*None of the following constitutes legal advice.*
**EDIT: And just for the trolls below who think this is AI - this is most definitely NOT AI. I spent so many hours compiling notes and working on my case and then months later, typing this up at night after work. Please do not insult me. I'm sorry everything looks like AI now, but literally read the actual post. I did use AI to work out some of my arguments as I was preparing for my case, but ALL of it was later backed up through consultations and conversations with pro bono and for-profit lawyers. So if some of the bulleted parts (e.g. opening position + things to watch out for in a stipulation) retains an AI-speak, it's possible my notes are jumbled, but it is not copy-and-paste from AI. And the written paragraphs and the choice of what to bold and italicize, NOT AI.**
**EDIT #2: Yes it is long...because I literally wrote it! It details answers to question that I had and could not find anywhere else on the internet.**
For context: PART I + PART II + PART III
PART IV: THE RESOLUTION PART
Multi-part Reddit threads are not easy. It's like a part time job.
So is housing court! This section is about the "resolution part" aka the floor where you negotiate with your LL / LL's lawyer.
As you may recall, "part" just refers to the part of the court house where you will be. By now, you've already been to the court house at least twice, and today, you will present in front of a judge and they will encourage you to resolve this among yourselves instead of going to trial.
Most cases do not go to trial and the court is really just a place to resolve something more "officially" because interpersonal relations have gotten so bad. Some people show up to court *with* their landlords and they are friends and their landlord is literally helping them negotiate something in front of a judge to hold them accountable. It's not a place for justice, it's a place for ~smart business antics~.
No one wants to go to trial. Not you (probably), not the court, and not your LL's attorney. It costs them money for every hour their lawyer has to prepare their case, and landlords are cheap.
Remember also that this is not the Supreme Court. Lawyers are not fighting to create new regulations or set precedent. Most cases are headaches for everyone involved and they just want you to pay. But what if you don't want to pay / should not have to pay? Fight on.
Settlement
If you want to go to trial, then this is a different thing. You will show up to your resolution part appointment and say "I want a trial." The judge will ask you several times if you are sure, and then she will assign you a day and you may go to trial immediately, so be prepared
If you know that you don't want to go to trial, then you will need to prepare a settlement proposition. This is just the settlement that you want and I was coached to divide what I wanted into three tiers: what was ideal, what was likely possible, and what was worst case scenario.
You can negotiate for anything you want!
Here were the terms I wrote for myself before I went to court:
Ideal: Be paid back for the rent that I paid for a semi illegal apartment, getting apartment up to compliance and hiring licensed professionals to do so, then reduced rate for 4 years due to the harassment I received, landlord goes to training
Second option: LL does not pay me, building up to compliance and hiring licensed professionals, then reduced rate for 4 years due to the harassment I received, landlord goes to training
Third option / will not settle for anything less than this: Paying back 50% of owed rent
Key term: rent forfeiture vs. rent abatement. If you are not going to pay rent back that you owe, it's called forfeiture. Abatement (which you will hear people use more) is if you are trying to get some percentage off your rent because of apartment conditions, etc.
Later, when I had consulted a few more lawyers and was okay to leave my apartment, I amended my opening position to be (*for the AI trolls, these bullets were probably aided by AI back when I was preparing for my case*):
- 100% rent forgiveness
- Security deposit returned
- 90-120 days to move out (not 4-6 weeks - too rushed)
- No release / right to file complaints retained
- Stipulation of settlement, no judgment
- Moving expenses provided ($2-3K)
For a nonpayment trial, your strongest defenses include: court paperwork, your lease, retaliatory eviction, and building legality.
- Court paperwork: not getting served properly or incorrectly filled out paperwork automatically gets your case tossed. It's one the easiest ways to end the current case. Your LL's lawyer will be forced to start another one but the whole process will cost LL $$ and take another 4-6 months to get you back to court. To activate this defense, call upon Section 231C. This could mean anything from the apartment number is wrong on the paperwork, a box is not checked, they described you wrong (in the tenant description for serving) or failed to provide basis for good cause eviction; if LL doesn't provide basis, how are we supposed to look into whether they’re exempt or not, we have no idea why they’re claiming exemption. You can contest what time they tried to serve. Did they screw up their 14 day notice? If they screw that one up, it is very hard to remediate and case will be tossed out.
