For Upper West Side assembly member Richard Gottfried, applying the current building code to illegal hotels is like calculus.
“I understand it when people from the Buildings Department explain it to me, but couldn’t necessarily explain it myself,” he said. “I got a B-plus or an A in the course, but ask me a week later to explain calculus, I couldn’t do it.”
He is currently working to simplify the code, with a bill sitting in committee in the state legislature that would change the legal definition of permanent and transient occupancy in residential buildings. But with multiple bills addressing the issue still sitting in the legislature’s housing committees, the fight against illegal hotels seems to have calmed down for now.
In February, assembly members Gottfried, Linda Rosenthal, and Micah Kellner each introduced bills aiming to crack down on residential “single-room occupancy” buildings, or SROs, that are being used as hotels–which are particularly common on the Upper West Side.
The state appellate court ruled in January 2009 that it was legal for SROs to function partially as hotels by admitting temporary residents, as long as that was not the building’s primary purpose. Since then, local politicians have worked to make it more difficult for owners to rent out their rooms through new legislature that would change the legal definitions of “transient” and “permanent” residents.
Gottfried said the state assembly’s housing committee is working to resolve issues with people in the hotel industry who fear being caught in the crossfire as he looks to eliminate the illegal hotels. Because of the complicated nature of zoning laws, it can be difficult to tell which hotels are legal or illegal under the bill in its current state, he said.
He said his goal was to see the bill passed before the end of the summer recess, and that the support of the mayor’s office, which drafted the language of the bill, would lend political clout.
“Our goal is that apartments that are legally meant to be housing for permanent residents should not be diverted into being transient hotel rooms,” Gottfried added.
Rosenthal’s bill, known as the “natural persons bill,” would prevent landlords from leasing portions of their buildings to companies who convert the blocks into hotel rooms, limiting landlords to renting only to “flesh and blood” tenants.
“By restricting the ability to lease these apartments to natural persons, my legislation will end the conversion of these units into for-profit illegal hotel enterprises,” Rosenthal said in an email.
But Rosenthal’s bill may be held up by ongoing debates in the legislature. According to Jonathan Davis, Rosenthal’s legislative director, the bill has been delayed by the ongoing budget debates in Albany, though Gottfried said that he didn’t think that was a factor in his own case.
Upper West Side City Council member Gale Brewer said that she is optimistic that Gottfried’s legislation would help free up affordable housing, since most people who live in SROs have limited or fixed incomes.
“We are very supportive and are going to do a [City Council] resolution to support this,” Brewer said of the bill.
Yarrow Willman-Cole who works with the Goddard Riverside SRO Law Project, an organization that works to protect the rights of tenants in SROs, said that all of the bills will help the city protect against the illegal conversion of residential units into hotel rooms.
“It’s important that the legislation is passed because landlords are taking more and more units out of the affordable New York City housing market every day and it’s more dire than ever that the city protects this type of housing for residents,” Willman-Cole said in an email.
Still, even in the neighborhood of the Continental building, a party in the lawsuit against New York City that declared most of the supposedly illegal hotels legal, outrage seemed muted. Multiple people said they hadn’t heard much about the issue.
Boris Kogan, who lives on 94th Street, said he didn’t feel that the SRO buildings being used as hotels are a problem for the neighborhood. “I’ve been living here for two-and-a-half years, and I’ve never seen or heard of any problem with a tourist,” said Kogan.
Susan Elliot, who lives at 711 West End Ave., was also among the unconcerned. The hotels in her neighborhood are mostly hostels accommodating young tourists, she said.
“I don’t mind the kids at all,” she added.
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