More rules for AirBnB

From Crains:

The mayor's office on Monday unveiled a set of proposed rules that will force short-term rental sites such as Airbnb to disclose the identities of hosts and the types of listings they are offering. The new statues are the result of a law enacted earlier this year that's designed to aid city inspectors in cracking down on illegal home sharing—which they have done in grand fashion lately.

Absent certain exceptions, the new rules propose that booking services submit monthly reports to the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement through a yet-to-be-create web portal or face fines up to the larger of $1,500 or the annual income from the listing. The reports are to include a host's personal information, how much money changed hands, where to find advertising materials for listings and, most crucially, whether an entire apartment was being rented out and for how long.

Renting an empty unit for fewer than 30 days in larger buildings is considered a violation of the state's multiple dwelling law, and the mayor's office has invoked that statute to ding homeowners or building owners and then hit them with additional violations for not having exit signs, sprinklers and other safety measures required in hotels.

"This law provides the city with the critical information it needs to preserve our housing stock, keep visitors safe, and ensure residents feel secure in their homes and neighborhoods," Christian Klossner, executive director of the Office of Special Enforcement, said in a statement.

The administration is hosting a public hearing on the proposed rules Dec. 18, after which the mayor's office is likely to adopt them in some form. The effort is part of the city's opposition to illegal home sharing, a thorny issue involving a nebulous mix of housing economics, politics and pricey public relations campaigns.

Landlord sued over illegal converting apartments into AirBnB rentals

From AMNY:

An “unscrupulous” Airbnb host is being sued by the city after he allegedly converted four apartments into illegal hotel listings that misled renters, placing them in hazardous living conditions, according to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (OSE).

The lawsuit was brought against David Schuchter De Oliveira by OSE on behalf of 10 unnamed plaintiffs who detailed horror stories of being duped into staying in illegally converted apartments in Manhattan, sometimes with dozens of other guests at the same time. Schuchter De Oliveira rents, but does not own the apartments, three of which are located in rent-stabilized buildings, per a city spokeswoman.

One plaintiff, David, said he was led to believe he was renting a room in a young couple’s guest bedroom with quality amenities and access to a shared living space, bathroom and kitchen.

“I first sensed something dubious about the host/listing when the key pick-up instructions sent me on a clandestine mission, several blocks from the apartment, to pick up keys from inside a small lockbox attached to a public telephone booth,” he said, adding that he realized it was an illegal Airbnb as soon as he walked into the apartment.

David said the two-bedroom unit had been converted into a hostel-like hotel with five bedrooms, each with their own lock, one bathroom and no common areas.

“Each bedroom was furnished to sleep up to six people, except for the kitchen which had been converted into a bedroom with a single bed,” he added.

City files lawsuit against AirBnB landlord

From AMNY:

One of the city’s “worst landlords” is accused of turning rent-stabilized apartments in Hell’s Kitchen into illegal hotel rooms and listing them on websites like Airbnb.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (MOSE) announced a lawsuit Wednesday against Big Apple Management LLC for allegedly converting seven buildings on 47th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, into illegal hotels despite years of complaints, violations and fines.

Based on the city’s inspections, at least seven of the unlawful hotel rooms had been rent-stabilized units before 2009.

City Council planning major crackdown on AirBnB

From The Real Deal:

The City Council is slated to consider a controversial bill seeking to fine Airbnb up to $25,000 for every listing it fails to disclose to the city.

The legislation, which will be introduced in the City Council on Thursday, requires online home-sharing companies to submit data on individual listings — including the host’s name, home address and phone number — to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which goes after illegal hotel operators, Politico reported. Under the bill, Airbnb and similar companies can be fined between $5,000 and $25,000 for each listing that isn’t shared with the city.

AirBnB couple on the hook for big fine

From The Real Deal:

A pair of illegal hotel operators need to pay the city $1 million as part of its crackdown on converting housing units into hotels.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement received the $1 million judgment against Mina Guirguis and Szilvia Patkos, who used services like Airbnb to market at least seven units in 5 West 31st Street and 59 Fifth Avenue, according to Politico. They operated as City Oases LLC and marketed the units as “Urban Oasis” and “the Contempo Design Suites.”

