What Is DHCR?

DHCR is the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the agency that administers and enforces the state’s rent regulation laws. It operates within New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), and through its Office of Rent Administration it oversees rent stabilization and rent control across New York City and other covered municipalities. For the board or owner of a building with regulated units, DHCR is the agency you register with each year, file rent-increase applications through, and answer to when a tenant challenges a rent or a cut in services. 

Most owner contact with DHCR runs through a few recurring obligations. Owners of stabilized apartments must file an annual rent registration recording the legal rent for each unit; major capital improvement and individual apartment improvement increases require DHCR review or supporting documentation; and tenants can file overcharge or reduced-services complaints, which DHCR investigates, usually with an inspection before it rules. The 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA) tightened this framework, narrowing the paths out of regulation and reshaping how increases are calculated. The administrative cost of getting it wrong is concrete: an owner generally cannot collect a rent increase for any period a unit was not properly registered.

Where DHCR is concerned, most problems trace back to a registration or a rent calculation that drifted off the rules years before anyone noticed. MD Squared handles annual DHCR registrations and rent-increase consultations for the buildings under its management, and coordinates experienced rent stabilization counsel when a matter turns into an overcharge claim or a deregulation question. Learn what our Rent Stabilization Consulting service includes, or get in touch to review the regulated units across your portfolio.