Let’s Lynch The Landlord!

Landlords are going to great lengths to catch rent control scofflaws:

Landlords are resorting to a new weapon in their war with tenants over rent stabilization — hidden cameras trained on an occupant’s door

“The whole building is paranoid now,” said Bryan Lurie, who last week found a camera hidden inside an electrical box outside his $360-a-month West Village studio apartment. “My friends told me I should have my apartment swept for bugs.”

With the housing market growing stronger, landlords are becoming so desperate to lower the boom on low rents that they are spying on tenants in search of any transgression that would let them tear up the lease.

“Tenants are absolutely horrified, and they should be,” said Jenny Laurie, director of the Met Council on Housing. “It’s very ugly. Tenants are feeling enormously pressured.”