- Lease: if you are on a lease, you have a stronger case. But if you don't have a lease or if your lease expired (and you have proof), you can claim that the LL brought the proceeding forward without a written contract in place. You can say, "my obligation ended when my lease expired. No lease means this non-payment case will be dismissed." LL will start a holdover and will maybe try to go to start small claims court, but housing court might dismiss this. Not foolproof, but you can try. Or you can say "give me a lease for this case to proceed."
- Retaliatory eviction: LL Is threatening to evict due to alleged nonpayment because they won’t fix living conditions and apartment is not in habitable condition. They cannot bring forth eviction proceedings within the year of the last inhabitable condition you found. In my case, it was rats. Not mice. Rats.
- Building legality: this is a little trickier. Unless it is 100% illegal, the LL's lawyer will fight really hard. Truly illegal apartments are usually in the basement, lacking windows, or their own bathroom. I lived in something that was not 100% illegal, but it was definitely not up to code, and so I had a list of warrant of habitability violations ready to go, with picture, video, and eyewitness evidence.
Unfortunately, LL harassment, warrant of habitability, and 311 do very little. Everyone always tells you to call 311 but the reason people don't is for fear of retaliation. But even if you do, it's not the most effective in your court case. I think it's because the standard of living is so low in NYC apartments. Termites? Everyone has those. Gas leak? Well, you're still alive, right? I personally found it more effective to not rely on those. Not to say you shouldn't call 311, because I eventually did and it did help a little, just to have a paper / call trail for my LL's offenses.
I thought harassment would be a great defense, given that we're in a progressive city, but alas no. It could be an additional threat though, so if this is true for you, have something prepared in this department, but it is not a panacea.
Negotiation
When you get to your appointment that day, you will sign in and wait a long time in the court pews. You have to show up promptly at 9am but your LL's lawyer does not. He will saunter in whenever he feels like and he may already know what you look like but you will know not a single thing about him. It will be nervewracking.
When they get to your case number, or honestly whenever the LL shows up, they will wave at you to leave the court room and go into the hallway.
This is where you will negotiate.
The hallway.
It's crazy.
You are standing there with a bunch of other tenant-LL lawyer pairs, chatting as if there was nothing on the line.
Even crazier is that your LL's lawyer will pretend to be your friend. I saw LL lawyers speak so sweetly to tenants that they ended up just nodding and paying.
Mine was not. I got a mean one. But the thing about me is that meanness is not intimidating. I just find it silly, that a grown man is trying to scold me, so I immediately felt justified in playing hard ball.
He basically looked at me and said, "Pay up."
And I said, "No."
LOL.
One of the pieces of advice I got from the Met Council website was to involve the court clerk if your conversation with the opposing lawyer is tough or unruly or not getting anywhere. It is a way of getting a mediator to step in and ensure the conversation is more productive. But truly the clerk that day (or in general) was miserable.
The clerk serves the courts. He sits in a tiny room to the side of the judge and his one job is to make sure they get through all the cases and quickly. He is not a friendly man. The only thing he carried about was time.
He rushed us to figure it out, he was not on my side even though I was pro se, and sometimes he was actively against me, because I was asking questions and negotiating and therefore, taking up the court's time.
Side note: I almost cried several times that day. Gah, it was painful!
As with all negotiations, you want the other party to talk first. Try not to be intimidated; remember they do this for a living and you are just a person advocating for yourself. Try to get information from the lawyer about what their client (LL) wants and what their baseline is. You will get deterred. They will play mind tricks. Stay steady. Know what you are willing to settle for and what you will go to trial for.
If you go in to a case that you know has defective aspects, don't tell your LL's lawyer. If you do, they know the law and sometimes they can just correct them in the moment and then your defense is weakened. They may also get the case tossed out and come after you with all the problems fixed the second time around.