The city sued them in 2014 and previously received a $1 million settlement in November with property owners Majid and Hamid Kermanshah. However, the Kermanshah’s ultimately will only need to pay the city $201,500.

Corona AirBnB flophouse shut down

From the Daily News:

The city has shuttered a Queens flophouse that operated as an illegal hotel listed on the Airbnb site — even offering travelers a $21-per-night stay in backyard tents.

The Corona home at 98-13 Northern Blvd. was one of two hit with a partial vacate order last month after officials deemed them “imminently perilous to life (and) public safety.”

“There is about 40 people on the two floors,” a caller reported to the city last October.

“The backyard has air beds under tents, also.”

When investigators from the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement showed up on Feb. 21, they found 27 mattresses crammed into two floors, four guests and one permanent resident.

The two-family property was illegally converted to seven furnished bedrooms where transient guests lived alongside one permanent resident, officials said.

AirBnB fine payment is lacking

From Crains:

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill late last year to stop Airbnb hosts from turning their apartments into de facto hotels, bigger fines were supposed to deter a practice elected officials argued took much-needed apartments off the rental market.

But more than six months after city inspectors’ first round of enforcement, the de Blasio administration has collected only a fraction of the issued fines, which added up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a Crain’s analysis. In large part, the trouble is rooted in the city’s long-flawed collection system—where cases and appeals can take months to process and landlords have little reason to pay up—which could ultimately defang efforts to curb illegal home sharing.

Between November and May, the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement targeted 16 properties in its first wave of inspections, issuing violations for operating an apartment as a hotel room. Inspectors also fined owners for building-code violations, like missing sprinklers and improper egress routes, and—beginning in February when the new law went into effect—for advertising units online. Few owners have paid up.

Trump home has illegal conversion inside

From DNA Info:

The city issued a partial vacate order at President Donald Trump’s boyhood home, which has recently been listed on Airbnb, after the owners illegally converted the basement into an apartment, city records show.

The five-bedroom, Tudor-style house, at 85-15 Wareham Place in the affluent Jamaica Estates neighborhood, where Trump lived until he was 4, was sold at an auction in January for $2.14 million. In August, the new owners listed it on Airbnb with a price tag of $725 per night.

But shortly after that, the city received complaints from Community Board 8 and via 311 about the illegal conversion conducted in the basement, officials said.

The basement is not part of the Airbnb listing which advertises the other portions of the house, according to Airbnb.

CB8 District Manager Marie Adam-Ovide said Friday that the board received a number of phone calls and emails with complaints that there are people illegally living in the basement.

“Once we receive complaints, we have to act,” she said.

CB8 then notified the Department of Buildings, which referred the case to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement investigating illegal conversions.

Illegal hotel owner gets off easy

From Crains:

The owner of a Midtown apartment building that for years has been dogged with lawsuits has agreed to settle millions of dollars' worth of outstanding violations for $375,000 and bring the property up to snuff, according to federal bankruptcy court documents.

Ben Zion Suky was one of several owners of 440 W. 41st St. and for years rented apartments for less than 30 days in violation of city code, according to City Hall. In 2015 the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down the illegal inn and collect damages. Before it was resolved, however, Suky sold the 96-unit building to a company controlled by David Goldwasser, who then filed for bankruptcy protection.

The city argued that Goldwasser was responsible for the outstanding violations and penalties, which totaled more than $2 million, according to the documents. Now the two sides have agreed to settle the suit for $375,000 on the condition that Goldwasser bring the property up to code and cease all illegal hotel operations.

Factory operated as hotel vacated

From the Daily News:

The city raided an apartment in hipster Brooklyn last week that had been operating as an illegal hotel through Airbnb and other websites, sending several unlucky out-of-towners scrambling for places to stay.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement — which just had its budget nearly doubled in order to crack down on illegal hotels — busted 210 Cook St. in East Williamsburg on Tuesday after receiving complaints about it through 311.

Inspectors found a brightly colored loft space — complete with wall murals, Ikea-style furniture and tons of potted plants — that had been converted into an eight-room hotel.

