New York Landlord Tenant Law

"The New York Landlord's Law Book" explains New York landlord-tenant law in comprehensive, understandable terms, and gives landlords the tools they need to head off problems with tenants and government agencies alike.

Written by one of the country's foremost urban historians, "The Great Rent Wars" tells the fascinating but little-known story of the battles between landlords and tenants in the nation's largest city from 1917 through 1929. These conflicts were triggered by the post-war housing shortage, which prompted landlords to raise rents, drove tenants to go on rent strikes, and spurred the state legislature, a conservative body dominated by upstate Republicans, to impose rent control in New York, a radical and unprecedented step that transformed landlord-tenant relations. "The Great Rent Wars" traces the tumultuous history of rent control in New York from its inception to its expiration as it unfolded in New York, Albany, and Washington, D.C. At the heart of this story are such memorable figures as Al Smith, Fiorello H. La Guardia, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as a host of tenants, landlords, judges, and politicians who have long been forgotten. Fogelson also explores the heated debates over landlord-tenant law, housing policy, and other issues that are as controversial today as they were a century ago.

Inspired by Depression-era travel guides, an anthology of essays on each of the fifty states, plus Washington, D.C., by some of America’s finest writers. State by State is a panoramic portrait of America and an appreciation of all fifty states (and Washington, D.C.) by fifty-one of the most acclaimed writers in the nation. Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1 Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York’s publicist . . . and personal attorney . . . and historian . . . and geologist John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a “Massachusettsean” Edward P. Jones makes the case: D.C. should be a state! Jhumpa Lahiri declares her reckless love for the Rhode Island coast Rich Moody explores the dark heart of Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway, exit by exit Ann Patchett makes a pilgrimage to the Civil War site at Shiloh, Tennessee William T. Vollman visits a San Francisco S&M club And many more Praise for State by State An NPR Best Book of the Year “The full plumage of American life, in all its riotous glory.” —The New Yorker “Odds are, you’ll fall for every state a little.” —Los Angeles Times

A compelling blend of legal and political history, this book chronicles the largest tenant rebellion in U.S. history. From its beginning in the rural villages of eastern New York in 1839 until its collapse in 1865, the Anti-Rent movement impelled the state's governors, legislators, judges, and journalists, as well as delegates to New York's bellwether constitutional convention of 1846, to wrestle with two difficult problems of social policy. One was how to put down violent tenant resistance to the enforcement of landlord property and contract rights. The second was how to abolish the archaic form of land tenure at the root of the rent strike. Charles McCurdy considers the public debate on these questions from a fresh perspective. Instead of treating law and politics as dependent variables--as mirrors of social interests or accelerators of social change--he highlights the manifold ways in which law and politics shaped both the pattern of Anti-Rent violence and the drive for land reform. In the process, he provides a major reinterpretation of the ideas and institutions that diminished the promise of American democracy in the supposed "golden age" of American law and politics.