It will soon be illegal for city landlords to rent residential rooms to tourists—a controversial practice often associated with owners neglecting longtime tenants—but some local housing activists say that a new law doesn’t go far enough.
Buildings known as “illegal hotels” will soon live up to their name, with a law passed this summer outlawing the practice of renting to tourists for short periods in residential buildings, a trick which has been especially common on the Upper West Side.
Critics of illegal hotels charge that the practice not only creates dangerous conditions for tourists, but also can be a cash-cow for landlords, allowing them to disregard their actual tenants.
Legislation preventing these make-shift hotels has been a long time coming, elected officials and neighborhood residents say.
Supporters, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Liz Krueger, and Assembly member Richard Gottfried, have been going after illegal hotels for years, and are hoping that the bill will facilitate their efforts to stop the practice.
“From a safety perspective, the overcrowding situations are the worst problem. Illegal hotels often bill themselves as ‘hostels,’ and cram multiple sets of bunk beds into units that are designed for one or two people,” Sarra Hale-Stern, Krueger’s district office director, said in an email.
“The bill closes loopholes and gives teeth to our summonses,” said Jason Post, spokesperson for the mayor, adding that the law will not be enforced until May 2011.
Prior to this summer, properties were not considered illegal unless more than half of the building had been converted into hotel rooms. The new bill changes the game by establishing that all Class A multiple dwellings—that is, traditional residential buildings—have to be occupied by residents who live there for 30 days or longer.
Despite the legislative push forward, some local groups are now advocating for provisions to make the law more effective come May.
One such organization, the Goddard Riverside SRO Law Project, represents Single Room Occupancy buildings, which have often been converted into illegal hotels.
“The bill is a good thing, but we still need to work to ensure that landlords are punished when appropriate,” Yarrow Willman-Cole, a Goddard organizer, said.
The law’s effectiveness, she said, will center around how landlords and tenants respond to the threat of legal action.
“Landlords could continue to rent to tourists or they could say, ‘I don’t want to have the city on my back so now I’m going to do something else.’ And tenants need to be aware and complain to the proper folks,” she added.
The issue of enforcement is what concerns Victor Gonzalez, a co-chair of the housing committee for Community Board 7, which represents the Upper West Side.
He doesn’t think that the bill does nearly enough to combat the problem of illegal hotels, since agencies cannot fine a landlord for multiple violations together. Each agency, Gonzalez said, must take the landlord to court separately, and in many cases, the most that the prosecuted receives is a slap on the wrist.
“If the landlords do not get fined properly and there’s no oversight committee to watch them, the law is only going to be a Band-aid on a very serious problem,” he said.
Gonzalez fears that minor fines do little to deter landlords of illegal hotels.
Since the mayor’s office will investigate only after tenants call 311 to file complaints, Upper West Side residents had mixed feelings about the potential of the bill.
Diogenes Vizcaino, who lives near the Devon, an SRO on 94th Street, expressed concerns about the burden lying with residents to make calls that prompt investigations. “So how can we make this happen? We’re going to have to have a big march or put posters up and have a big meeting.”
Hale-Stern from Krueger’s office said of the bill’s influence, “Like all new laws, we will have to wait until the law goes into effect to evaluate its effectiveness.”
But for Upper West Side resident Denise Clock, the need to fight illegal hotels is urgent, “especially if they’re not taking care of the tenants that have been there for a while.”
She added, “It [the law] should be helpful if you complain to the right people.”
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