After Anne Cunningham’s superintendent caught her speaking with a journalist last year, he called the police.
Cunningham, a resident of Tempo Hotel, a residential hotel on 73rd Street, said that her home often feels like a prison, and the call to the police was just one example of the oppressive environment.
As a tenants’ rights advocate, she is not alone in her frustrations with a persisting phenomenon on the Upper West Side of what local politicians call “illegal hotels”—traditional residential buildings that are used as tourist hotels and hostels.
Opponents have criticized landlords for illegally renting residential apartments to tourists for years, because these landlords often make a greater profit from visitors, compared to permanent low-income tenants.
Though a New York State Supreme Court decision one year ago said that these hotel converts are in fact legal, this week, city and state legislators and community activists are renewing the fight against these hotel conversions.
Legal or illegal?
Three buildings have been at the center of the controversy—the Continental and the Pennington, both on 95th Street, and the Mount Royal on 94th Street. The buildings are all Single Room Occupancy buildings, or SROs, with rooms that have either a bathroom or a kitchen.
In 2007, the New York Supreme Court granted the city an injunction, which stated that those three buildings could not be used as hotels or hostels.
But the case of City of New York v. 330 Continental LLC in 2009 overturned that injunction. The State Appellate Court ruled in January 2009 that though units in these buildings were being used for “transient occupancy,” or stays of less than 30 days, the city could not prove that the buildings were used primarily for that purpose. This effectively allowed the landlords to continue converting SROs to hotels.
Now, New York State Assembly member Richard Gottfried’s office, with the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is currently drafting legislation in response to the Appellate Court ruling.
According to Gottfried’s deputy chief of staff Michael Kaplan, a bill which will be introduced later this month will clarify the difference between permanent residence—“Class A multiple dwellings”—and a transient occupancy.
Right now, transient occupancy is too ambiguous, Kaplan said. “It’s legal and illegal depending on whose definition you use,” he said.
Gottfried protested the idea that buildings could legally house both transient and permanent residents.
“If a building’s certificate of occupation says that it is a Class A multiple dwelling, that’s all it should be. I believe the [Appellate] court decision misinterpreted the current law,” Gottfried said. “I believe that the city’s bill will make that crystal clear.”
‘Not exactly the Plaza Hotel’
For some residents of these buildings, renewed legislative efforts to halt the practice of illegal hotels could not come soon enough.
Rick, one resident of the Pennington, who has lived in the building for more than 15 years and declined to give his last name for fear of retribution from the landlord, said that he believes government action up to this point is “just tied up in knots in the court and tied up in political corruption.”
In converting SRO units into hostel units, the Pennington has neglected to address the needs of tenants with stabilized rents, he said, pointing out the caving floorboard in his own unit, deterioration of paint and plaster on his ceiling, and cracks on his walls.
While catering to tourists leaves the building clean, he said that he does not feel safe with strangers in the building.
He said he has even received knocks on his door soliciting drugs and sex.
Rick said that the Pennington’s employees are unresponsive to tenant requests and inquiries regarding the building’s operations. “They play dumb,” he said. “How much can you take? This is just a game they play to get you out,” he added.
David Satnick of Loeb and Loeb LLP who represents Continental LLC, the owners of the Pennington, denied allegations that the company is trying to get rid of any of its tenants. He said allegations of harassment are a serious matter and he encourages individuals to come forward.
When asked about the accusations of shoddy maintenance work and unresponsive landlords, Satnick added, “This is something I’d like to know about because it means my employees aren’t doing the best job they should.”
Satnick was one of the lawyers representing the Continental LLC in the 2009 State Apellate Court case that that ruled in favor of transient residential hotels.
He said in a recent interview, the Pennington and its sister hotels are legal and provide tourists a chance to explore the city in a tough economy.
“These hotels have been transient since the beginning of time. They’ve always been a hybrid,” Satnick said.
“When most hotels in New York got to be so expensive, a lot of visitors started looking for alternate accommodations. A single room is not exactly the Plaza Hotel,” he said.
