Illegal Hotels Threaten Affordable Housing In New York

Article By Vivan Riffelmacher A Founding Member of the West Side Neighborho

Imagine that every weekend your home is invaded by strangers.   The room next to yours is occupied by crowds of backpackers; kids in their late teens and 20's on their own in New York city, partying loudly all night. Imagine they have no keys so when they (or their friends) need entrance at midnight, two, three in the morning, they hammer on the door until you wake up and crawl out of bed to let them. Imagine your landlord shrugs when you complain, "You don't like it? Leave!"   The police can do nothing; your landlord's actions are a civil issue, not a crime.   Complaints made to the Mayor's office elicit no response. 

 "How can this happen?" you ask. Yet for years in residential buildings all over the city, Illegal Hotels and Youth Hostels have been a way for landlords to make quick cash while they drive out their rent-stabilized tenants. Tenants are cut adrift, often winding up homeless, and hundreds of affordable housing units are lost at a time when the need for such housing is at a crisis. 

In June 2005 the New York City Law Department filed a lawsuit against the owners and managers of Dexter House, a residential SRO on West 86th street, for running the building commercially as a youth hostel advertised on the Internet. It was the first time the City of New York had brought such a case, and a vital chance to set legal precedent on the issue.