I am a tenant attorney. These days, I spend a good amount of time explaining to clients and prospective clients why a landlord who knowingly removed an apartment from rent-stabilization in violation of the rent laws has not engaged in fraud. Without a fraud determination, tenants are stuck paying inflated market rents for unlawfully deregulated apartments, rather than proper rent-stabilization rents, and denied compensation commensurate with the landlord’s ill-begotten gains. Sometimes I have to try to explain why this is the law multiple times.

I started to believe that my explanations were not clear enough. I never seem to be able to overcome the incredulity. “I’m stuck paying a market rent even though the evidence is clear that my apartment was unlawfully deregulated?” One day, it finally occurred to me that the reason I am unable to explain the current law is because it is indefensible.