New York State’s Tenant Safe Harbor Act was intended to help those affected by the pandemic. But what if that harbor is on the fancier side?

See The Talk of Montauk. By Jonah Engel Bromwich and Ezra Marcus of The New York Times. Excerpts:

"Several days before Ms. Hochberg was scheduled to move out, according to Ms. Berman-Schechter, her father, who was listed on the lease as an occupant of the house, called and asked that his daughter be able to stay. The landlord said no. On a text message thread with both Hochbergs after the call, she offered to help find Ms. Hochberg somewhere else to live.

Ms. Hochberg’s tone changed.

“You’re going to kick an almost 91-year-old man out in the middle of a global pandemic?” she texted. She added that she and her father were protected by a law passed to shield vulnerable tenants during the pandemic. Later she sent a New York Post article about moneyed tenants who had taken advantage of the law. (In a conversation with The New York Times, Mr. Hochberg played down his occupancy of the Berman-Schechters’ place. “I think I slept there one night,” he said. “I have my own place in Montauk.”)

On Sept. 1, according to a court filing, Ms. Hochberg hadn’t paid what she owed, and hadn’t left the house. She posted a picture of herself to Instagram that day, holding the door of the Berman-Schechters’ outdoor shower open. The caption read: “I’ve heard September is the new August 🙃”

‘It’s Happening All Over the Place’

The Berman-Schechters are far from the only landlords who have had trouble getting short-term tenants to pay rent or leave their rentals during the pandemic. Tenant-protection laws passed by the state of New York in order to shield the vulnerable both before and during the pandemic have been used as a cudgel by wealthy renters, as well as those who wish to portray themselves living in luxury.

“When the legislature enacted this law, I’m sure that they did not intend to protect people in this way, renting units, houses in the Hamptons, for tens of thousands of dollars a month,” said Steven Kirkpatrick, a partner at the Romer Debbas law firm in Manhattan who specializes in housing law. (Ms. Hochberg had agreed in May to pay $31,750 for her stay in Montauk.)

Robert Marcincuk, of O’Shea, Marcincuk and Bruyn in Southampton, said he had 10 landlord clients with tenant headaches there."

"“It’s happening all over the place,” Mr. Killoran said. And people are talking. “Certainly landlords are and obviously tenants are too because you’re seeing the proliferation of the strategy.”

The Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law on June 30, extended pandemic-related protections that the governor had already established, making it difficult for landlords to obtain an eviction order, no matter whom their tenant might be. Tenant rights had already been buttressed by a law passed the previous year, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act."

"But during a summer like no other, cases of wealthy squatters attracted public attention. In June, Air Mail reported that a Hamptons realtor, Jonathan Davis, had trashed a property he’d leased, and had refused to leave. In a court filing, Mr. Davis’s landlords, Giancarlo Bonagura and Paula Rosado, accused him of overstaying his lease because he believed that the tenant laws passed during the pandemic would leave them with no legal recourse."