“In Treatment” star in rent deregulation suit

Academy Award-winner Dianne Wiest, who starred in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and more recently, in HBO’s “In Treatment,” has joined a group of tenants at her 229 West 78th Street home in a rent-stabilization lawsuit against their longtime landlord. According to the Post, the actress and her cohorts are taking a page out of the book of the Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village apartment complex, claiming that their landlord illegally charged them market-rate rents because the 100-unit building was simultaneously getting a J-51 tax abatement from the city between 1993 and 2004. In 2009, the New York state Court of Appeals ruled that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village should not have deregulated the rent-stabilized apartments in the 11,000-unit complex, because the firm had been receiving tax breaks for renovations at the time. The ruling spawn a number of copycat lawsuits around the city. Wiest is currently paying $7,290 per month to live in her home. The tenants at 229 West 78th Street are all seeking to recoup rent overcharges from those years and get their rents lowered from now on. [Post]