Opinion ID: 2069199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Physical Occupation

Text: Governmental action that compels an owner to endure a permanent physical occupation of its property effects an unconstitutional taking per se ( see , Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1526; Loretto , 458 US, at 434-435). Appellants claim that they are forced by the new regulations to accept strangers as tenants and that these tenancies, no longer restricted to blood-or-marriage relatives of the original tenant, will exist in perpetuity. Because the coresidency requirement in the case of a tenant who voluntarily vacates has been reduced to the shorter of two years (one year in the case of elderly or disabled tenants) or the inception of the tenancy or commencement of the relationship, appellants further complain that the new regulations make it easier to qualify for protection. At the outset, we are unpersuaded by the argument that the new regulations have created perpetual tenancies. An owner's right to evict an unsatisfactory tenant or convert rent-regulated property to other uses remains unaffected ( see , 9 NYCRR parts 2104, 2204, 2504, 2524; Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1528-1529). That a rent-regulated tenancy might itself be of indefinite duration  as has long been the case under rent control and rent stabilization  does not, without more, render it a permanent physical occupation of property ( see , Manheim, Tenant Eviction Protection and the Takings Clause , 1989 Wis L Rev 925, 991-993 [1989]). Nor does the fact that an owner must offer a renewal lease to a departed tenant's newly defined family member  potentially a stranger to the owner  give rise to such a physical occupation ( see , Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1528). In Seawall Assocs. v City of New York (74 N.Y.2d 92, 105, cert denied 493 US 976), we held that Local Law No. 9 of 1987, which required owners of single room occupancy housing accommodations to rehabilitate and rent out their units, forcing them to subject their properties to a use which they neither planned nor desired, constituted a physical taking per se. By contrast, in Yee , the Supreme Court held that requiring owners of mobile home parks to rent the pad beneath a mobile home at controlled rents to any purchaser of the mobile home did not constitute a physical occupation because the owners had voluntarily open[ed] their property to occupation by others and thus could not assert a per se right to compensation based on their inability to exclude particular individuals ( Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1530). The difference  dispositive here  between requiring an owner to accept a purported stranger as a tenant and compelling the owner to rent out single room occupancy accommodations is in the owner's voluntary acquiescence in the use of its property for rental housing ( see , Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1531; Federal Communications Commn. v Florida Power Corp. , 480 US 245, 252-253; see also , Seawall , 74 NY2d, at 105). As we noted in Seawall , [i]t is the forced occupation[,]    not the identities of the new tenants or the terms of the leases, which deprives the owners of their possessory interests and results in physical takings ( Seawall , 74 NY2d, at 106). Indeed, once a property owner decides to rent to tenants, the antidiscrimination laws eliminate an owner's unfettered discretion in rejecting tenants ( see , Yee , 503 US, at ___, 112 S Ct, at 1530; see also , Atlanta Motel v United States , 379 US 241; Manheim, Tenant Eviction Protection and the Takings Clause , 1989 Wis L Rev 925, 997-998). In any event, a family member for noneviction purposes, applying all of the criteria established by DHCR, is no more likely to be a stranger to the owner than a family member as formerly defined. This is so because, under either definition, the family member entitled to noneviction protection must have occupied the apartment with the tenant of record in a long-term, committed relationship (to be determined on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the specified criteria). In fact, the challenged regulations additionally permit the owner to request, when offering a renewal lease, the names of all co-occupants and whether they qualify as family members (9 NYCRR 2104.6 [d] [2]; 2204.6 [d] [2]; 2503.5 [e]; 2523.5 [e]). Because the challenged regulations may require the owner-lessor to accept a new occupant but not a new use of its rent-regulated property, we conclude that appellants have failed to establish their claim that, facially, a permanent physical occupation of appellants' property has been effected.