenant turnover to reach a certain rent level that allows deregulation of an apartment

b.) re-register the studio apartments as different from their original form, i.e., as one bedrooms allowing the landlord to further raise the rent. 

This has been going on for several years. It really shouldn't be legal but my landlord otherwise does everything by the book so I suspect that his company is using a loophole to accomplish his goals of turning formerly rent stabilized studios into market rate apartments.

My apartment is rent stabilized and I have lived here for twenty years. Because of rent protections, my landlord does not try to do anything involving my rent. However, when I move out one day in the future, my landlord will use these techniques to achieve his goal of much higher rent to future tenants occupying my apartment.

This is real estate in New York City.

hall leading to my fourth floor apartment door

stairs to the roof