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Harassed tenants in rent-regulated buildings are finally getting much needed support from elected officials in Queens and throughout the city.

Following landmark legislation passed in the City Council in March, Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) is calling for hearings in the body to further address harassment stemming from repeat offender Vantage Properties.

Vantage has previously been targeted for criticism by elected officials for its underhanded business practices. The company has a track record of buying rent-regulated buildings in Western Queens and harassing tenants in an effort to move them out in favor of newer, better-heeled renters.

Recently Gioia threw his support behind efforts to reign in companies practicing this tactic. In early May he joined with Vantage tenants to protest the private equity landlords’ predatory Tactics.

These tenants all live in buildings owned by Vantage, which has recently purchased over 9,000 affordable, rent-regulated apartments in Western Queens and Upper Manhattan with private equity loans financed by financial giant Credit Suisse.

At the crux of the problem is some complicated financial calculus. The debt service on each apartment is over 50 percent higher than the current rental income, so paying off the loans is dependent on Vantage dramatically raising rental income in the buildings.

To make up for this financial windfall, Vantage has resorted to harassing tenants with frivolous lawsuits and baseless claims so rent stabilized renters can be moved out and replaced.

Councilman Gioia announced the City Council hearings into this trend in rent-regulated real estate and felt it is leading to “systematic harassment and displacement of tenants,” throughout Queens.

“We’ve got to do everything possible to protect our City’s affordable housing stock,” said Gioia, whose district covers an estimated 20 Vantage-owned buildings in Woodside, Sunnyside, Long Island City and Astoria. “In this case, that means protecting tenants from harassment, meritless lawsuits, or intimidation, which have no place in this City.”

According to housing advocates, Vantage has harassed rent-regulated tenants and brought baseless eviction proceedings in an attempt to force out long-time tenants and thereby raise rents. Loan documents show a disturbing trend developing and clearly state that as business practice Vantage aims to remove 20-30 percent of their tenants in the first year and 10 percent every subsequent year. These numbers are grossly incongruous as typical turnover in rent-regulated apartments is 5.6 percent per year.

“We are seeing unprecedented harassment of rent regulated tenants in neighborhoods throughout Queens. It is especially alarming that these business practices appear to target immigrants and other vulnerable people,” said Robert McCreanor, director of the Catholic Migration Office’s Immigrant Tenant Advocacy Project.

With affordable housing disappearing in every borough, Vantage and Credit Suisse are each part of a larger socioeconomic issue of private-equity backed developers that have purchased over 75,000 units of rent-regulated housing in the past four years, further leading to the destabilization of a significant amount of the City’s supply of affordable apartments.

The call for hearings comes after groundbreaking anti-harassment legislation was signed by Mayor Bloomberg in March.