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Advocates seek crackdown on illegal hotels

By David Freedlander | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

May 1, 2008

A ground-floor lounge used by tourists that was built by removing SRO rooms in the residential building at 230 W. 101st Street which is now known as the Broadway Studios. The landlord of the building is trying to force out tenants who have been renting rooms in the building in order to make way for more Hotel rooms. (Jefferson Siegel / April 30, 2008)

The Broadway Studios Hotel markets itself to chic European travelers looking for a cheap room in the heart of the Upper West Side.

But the deal comes with a catch: it's not a licensed hotel at all, but home to a dozen or so full-time, rent-paying tenants, many of whom who have lived there in squalor for years while the landlords have tried to get rid of them.

In fact, according to tenant activists, the owner of the building at 230 W. 101st St., Hank Fried, used money from a federal Housing and Urban Development program designed to provide housing for homeless people with AIDS and used it to remake the building into a destination for the international backpack set.

"Look around, all of this is HUD money," said Eric Abrams, 47, who has lived in the building since 2003, pointing to a cascading fountain in the cobalt lobby and three flat-screen televisions hanging above rows of Internet terminals.

"This once looked like any SRO welfare lobby and now it looks like a boutique SoHo hotel."

There are more than 200 buildings, primarily in Manhattan, that have been converted into illegal hotels, according to John Raskin, an organizer with Housing Conservation Coordinators, an affordable-housing group.

"There is a reason why we don't put hotels in the middle of residential neighborhoods," he said. "We have worked hard to ensure the residential quality of life in our neighborhoods, and if we stop enforcing the laws we lose that."

The mayor's Office of Special Enforcement took over enforcement of illegal hotels last year from the Department of Buildings, and is looking to close a loophole in the law that allows some of them to skate by unnoticed.

"Illegal hotels damage the character of the neighborhood and take away much-needed affordable housing," said Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor. "We can fix it."

Fried did not return several inquiries seeking comment.

The West Side SRO project, which is organizing a rally outside Fried's building Saturday, has a list of landlords and buildings it's targeting for similar practices. But a lawyer for one of the four west side buildings the group's targeting said the accusations are bogus.

"The allegation is baseless. We have a very stable, a very happy group of residents in our buildings," attorney Davis Satnick said. "Not one of them has every complained about the use of our buildings."

"The city is trying to force the owners of these SRO hotels to rent to long-term tenants. Its' a way in the city's mind of alleviating the low-income housing shortage," he added.

Fried's building on West 101st Street was once a typical single-room-occupancy hotel for down-on-their luck New Yorkers, but in time the owners began renting out rooms through the HIV/AIDS Service Administration, a city agency that provided emergency housing for homeless people living with HIV.

Many of the residents took payouts to leave and go to other Fried-owned properties throughout the city, and gradually the owner illegally converted it to a hotel despite having a residential occupancy permit from the Department of Buildings, according to current tenants.

Rents for tenants at the hotel range from $400 to $500 a month. While a room for the nightruns from $158.99 to $200 a night for a private room, with private bath and TV, and $27 to $40 for a dorm that fits between four and eight people with no TV and a hallway bathroom.

Now, the few remaining holdouts say that the owners have cleared out most of the rooms and put sets of bunk beds in them, meaning that quarters meant for one or two people now house six or eight.

"It's like living in a dungeon," said Patricia Prickett, 62, a retired artist who has lived at Broadway Studios for 15 years, adding that there aren't enough bathrooms or showers in the building now that it is home to a swarm of tourists.

"This is a pretty sad place for a retirement."

Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) has introduced legislation that would greatly increase the fines on landlords who convert their buildings into illegal hotels.

Now, they face an $800 one-time fine, but Brewer wants to increase that to as much as $10,000 per unit each day.

"You want a neighborhood where families and individuals live there on a permanent basis," she said. "They shouldn't have to deal with the coming and going of the backpacks. It's like having a party next door."

(with Matthew Sweeney)