Attorney General Letitia James sued a Crown Heights landlord on June 16 who, she says, sent a friend to impersonate him in court rather than give his tenants the rent-stabilized leases they were owed. John Anderson, who owns 1075 Dean Street, is one of the first two landlords James has sued under a program built on a rule most renters have never heard of: de facto rent stabilization.
The rule: a small building put up before 1974, one with five or fewer apartments, is normally not rent-stabilized. But if a landlord later carves it into six or more units, legally or not, the whole building flips into rent stabilization and stays there for good, even if the owner later pulls an apartment back out. That is the “de facto” part. The law treats the building as stabilized whether the landlord ever registered it or not.
The two suits, her office announced, are the first James has filed under a compliance program she built entirely around that rule.
The case against Anderson, the first of the two, says he withheld those leases for ten years, lied about the building’s rent-stabilized status on a Department of Buildings application, and cut off a tenant’s utilities in retaliation.
The second names Claudette Henry, who owns 134 Sackman Street in Brownsville. The AG says she never registered her building with the state, tried to illegally evict tenants after a court had already found the building was rent-stabilized, and ignored the AG’s letters entirely. She also landed at number eight on the Public Advocate’s 2025 Worst NYC Landlords list.
James is asking a court to force both buildings back into rent stabilization, refund every overcharged tenant with nine percent interest, and impose civil penalties: between $2,000 and $10,000 for each tenant who was harassed, plus $500 per apartment for every month it went unregistered. “My office will not shy away from taking immediate action against any landlord who fails to follow the law and attempts to overcharge or illegally evict tenants,” James said. “Our housing laws are clear, and any landlord who violates them will be held accountable.”
These two are not the end of it. The AG launched the de facto compliance program in May 2025 and sent warning letters to more than 50 city landlords whose buildings courts or the state had already found to be stabilized but who never registered them. So far, the office says, the program has stopped 26 evictions and returned 91 apartments to rent stabilization. Anderson and Henry are just the first owners the AG decided to drag into court.
If you live in an older, small Brooklyn building that got chopped into more apartments at some point, there is a real chance you are legally rent-stabilized and have no idea, which can mean you are owed money and shielded from a no-cause eviction. You can look up your building’s registration with New York State Homes and Community Renewal, and you can bring a suspected de facto building to the AG’s Housing Protection Unit, the same unit that just filed these cases. The phrase your landlord hoped you would never learn could lower your rent.
Featured image: Photo courtesy of Susan Watts/Office of Gov
