[Landlord-US-NY] My Experience with a Nightmare Tenant During COVID in NYC

In January 2020, I signed a lease with a tenant in NYC, right before COVID changed everything. For the first three months, she paid rent without issue. But soon after, she claimed she lost her job due to the pandemic and began citing the newly enacted NYC policy allowing tenants facing financial hardship to use their security deposit for rent. I agreed, understanding the difficulties of the time.

By the following month, however, she couldn’t pay the full rent of $4,200 and started paying less than half. This arrangement lasted a few months until she eventually stopped paying rent altogether.

In May 2020, when New York had strict COVID-19 restrictions, my neighbor called to report a large gathering at the apartment. I rushed over, only to find a line of people waiting to get inside. Someone even asked me, "Are you here for the party?" When I confronted the tenant, she claimed it was just close family, all socially distanced—a blatant lie. At that moment, I knew I was in for a difficult journey.

Over the next 30 months, I received dozens of complaints from my neighbors. One incident stood out: my tenant allowed a friend to "cat sit" over the weekend—a friend known for substance abuse issues. This friend invited others over, turning the building's common area into a gathering spot for drug use, all of which was caught on the building's surveillance cameras. I fielded complaints about drug use, noise, and disruptive behavior regularly.

For three long years, she paid no rent. She continued to claim financial hardship, yet I later discovered she had a job the entire time and even traveled internationally to attend music festivals. While I was paying the mortgage and my own rent, she was living rent-free, shielded by NYC’s tenant protection policies, which ultimately put landlords like me at a severe disadvantage.

Finally, in December 2023, I managed to evict her. When I re-entered the apartment, it was completely trashed. There were remnants of drug use, with bags of cocaine left out, a filthy refrigerator, cracked bathroom fixtures, and grease-covered appliances. The place was in complete disarray.

I was awarded a money judgment of over $100,000, yet collecting any of it remains unlikely. She even has a misleading LinkedIn profile, claiming employment at a major tech company, which I’ve confirmed is untrue.

Reflecting on this ordeal, I feel partly at fault. Had I done a thorough background check, I would have found warnings from others who had encountered her before. Still, NYC’s anti-landlord policies and limitations, like the rental assistance program (ERAP) excluding co-ops, enabled her to exploit the system. Now, I'm left out over $100,000, and it seems improbable that I’ll ever recover any of it.

This experience has been a painful lesson, and it’s disheartening to see policies intended to protect tenants create loopholes that allow bad actors to take advantage of landlords trying to do the right thing.