Did Landlord Exploit Rent-Stabilized Tenant Via $100 Buyout?

Six days before the fatal fire this week at 209 Dyckman Street in Inwood, HPD brought a case against the owners at their property next door. One allegation caught my attention.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development cited a $100 buyout in Queens as evidence of the landlords’ bad behavior. I decided to take a closer look at that, because buyouts have become increasingly rare and a hundred bucks is a pittance.

Few buyouts happen anymore because the 2019 rent reform removed the 20 percent rent bonus that incentivized landlords to buy out rent-stabilized tenants.

Buyouts for substantial rehabilitation projects are also dead, thanks to the Division of Housing and Community Renewal. (Sub-rehab buyouts remain legal but they now make getting approval harder, rather than easier.)

So, why did the landlords sued by HPD pay a tenant $100 to leave?

The agency’s complaint against Jack Bick, Ariel Bick, Howard Bick, Chaim Schweid, Janjan Realty Corp. and SB Dyckman LLC, filed on April 27, alleges they harassed tenants by failing to repair “dangerous conditions” at 207 Dyckman Street. HPD included a photo of a hole in a ceiling and three photos of peeling paint.

The landlords’ goal, according to HPD, was to replace tenants who had preferential rents with tenants paying the full legal rent. This is the one small way that the 2019 HSTPA incentivized buyouts: It locked in preferential rents for tenants, meaning only new tenants could be charged the full legal rent.

HPD accused 207 Dyckman’s owners of neglecting unsafe conditions “as part of an intentional and aggressive campaign to harass and displace rent stabilized tenants — efforts which have included, in another county, entering a stipulation with a pro se rent stabilized tenant that offered them a $100 payment to vacate their apartment.”

I doubt a buyout in another county has any legal relevance to the Inwood case, but let’s set that question aside. Persuading an innocent tenant to accept a meager buyout is classic exploitation. Is that what happened here?

HPD was referring to JB Hartman LLC’s agreement with tenant Dorian Rease at 10-15 Hartman Lane, Far Rockaway. What the agency didn’t mention is that it stemmed from a nonpayment case the landlord brought against Rease and two allegedly unauthorized subtenants.

Rease’s preferential rent was $1,696, a discount of $307 from the unit’s legal rent. Landlords sometimes give preferential rents to retain a good tenant, but in this case it was probably because no one would pay $2,004 a month for the Far Rockaway unit.

It turns out that Rease wasn’t even paying the preferential rent because, he told the court, he couldn’t afford it. Half the time he paid only $1,000 or $500, and the other half he paid nothing. After 14 months, according to the owner, he owed $18,419.

In December, Rease signed a handwritten agreement acknowledging rent arrears of $21,812 and promising to vacate the unit by Jan. 15. In exchange, he would receive $100. Rease planned to stay with his grandmother. “It was clear that [he] knew what he was signing,” wrote the landlord’s attorney, Dwij Patel.

HPD is correct that if Rease had a bulldog lawyer, he would have asked for a lot more than $100 — not because he deserved it, but because he could have dragged out the case in Queens’ dysfunctional housing court for another year or two, costing the landlord another $40,000 in lost rent.

Regardless, it doesn’t seem like the landlord was harassing someone to leave in order to raise the rent by $307. It sounds like the Bicks were trying to get rid of a tenant who from August 2024 to October 2025 didn’t pay the full rent while sharing his apartment with persons unknown.

The story has a surprise ending: Rease didn’t leave in January as planned, and in February the landlord agreed to keep him as a rent-stabilized tenant. As for the rent, he has some catching up to do.