Tenants forced out?
At other SROs on the Upper West Side, tenants say they have faced harassment by managers and landlords. A tenant in a rent-stabilized apartment on the first floor of the Imperial Court Hotel on 79th Street, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of harassment, said that he knows of cases within the building where landlords have taken tenants to court on false charges in attempts to illegally evict them.
“They don’t do repairs, they don’t put the heat on, they tamper with the mail. They’re treating tenants like second class citizens,” he added.
He said that he also reported a complaint to the Department of Buildings that “over 60 percent” of the Imperial’s rooms are being used as hotel rooms, as evidenced by their keypad locks as opposed to basic doorknobs.
The complaint can be found on the Department of Buildings website, which says that further inspection is scheduled.
“Legislation has to be stronger, with much more teeth. It has been ineffective,” he said.
Sarah Morgan, assistant manager at the Imperial Court, denied allegations of illegal evictions or any such attempts. Landlord Michael Edelstein could not be reached for comment.
Despite the fact that the Imperial advertises online, some West Side residents said they had no idea tourists are staying in nearby buildings.
Andrea Fry, a resident in the neighborhood since 1991, said she hadn’t heard of any controversy.
“I wasn’t aware, but I don’t doubt it,” she said.
Legislative agenda
In February of 2008, Gottfried introduced Assembly bill A.6013, with the co-sponsorship of several politicians and the Illegal Hotels Working Group, to address concerns over illegal hotels. The bill included several different pieces of legislation surrounding illegal hotels.
While the original bill never made it to the floor, the offices of assembly members Gottfried, Linda Rosenthal, and Micah Kellner are each slated to introduce parts of it this week.
Rosenthal will introduce the “Natural Persons Bill,” according to her legislative director Jonathan Davis. That bill will limit the ability to solicit a lease in SRO residential buildings to “flesh and blood human beings” as opposed to corporate entities, which can currently lease blocks of these buildings and transform them into hotels, Davis said.
“These folks are a source of harassment of tenants,” Davis said. The bill is an attempt to restore these buildings to their intended purposes, he added.
According to Legislative Director Eliyanna Kaiser, Kellner’s office is slated to introduce legislation that will allow the Attorney General to consider the operation of an “illegal hotel” as a factor in deciding whether or not to grant requests by building owners for condo and co-op conversion.
Gottfried’s office will introduce a provision that will al=low the city to enforce state rent control and stabilization requirements. “When a landlord takes a residential apartment and illegally rent them out as transient hotels, this deprives the city of affordable housing and the regular tenants have to put up with disruption,” Gottfried said.
Turning the tide
An advocate of tenants’ rights for over 30 years, Tempo Hotel resident Cunningham said the problem is so rampant around the city that her efforts have become a “work of dedication.”
She said the superintendent has been a source of fear and intimidation for many residents. His services have been terminated by AIMCO, a real-estate investment trust that oversees the Tempo, as of this past Friday after an investigation prompted by tenants’ written complaints, she said.
Neither the superintendent nor an AIMCO representative could be reached for comment.
“There is so much money to make from this that it has become a game,” Cunningham said. “Politically, the momentum is lost because the problem has been out of control for so long,” she said.
Of the proposed legislation she said, “We have many elected officials on our side, but there are many more who are upstate where it is not affecting their communities.”
“It would be a miracle if it passed in our favor,” she added.
Jackie Del Valle, community organizer at the West Side Neighborhood Alliance, a community group that mobilizes residents on housing issues, agreed that the issue remains unsolved.
According to Del Valle, West Side Neighborhood Alliance has done an informal study and suspects that there are at least 297 “illegal hotels” in the city. The Alliance considers these hotels illegal if they are renting rooms out on a transient basis, when their certificate of occupancy reads that they are intended for permanent residence. Del Valle emphasized that while those numbers are by no means conclusive, they indicate the scope of the problem.
She said, “The loophole that was created by this unfortunate ruling really needs to be fixed.”
hien.truong@columbiaspectator.com
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