The narrative tended to focus on vacant high-rise hotels in Manhattan. Andrew Cuomo was touting a plan to turn those hotels into permanent homes. “That won’t get you the magic bullet of 1,000 rooms at once, but it will provide needed housing and get people off the streets.”Īs COVID-19 shut down New York City, policymakers, housing advocates and everyday residents saw a clear opportunity: The city had interconnected affordable housing and homelessness crises the city also had hundreds of empty hotels hemorrhaging cash. “It’s going to be smaller, outer-borough hotels,” Ginsberg said. The program, now funded with a total of $200 million, can still work as long as housing providers look in the right places, said architect Mark Ginsberg, an expert in the affordable housing development and hotel conversions. Never mind that that opportunity actually arose more than two years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the city’s hospitality industry and prompted pontification on how best to convert vacant, debt-burdened hotels into apartments for New Yorkers experiencing or at-risk of homelessness. “The legislation we are signing today will help create new affordable housing units.” “An opportunity has arisen to use vacant hotels in a way that will lift people up and give them, yes, the dignity of a home,” Hochul said at the bill signing. That zoning text was removed from the original HONDA bill before the vote last year, seriously restricting the number of potential conversions. The legislation also overrides land use restrictions to allow such conversions in manufacturing zones located within 400 feet of a residential district-just like the Phoenix in Sunset Park.
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The measure, approved last week by the state legislature, amends New York’s multiple dwelling law to allow hotels to become permanent housing while retaining their current certificates of occupancy and bypassing onerous code requirements. READ MORE: New York’s Legislative Session Ends, With Mixed Results on Housing. Kathy Hochul signed into law revisions that should make it easier for housing providers to turn rooms into apartments. The sputtering program got new life Tuesday, when Gov. There is some reason for optimism, however. Just two developers have come forward with informal proposals, the agency said. The state’s Division of Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), which administers HONDA, said it has still not received an application. Nine months since that visit and a year since state lawmakers established the HONDA program, not a single hotel has been converted to housing in New York City. A few days after Adams’ visit, Phoenix staff removed the plywood and the hotel reopened, a manager told City Limits. Second, New York City’s hospitality sector had already begun to recover from its pandemic devastation. Thus, a conversion would have to happen the old-fashioned way-passing the city’s lengthy land use review process and “layers and layers of really outdated bureaucracy,” Adams said then.
But there were two problems: First, the Phoenix did not qualify under the terms of the state’s Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA) because it is located in a light manufacturing district, a few dozen feet from residential zoning. The plan will create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes in urban and rural areas.Late last September, mayoral candidate Eric Adams campaigned in front of a boarded-up hotel in Sunset Park, describing it as the kind of place he wants to see turned into affordable housing through a $100 million state fund.Īn empty building with a sordid history that antagonized neighbors, the Phoenix Hotel seemed to fit the bill for conversion. Hochul's $25 billion, 5-year plan to address the need for affordable housing around New York State. The occupant of a hotel, Single Room Occupancy or rooming house may only be protected by rent stabilization if he or she becomes a 'permanent tenant'. If they enter into an agreement with the City of New York or get financing through the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act.Ĭlass B Multiple Dwellings, which include SRO Hotels and rooming houses and which became subject to rent regulations on June 4, 1981, contain units occupied by transient residents and are not required to have a kitchen or bathroom in each unit. The hotels will be able to use their existing certificates of occupancy. Under the new law Class B hotels located in or within 400 feet of districts that permit residential use, that also meet certain criteria, can operate as permanent residential spaces.
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