Wow. I feel for the tenants but... that's how it goes. Nothing in this life is guaranteed.
A similar thing happened to my mom's tenants when she sold her property. My mom deliberately rented below market if they were good tenants (paid on time, respected their unit, didn't cause any trouble) but at the closing the new owner made it clear that she was going to raise everybody's rent to market. The new owner can do whatever she/he wants.
No Legal Avenues
Sánchez noted that the city is preempted by state law from intervening in matters of rent regulation, so Glacier isn’t required to do anything for the tenants.
“We can’t mandate a lease renewal, we can’t mandate any specific terms,” she said. “So we’re hamstrung, and so it becomes this effort around mitigation and changing hearts and minds where we can.”
The state Attorney General’s Office similarly has no power to intervene in matters of deregulated apartments and, because the buildings were converted in the 1980s, the tenants are not protected through statewide tenant protection reforms approved in 2019.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/2/23/22...buy-or-get-out
Hundreds of tenants at eight Bronx and Manhattan co-op buildings are at-risk of eviction after a private equity firm announced last year that it would not renew their leases and instead sell the rental units.
The tenants, many of whom are low-income families or retirees, were given the option to buy their apartments, now owned by Glacier Equities, or leave.
In November 2020, Glacier purchased a collection of 255-residential unit “unsold shares” in co-operative buildings in Norwood, Fordham, Bedford Park and Spuyten Duyvil in The Bronx and Inwood in Manhattan for $23 million.
Nearly all of those unsold shares were deregulated rental apartments occupied by longtime tenants.
As the new owner of the units, Glacier Equities can legally boot tenants who’ve done nothing wrong and paid rent on time, then sell the co-op shares to individual buyers.
Wilson Z., who works as a cleaner in the city’s transit system and has lived in his McClellan Street apartment for 18 years, said he received his first 90-day notice from Glacier in May 2021, six months after the sale.
“I thought, ‘This cannot be,’” the 52-year-old, who declined to give his last name, said in an interview on Friday.
“In this building there are people with children, retirees, and people like myself who work day after day to be able to live here. And this is how we’re treated?”
The residents, housing-rights advocates and local politicians say it is a classic case of why Albany lawmakers should pass “Good Cause” eviction-protection legislation.
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