St Nick's Alliance, LLC v. Cordero, 2024 NY Slip Op 24089 (2024)

On December 1, 2023, petitioner cross-moved to strike respondent's defenses, for summary judgment and to order respondent to pay use and occupancy pendente lite. (NYSCEF Doc No. 28, notice of cross-motion [sequence 3].) Attached to petitioner's moving papers are, inter alia, a lease agreement between petitioner as corporate tenant and JLNT Realty LLC as the landlord, and an "admission agreement" between St. Nicholas NPC SSHP and Morales, signed by the parties on July 29, 2011. (NYSCEF Doc No. 23, petitioner's exhibit C, lease agreement; NYSCEF Doc No. 25, petitioner's exhibit E, admission agreement.) In opposition to the motion to dismiss, petitioner argues Morales was never a rent-stabilized tenant, but rather always maintained her status as petitioner's licensee of the subject premises, because RSC 2520.11 (f) explicitly exempts from rent regulation "housing accommodations owned, operated, or leased or rented pursuant to governmental funding, by . . . any institution operated exclusively for charitable . . . purposes on a nonprofit basis, and occupied by a tenant whose initial occupancy is contingent upon an affiliation with such institution . . . ." (NYSCEF Doc No. 31, petitioner's mem of law at 5.)[FN2]
Petitioner further argues that "[i]t is well documented that the legislature's [*3]intent in implementing Part J of the HSTPA was to alleviate the issue of a corporate tenant's inability to primarily reside in the apartment thereby making it vulnerable to a non-primary residence proceeding by a lessor/owner. By legislating that the occupant in a scatter site program be recognized as an identifiable 'tenant' (rather than a licensee) the legislature's intent was to preserve the use of apartments in New York City by scatter site programs such as [p]etitioner's, and by designating a 'tenant' in possession, thereby protecting the corporate tenant from being evicted on a nonprimary residence claim." (Id. at 7.) Petitioner posits that "should the Court afford [r]espondent—a non-affiliated, unauthorized occupant of the apartment—rent stabilized tenancy rights, the Court would jeopardize not only this [p]etitioner's use of the apartment by affiliated program participants but would ultimately put every apartment rented by a not-for-profit in jeopardy of losing the intended use, and to boot would create an unintended co-tenancy between the corporate tenant and occupant," which was not the legislative intent. (Id.)[FN3]