Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants v. New York City Loft Bd.
| Decision Date | 19 November 1985 |
| Citation | 66 N.Y.2d 298,496 N.Y.S.2d 979,487 N.E.2d 889 |
| Parties | , 487 N.E.2d 889 In the Matter of LOWER MANHATTAN LOFT TENANTS et al., Appellants, v. NEW YORK CITY LOFT BOARD et al., Respondents. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Regulation J(1)(a), issued by the New York City Loft Board, which permits the landlord of an interim multiple dwelling registered with the Board pursuant to article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law to evict a residential occupant of a unit, who has no lease or rental agreement with the landlord, on the ground "that the unit is not the primary residence of such residential occupant," was within the Board's authority to issue under article 7-C and is valid. The order of the Appellate Division should, therefore, be affirmed, with costs.
Petitioners are a tenants' association and five individuals who occupy loft space in buildings owned by respondents New York University, Chand Realty Associates and 655 Realty Associates. Each individual was served with a notice of termination by his or her landlord pursuant to Regulation J(1)(a). 1 They and the Association then began an article 78 proceeding against the Loft Board and the landlords seeking to have the regulation declared ultra vires and invalid. In that proceeding they sought an order restraining the landlords from seeking possession. The papers submitted by petitioners on the latter application and in response to the landlords' motion to dismiss include the depositions of petitioners Close and Eisenstein taken in prior proceedings between the parties and an affidavit filed in that prior litigation which establish that the space occupied by petitioners Close, Eisenstein and Molner is not his or her primary residence. Furthermore, the petition in the present proceeding contains no allegation as to any of the individuals that the space occupied is his or her primary residence.
Special Term's order and judgment converted the proceeding to an action for declaratory judgment, declared the regulation "invalid as an exercise of legislative power," declared the notices of termination void, and enjoined the landlords from prosecuting any proceeding for possession based upon Regulati J(1)(a). On appeal by the Loft Board and the landlords, the Appellate Division modified, on the law, by striking all decretal paragraphs except that converting the proceeding, declared the regulation valid, and otherwise affirmed.
The essence of petitioners' argument is that because article 7-C refers to a "residential occupant qualified for protection" but, unlike the Emergency Housing Rent Control Law (McKinney's Uncons.Laws of N.Y. § 8582[2][l] [L.1946, ch. 274, § 2, as amended] ): the Local Emergency Housing Rent Control Act (); the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 (ETPA) (McKinney's Uncons.Laws of N.Y. § 8625[a][ii] [L.1974, ch. 576, § 4, as amended); 2 the New York City Rent and Rehabilitation Law (Administrative Code of City of New York § Y51-3.0[e][2][i][10] ), and the New York City Rent Stabilization Law (Administrative Code § YY51-3.0[a][1][f] ), nowhere makes "primary residence" a qualification, and in defining an "interim multiple dwelling" refers to "residence or home," the regulation constitutes an unauthorized extension of the statute. They argue also that to construe the article as did the Appellate Division is to frustrate the legislative purpose. For a number of reasons we disagree.
First, the argument is based upon a skewed view of the Legislature's purpose in enacting the article. The legislative findings set forth in Multiple Dwelling Law § 280 begin with the statement "that a serious public emergency exists in the housing of a considerable number of persons * * * which emergency has been created by the increasing number of conversions of commercial and manufacturing loft buildings to residential use without compliance" with applicable laws and standards (emphasis supplied). It also contains the declaration "that as a consequence of the acute shortage of housing * * * the tenants in such buildings would suffer great hardship if forced to relocate ", and that governmental intervention is necessary "to establish a system whereby residential rentals can be reasonably adjusted so that residential tenants can assist in paying the cost of such legalization without being forced to relocate " (emphasis supplied). Thus, the emphasis is upon residential use and residential tenants being forced to undergo the hardship of relocation. Neither in the legislative findings nor in the other sections of the article is there any reference to protection of the tenant with respect to the commercial or work use of the premises. Yet if any residential use, however limited in time or space, is sufficient the statute is effectively turned on its head.
The purpose of article 7-C comes into focus when one looks at former article 7-B of the Multiple Dwelling Law, now article 27 of the Arts and Cultural Affairs Law, which was enacted in 1964, some 18 years before article 7-C became law in 1982. As originally enacted, article 7-B contained in its section 275 the legislative finding that "persons regularly engaged in the visual fine arts generally find it financially impossible to maintain quarters for the pursuit of their artistic endeavors separate and apart from their places of residence" and that there existed buildings occupied in the past for commercial and manufacturing purposes suitable "for use by persons regularly engaged in the visual fine arts for the combined purposes of pursuit of their artistic endeavors and residences." As amended by chapter 853 of the Laws of 1977 and now contained in article 27 of the Arts and Cultural Affairs Law, former article 7-B was expanded in purpose to cover "general residential occupancy of loft, commercial or manufacturing buildings," and former section 275, now Arts and Cultural Affairs Law § 27.01, contains the further declaration that "legislation governing the alteration of such buildings to accommodate general residential use must of necessity be more restrictive than statutes heretofore in effect, which affected only joint living-work quarters for artists."
Evident from the history of the enactment of article 7-C, which includes the previously existing more broadly purposed article 7-B, and from the legislative findings in section 280, is the legislative purpose to protect the residential aspect of occupancy of an interim multiple dwelling rather than to shield the tenant whose use is essentially commercial and only incidentally residential.
Secondly, petitioners, relying on the decision in Axelrod Co. v. Dixon Studio, 122 Misc.2d 770, 471 N.Y.S.2d 945, the use in section 281(1) of the phrase "residence or home," the rule that a statute must be read to give meaning to each word in it (Matter of Smathers, 309 N.Y. 487, 495, 131 N.E.2d 896; McKinney's Cons Laws of N.Y. Book 1, Statutes § 98[a] ) and the distinction drawn between residence and domicile in the law of wills (Matter of Newcomb, 192 N.Y. 238, 84 N.E. 950) and of venue (Siegel, NY Prac § 118, at 147-148), argue that article 7-C protects "all residential occupants" (emphasis in original) and that the regulation has in effect eliminated the word "residence" from the statute.
The fallacy of the argument lies in part in its analogy to case law construing statutes with purposes very different from that of article 7-C, but in the main in the selection of words from the statute upon which it is based. The word "or" between "residence" and "home" suggests a distinction between "residence" and "home" which completely disappears when used, as it is in section 281(1)(iii), as part of the phrase "the residence or home" (emphasis supplied). "The", as Webster's Third New International Dictionary (at 2368) informs us, "refers to someone or something that is unique * * * or exists as only one at a time." Ergo, "the residence or home" as used in section 281, cannot properly be construed to exclude primary residence as a measure of its...
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