Opinion ID: 1966812
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The First Decision of the Rental Housing Commission

Text: The landlord appealed the Rent Administrator's decision to the RHC. The landlord argued to the Commission that since both apartments were within the same multi-building housing complex, shared a common heating plant, were owned and managed by the same entities, and had the same housing registration, business license, and certificate of occupancy, the unit in the other building should be considered as located in the same housing accommodation as Ms. Marshall's unit. While the Commission recognized that it had, on other occasions, taken such factors into consideration in determining whether a multi-building housing complex should be treated as one housing accommodation for purposes of allowing a landlord to file a single hardship petition for a group of buildings, it declined to extend this interpretation of the statutory term housing accommodation to determinations involving vacancy rent increases. Thus, because the rental units here were in different buildings, the RHC concluded that the Rent Administrator was correct in holding that the 1977 vacancy rent increase was improper. The Commission, however, noted that a hearing examiner had erred in taking official notice of the rent history for Daisy Marshall's apartment when it had not given the landlord the opportunity to contest any material fact of which official notice had been taken. The Commission, nevertheless, found the error harmless in view of the fact that the landlord could not show he was entitled to the 1977 vacancy rent increase, since it had already been established that the comparable unit on which the landlord based the rent increase was located in a different building. The RHC did not address the five percent increase in rent implemented in 1976, apparently because the issue was not raised in the landlord's appeal. The RHC affirmed the Rent Administrator's decision on the reduction of services due to loss of air-conditioning.