From the Daily News:The West Side’s mysterious “Hotel Hunter” has shut down two illegal B&Bs in Harlem — but their owner is assailing his “Nazi” tactics.
Tom Cayler of the ad-hoc Westside Neighborhood Alliance's Illegal Hotel Committee sicced the Department of Buildings on the Sugar Hill Harlem Inn and its sister hotel a few blocks away — and now the owner of both places has shuttered rather than allow in city inspectors.
“It's like Nazi Germany,” said the inns’ owner, Jeremy Archer, who moved to Harlem more than a decade ago and became an unauthorized hotelier in 2005. “They (investigators) tried to come in here. It was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. They had no warrant."
Archer said he didn’t know Cayler’s “illegal” hotel group and he had no idea why it had targeted him.
"I never heard of him, but he is causing me a lot of problems," Archer said from the foyer of his empty seven-room, four-story guesthouse at 460 W. 141st St., where he once charged $125 to $275 a night — well below the city’s hotel room average of $281 a night.
"October is my busiest month. I am losing a lot of money over this," Archer added, mentioning that he also closed his other hotel on Convent Ave. to dodge city inspectors.
Turning a house into a profitable crash pad requires more than just sprucing up the space and posting it on Craigslist and Airbbnb. City law requires a proper certificate of occupancy from the Department of Buildings and the collection of the city’s 6% hotel tax.
Archer did neither — plus he violated city zoning, which forbids commercial operations such as hotels in residential districts.
5 comments:
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and Archer can't even claim ignorance, seeing as he confessed to closing another such establishment to "dodge inspectors."
"'October is my busiest month. I am losing a lot of money over this,' Archer added."
What chutzpah.
It doesn't matter that this was a well run B&B with no problems, this is pretty much the same as having an illegal apartment or putting up something where the area is not zoned for it, such as this.
Do have to say Archer does have some huge balls to say what he says.
Never ceases to amaze me that nonsense that goes on in this city, speaks mounds about leadership.
I wish this dude would come to bayside to put some of these people out of their illegal apartments in these supposedly two family houses!!
I wish he would come to Flushing and "flush"out all the illegal aparments.
The DOB dose nothing but leave a LS4 form letters on the violators door.
I'm sure all this will improve under Bill Sandinista Duh Blazio. Boy are we lucky!
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