“My name is Liz Krueger and I represent the 28th Senate District, which includes the East Side and Midtown areas of Manhattan. I want to thank Chairman Jumaane Williams and the members of the City Council Housing and Buildings Committee for providing me with the opportunity to testify today.
I have been working for a decade to understand and address the exponential growth of residential apartments being illegally converted into short-term transient units for visitors, commonly referred to as “illegal hotels.” After years of collaboration with a large task force of elected officials, neighborhood organizations, housing advocates, and city agencies, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried and I passed legislation in 2010 clarifying ambiguities in city and state laws that made it difficult for city enforcement agencies to take action against illegal hotels. Following the enactment of the state law, I continued working closely with the task force to support the subsequent introduction and passage in 2012 of Local Law 45, sponsored by then-Councilmember Gale Brewer, to classify illegal hotel violations as “immediately hazardous” and increase the fines the city can impose.”
