You Don’t Think I Can Wedge A Reference To “Wooly Bully” In A Story About Rent Control? Just Watch Me!

A rent control story for the ages:

For three decades, Lisa Dittmer has been on a collision course with her landlords — one involving the peculiarities of real estate and rent control in New York City — that culminated yesterday in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

For those unaccustomed to the range of comedy and heartbreak those factors can produce, it is worthwhile to begin with this: By law, Ms. Dittmer says, her monthly rent is $94.18, roughly the price of a pair of sneakers that will get you laughed off any basketball court in the city.

Ms. Dittmer moved into her apartment on the top floor of a three-story building in Bay Ridge in 1965, about a month before Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs released “Wooly Bully.”

“To date,” her lawyer wrote with lawyerly reserve, “plaintiff continues to occupy said apartment.”

The best reason, and perhaps the only reason, to occupy the same apartment for 41 years is rent control, a program established to address a housing crisis in postwar time, post-World War II time in particular. Under those rules, Ms. Dittmer’s rent for the apartment at 319 82nd Street was set at $80.72 a month in June 1970 and raised to $94.18 in March 1983, according to the lawsuit.

But since 1976, the lawsuit says, she has often been charged more than that. A lawyer for Ms. Dittmer, Colleen Buckley, said the amount she paid ranged from the maximum legal rent to as much as $570 monthly.

The suit contends that the landlords willfully ignored the fact that the apartment was rent controlled. The plaintiff is asking for $350,000:

Since 1976, the lawsuit says, Ms. Dittmer has been overcharged, in total, $84,465.80, which works out to $237.93 a month.

In the lawsuit, Ms. Dittmer, who did not return calls seeking comment, is seeking $253,397.40, or three times the total overpayment, plus lawyers’ fees and interest, for a round total of $350,000.