Guests would punch a code into a keypad at the door to get into the space, which was divided into cubbyholes marked 1 through 8.

Rates started at $31 a night on Airbnb, where it had a 4.5-star rating.

Visitors shared one of two bathrooms, had access to a kitchen and received free Wi-Fi, according to the listing on Airbnb.

It's amazing the lengths that the city will go to in order to keep tourists safe, but doesn't care much about illegal conversion of permanent residences.

Van Bramer angry about AirBnB in affordable housing

From LIC Post:

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer is working on legislation that would penalize New Yorkers who exploit their subsidized apartments for profit on Airbnb, his office announced Thursday.

The announcement follows an LIC Post report on multiple residents at the affordable Hunters Point South development who were renting out their tax-subsidized homes for as much as $500 per night.

Van Bramer’s legislation would establish penalties for renters who “are found guilty of taking advantage of rent stabilized and/or rent controlled units for profit as illegal hotels on sites like Airbnb,” his office said.

The Councilman also wants the City to respond to Airbnb abuse at Hunters Point South and other instances in rent regulated/controlled buildings.

He has requested an investigation into illegal hotels in rent regulated and rent stabilized buildings from the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, as well as hearings at the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings specifically focused on the proliferation of Airbnb in these buildings.

State law already prohibits tenants in apartment buildings with three or more units from renting out to transient visitors for less than 30 days. City law sets fines of $1,600 and up for illegal hotels in residential apartments; Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal has introduced legislation to increase these penalties.

Special Enforcement to go after illegal hotels

From the Daily News:

The battle to shut down illegal hotels in New York City — which officials say are draining the already dwindling stock of affordable housing — is getting a $10 million budget boost.

The de Blasio administration is giving the money — which will be spread out over the next three years — to its newly beefed-up Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which goes after illegal hotels that advertise on sites like Airbnb.

The money will go toward hiring five new staffers, state-of-the-art data to find illegal operators and a public awareness campaign to inform people what their rights are under New York’s strict hotel occupancy law.

Illegal hotelier ignored court order to stop

New Yorker Renting Out 2-bedroom Apartment with... by Gothamist
From the Daily News:

Your home is not a hotel — unless you’re former club promoter David Jaffee, in which case court papers say five of your homes are hotels.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement says Jaffee is a repeat offender in the illegal business of running cheap hotels out of Manhattan apartments.

The unit has filed court papers asking permission to search a two-bedroom apartment at 116 John St. which, it says, has been renting “bunk beds” to tourists through www.booking.com for $42 per night.

Jaffee rented the 14th floor apartment in October 2014 for $4,350 per month. The two-year lease, which is attached to the city’s court papers, clearly states that subletting is forbidden.

However, the managers of the building, Metro Loft Management and 116 John St. Subtenant LLC, say Jaffee almost immediately started renting beds in the unit for short-term stays, billing the apartment online as a “Financial District Hotel John Street.”

David Lepard, a lawyer with the OSE, says in an affidavit that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten signed an order on April 2 barring Jaffee from continuing to sublet the apartment, but building managers told city officials that Jaffee has ignored Wooten's order.

City not properly tracking illegal conversions

From Brooklyn Daily:

A high-tech system the city uses to clamp down on residents who illegally rent their apartments over the internet should be used to put an end to the illegally dicing up of homes in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, according to local officials.

A sophisticated data-crunching and workflow platform called Palantir is helping the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement crack down on peer-to-peer apartment sharing services like Airbnb at an unprecedented rate, according to a WNYC report. But the city isn’t using the software to combat illegal home conversions — and local leaders say that needs to change.

“If they have a program that tracks the illegal hotels, then it should be easy enough to track illegal conversions, whether through the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement or through the Department of Buildings,” said Councilman Vincent Gentile (D–Bay Ridge). “We reached out to the Mayor’s Office, and so far no one could give us an answer as to why they’re not using this for illegal conversions.”

Landlords in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Dyker Heights are violating building and fire codes by subdividing small homes into multi-family apartments at an alarming rate, locals said. The practice creates dangerous living conditions and strains city services.

