State Laws Change on Tenant-Landlord Leases

Willie Perez from the organization Hombres de Palabra and Pilar Moya, executive director of Greenlawn-based nonprofit Housing Help, invited Huntington Town Councilman Mark Cuthbertson onto a radio program to review new state laws governing rent regulations, security deposits, eviction timetables and more.

Among the changes: Landlords can no longer require more than one month’s security deposit and cannot blacklist troublesome tenants.  

“The real estate industry is pushing back from the landlord side of things because this makes hard to get rid of bad actors,” one agent said. She predicted that landlords would start raising rents to provide more of a cushion against their costs. She also predicted that more owners would be willing to accept Section 8 housing vouchers because of how the government pays rents.

Tenant activists, however, said the limit on security deposits would make finding a home for rent easier and more affordable, and tenants with legitimate gripes against landlords wouldn’t be blacklisted.

The radio program is based at the Light of Salvation Church in Huntington Station.

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