Rent Control/Lease Problem

[Dean Kao]

My friend is in a weird situation. Lets call him Frank. Frank's friend Todd lives in a rent controlled building. Frank moves in with Todd and the landlord put Frank on the lease through an addendum. The addendum stipulates that Frank's lease is tied to Todd's. If Todd leaves, Frank's lease is terminated.

So 10 months later, Todd has to move. The landlord tells Frank that he has to sign a new lease and the rent is now double. Does Frank have any recourse?

[Michaela G.]

Something seems very off in this situation: Todd has been living in this apartment all by himself for a long time (since his rent is only half of market rate) and suddenly he's willing to get a roommate.

Frank is willing to get into a roommate situation, which only happens to save money or because people become a couple.

Now that Todd moved out, Frank would be willing to pay all of Todd's rent rate, without roommate? If so, why was he looking for a housemate situation before, if he could afford that?

Maybe I'm wrong, but what I'm suspecting here is that Frank and Todd made an arrangement, knowing that Todd was going to leave and he wanted to help his friend, Frank, to take over his apartment at the current rate. They figured that getting the landlord to add Frank to the lease would make it easy to just continue the same way. They were trying pull one over on the landlord and he's not playing.

So, now 'Frank' is trying to come up with a way to continue to scam the landlord.