New Yorkers registered upwards of 100,000 complaints to the Department of Buildings through 311 in 2014 — 1,100 about illegal hotels and 26,000 for illegal home conversions, city data shows. A spokesman could not provide the number of inspectors the department employs, but reports put the figure around 200.

Software like Palantir helps agencies make the most of their staff, an official said.

“Thirty percent more work with the same exact staff,” the acting director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, Elan Parra, told WYNC. “I guess maybe you could call it ‘Moneyball’ for quality-of-life violations.”

But Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement focuses on quality of life issues — not buildings issues, a spokeswoman said.

Buildings/illegal conversion issues ARE quality of life issues. HELLO?

City sues owner of illegal hotel

From the Epoch Times:

The online listing boasted apartments with the amenities of a midtown Manhattan hotel: coffee in the lobby, luggage storage, a 15-minute walk to Times Square.

But the arrangement was illegal, the city said in a lawsuit this week accusing the building’s owners and operators of turning an apartment house into a hotel. The suit — one of three the city has filed amid a short-term rental boom in recent years — was filed Wednesday, a day after a City Council hearing spotlighted concerns about homes being rented out like hotel rooms.

“Where the health and safety of New Yorkers and people visiting our city are put in jeopardy, we vigorously pursue enforcement,” Elan Parra, the acting director of the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, said in a statement Thursday. The office fields illegal-hotel complaints, which rose 62 percent last year to 1,150.

The building’s management company, identified in the suit as U.S. Suite Management LLC and also known as Metro Apartments, said no one was immediately available Thursday to comment. A call to a man identified in court papers as a principal in the company wasn’t immediately returned.

Hotel law hasn't changed much

From City Limits:

Two years ago, tenant advocates and hoteliers came together to praise a New York State law clarifying the ban on most rentals lasting less than 30 days. The measure closed loopholes that had prevented hotels operating out of residential buildings from being shut down, and was touted as a long-needed boost to residential protections. But over a year after the law went into effect May 2011, tenants and housing lawyers have yet to see big changes.

In 2011, the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, which responds to complaints about illegal hotels, issued 1,897 citations–three times the number issued in 2010.

Ninety-six percent of them were issued after the law went into effect May 2011.

Building owners who rent out residential buildings for less than 30 days can be fined $800 to $2400 per citation, and one incident of illegal hotel use can result in multiple citations, adding up many thousands of dollars.

While citations are up, the law doesn't appear to be deterring would-be hoteliers.

UWS illegal hotel busted

From The Real Deal:

An illegal hotel operating out of the Upper West Side last week became the latest victim of a new state law that’s cracking down on these facilities, the New York Press reported. Located at 318 West 75th Street, the landmarked five-story, 11-unit building had four of its units used as hotel rooms.

The rooms were advertised online at Airbnb.com, a travel site where owners can rent out their rooms or homes for short-term stays at a lower price than general hotel rates. Dee Rieber, the president of the neighborhood block association, said the building’s owner, Ron Shoshany, who is also the president of Sirkin Realty, has been trying to rid his building of tenants in hopes of operating all units as hotel rooms. Shoshany did not return calls requesting comment.

The online ads are now gone, as are guests of the illegal hotel, said Rieber. The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement has issued violations, though specifics of the penalties were not mentioned.

Bushwick's illegal halfway house still a problem

From NBC:

On a street in Brooklyn is what the New York City Buildings Department says is an illegal boarding house for men with substance abuse problems who have recently gotten out of jail or prison.

And on that same street in Bushwick is a family who describes that house as the nightmare next door.

"We have no idea who's there," said Angel Tarrats. "We don't know if there are sex offenders there. We don't know what type of crimes these people commit. Nobody checks with us. We see these strangers come in and these strangers leave."

According to Buildings Department records, the owner of 1088 Hancock Street illegally converted the two family house to a transient hotel two years ago.

The department has issued four violations and has fined the owner $47,000. But a spokesperson says the owner never showed up for scheduled hearings and has not paid the fine.

And because the department does not have the authority to issue a vacate order on the house, the case is now being referred to the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement.

NBCNewYork was unable to reach the owner for comment.