Q: I am a residential tenant in Amherst NY (lived here for three years. How are notices of non-renewal required to be serve
I have lived here for 3 years and am aware of the 90 day notice requirement. I want to know how noticed are required, by law, to be served. Email, text, phone, mail? Please cite statute. Thank you
A:
Dear Amherst Tenant:
Thank you for your question. I may as well say you should ask the NY State Legislature why the statute does not provide any precise method for delivering the written notification. The word 'service' is not once mentioned in the 362 words of this statute.
The end result is that every person receiving or giving the Real Property Law Section 226-C 'notice' must inquire from a local attorney how the local judges in the local tenant and landlord courts interpret the statute's text '...the landlord shall provide written notice...' and '... gave actual written notice...' because this statute is meant to provide full employment to lawyers.
Some lawyers in NYS other than in NYC choose to employ common sense with the concepts of 'shall provide' and 'gave actual,' but until Appellate Courts start making precedents that bind the lower court judges, it seems that the best approach is to find out what your judges want a landlord to do.
In NYC, it is easier because the Legislature simply grafted the new statute by reference to the prior statute that required '...the landlord or the landlord's agent serve upon the tenant, in the
same manner in which a notice of petition in summary proceedings is now
allowed to be served by law...' the RPL Section 226-C written notice.
Of course, even there, rather than simply spell it out, the NYS Legislature chose to use an expression '...in the same manner in which a notice of petition in summary proceedings is now
allowed to be served by law...' which is NOT the methods described in the actual service statute for a notice of petition and petition. Because that statute is interpreted by courts in NY State as high as the Court of Appeals to do acts of service in the name of compliance with the statute that the Legislature never stated and, even after thirty-nine years, has not added into the statute [https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/1985/65-n-y-2d-739-0.html, [https://casetext.com/case/eight-associates-v-hynes-1].
As I said, these statutes are written to provide employment for lawyers.
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