NEW YORK—Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos today sent a letter to the city’s Department of Information Technology calling on the agency to provide more information regarding complaints around apartment owners providing space to lodging sites such as Airbnb, creating what some charge are illegals hotels.
According to the New York Post, the Upper East Side politician considers such illegal hotels a threat to tourists as well as persons within or near such accommodations.
Kallos also proposed creating a specific category within the city’s 311 help line so complaints could be lodged against alleged illegal accommodations.
In his letter, Kallos cited a recent fire that consumed a five-story building in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood “that was operating as an illegal hotel,” he wrote.
The Post reported the building had been operated by a company carrying more than $300,000 in outstanding fines for illegally renting out apartments.
“This serves as an unfortunate example of why the illegal hotel complaint process would greatly benefit from added transparency,” Kallos wrote in his letter.
A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the city’s record on illegal hotels, according to the Post, stating: “When we have a bad actor putting people’s safety at risk, we’re going to go after them.”
Commenting on the proposal, Vijay Dandapani, chairman of the Hotel Association of New York City, told HOTEL BUSINESS: “The recent fires in illegal hotels in the city have demonstrated just how serious a threat they are to residents and visitors. More must be done to protect the public from the life-threatening hazards of these dangerous buildings. Creating a new category for 311 complaints against Airbnb and other illegal hotel operators is a common sense proposal that gives New Yorkers another public safety tool at their disposal.”