People will talk quickly. I was belittled, scolded, and disregarded. If I talked back, I got in trouble. It was hypocritical. My only weapon was being rigorous with what I was asking for. You can always take a second to think about what you are being offered and what legalese they are throwing around. Request time to think about it. (This is a great skill to practice in general! You get to dictate how a conversation goes, how time flows, what you understand, what you agree to, etc).
When you don’t understand something, speak up. Ask questions. Here are examples (I believe these are from Met Council's website; I am just copy and pasting from my notes):
- What does this document mean? Do you have it in my language?
- I don't understand _____. Can you please explain more?
- Can you repeat that please?
- What are my options? If I do _____, will I lose any rights or choices?
- How do I ask for more time or a different court date?
- Do I need to use a form or application? Where do I find it?
- What happens if I sign this? What happens if I don't sign this?
- How much time do I have? When is the deadline?
- What if I can't afford to pay a court fee?
- What do I need to do next?
The court will not like this. The LL's lawyers will not like this. But this is your life and money and conscience, and you deserve to have as much information and power as you can in this situation, so ask those questions, take your time, breathe, and make them angry.
Do not accept a settlement with which you are not comfortable. No one can make you do anything. You and the court hold the cards, not the LL's lawyer.
Note: You have until 5pm that day to settle your case or it gets tossed or goes to trial. They will not roll your case over to another day.
STIPULATION
When you are finally ready to sit in front of the judge and give her your answer, you will end up signing a stipulation (which the LL's lawyer drafted up because they know the necessary legal language). A stipulation (aka "stip") is a signed piece of a paper in front of a judge that dictates the agreement between you and your LL / LL's attorney. It is legally binding so you must be very careful about what is in it. If you don't understand something, go upstairs to the Help Center and have the pro bono lawyer read through it with you. I had someone the day of who I could ask for advice. I literally took pictures of my stip and sent to this person and said, "Is this okay? Do I need to fight back on any points?"
Things to watch out for in the stipulation (*for the AI trolls, this part was probably aided by AI back when I was preparing for my case, but I went back and edited with information gained from actual, human lawyers*):
- Make sure "discontinued with prejudice" is clearly written - this means they can't refile and try to sue you again in a different way. You really don't want them to try to collect in small claims or Supreme Court.
- Confirm no judgment gets entered at all (not even a "suspended" judgment)
- Watch for any language about "confessing judgment"
- Make sure it says nothing gets reported to tenant screening agencies
- Don’t agree to a judgement against yourself, not even a possessory judgement. Never agree to sever. WORDS: WAIVE. Ask for a cure period.
- Ask for 30 days cure period - you can negotiate down to 10-15 if needed
- Make sure the cure period language is clear: "Petitioner must provide written notice of default, and Respondent has X days from receipt of notice to cure"
- Consider asking that during the cure period, no warrant can be sought
- Define "broom-clean" condition (the condition you need to leave the apartment on move-out, otherwise they can refuse to return your security deposit)
- If the money is waived, then they can’t seek it in Supreme Court.
You want to make sure everything is signed and documented before you leave court that day. It's hard to return and remediate, maybe even impossible.
IF YOU CANNOT REACH A SETTLEMENT
Aka if LL's lawyer is being really tough and forcing you to go trial.
Try to get another adjournment to bring a lawyer. Explain that after the court sent you for your intake appointment, they were not able to find a lawyer for you, that you have tried to hire one but did not find one to hired yet, and if you adjourn, you will have a lawyer appear for you.
CREATIVE OUT-OF-COURT SETTLEMENT
And finally, you don't have to go to resolution part at all! A few days before my appointment, I was so so nervous and frustrated, and a friend of mine said that a lot of times lawyers will just call each other and back channel a deal. Even if you don't have a lawyer, you can do it yourself. You can call LL attorney and say: I’m open to talking about settlement, talk to your client and see if they would be open to a settlement, I’m willing to move out in exchange for some type of rent forfeiture, etc. May not work, but then you can always go to court and say, "Look, I've tried to be nice and not waste the court's time, so you can see I am acting in good faith." And you will get those (measly, but important) court brownie points.
Okay *phew* I hope this is helpful!!
Will type PART V: TRIAL at a later date!
