Tenants Urge City Council to Stop “Illegal Conversion” of SRO Housing
By Frank Brodhead

Flanked by large photos of illegal construction in occupied SROs, on Dec. 11 some two dozen tenants and advocates urged the City Council to pass legislation protecting tenants.

Sponsored by Councilmember Ronnie Eldridge (D-Manhattan), Intro 108A has received strong tenant support for almost two years. The bill essentially requires the Department of Buildings to enforce existing legislation protecting tenants in single-room-occupancy housing from “illegal conversions” to other uses, primarily tourist rooms or apartments. Existing legislation, which allows the Department of Buildings to take action, is largely ineffective.

The issues of illegal work and illegal conversions are vital to the city’s 40,000 SRO tenants. The prospect of lucrative rentals has encouraged many owners of single-room-occupancy buildings to move to convert them, usually by combining two rooms that have neither a bathroom nor a kitchen into a small efficiency unit. In Midtown Manhattan and on the Upper West Side, conversion has taken place most dramatically in SRO hotels. Elsewhere, especially in Harlem and parts of Brooklyn, rooming houses are being converted to apartments. In both cases, long-time residents are forced out, often illegally.

Data released by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development shows that the number of legal conversions has risen from 82 in 1993 to 140 in 1997, with the number of units affected rising from 568 in 1993 to 1,683 in 1997.

Under current legislation, landlords who want to convert SRO housing to other uses must first obtain a “Certificate of No Harassment.” This means SRO landlords cannot profit by harassing tenants out of their building in order to do the major construction required to convert it to tourist accommodations or apartments. Only after receiving the certificate may a landlord then apply for the permits needed to do the conversion work.

Tenant advocates estimate that at least half of the current SRO conversions are carried out without such a certificate. Landlords do this by applying for a lesser permit, one that does not require a certificate, and using this permit as a cover for major construction; or, in many cases, simply working without any permit whatsoever.

Many tenants who testified at the Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee hearing on Intro 108A spoke to the ineffectiveness of the Department of Buildings’ enforcement of existing legislation. They described what it was like to live in the middle of a construction zone, with the mandated “tenant safety plan” routinely ignored. They cited instances of landlords converting entire SRO hotels to tourist use without proper permits, such as occurred in the Amsterdam Court in Midtown and the Upper West Side’s Simmons House. They also described landlords who reconfigured their SRO building without any permits at all. And in all such instances, enforcement was too little and too late. Stop-work orders were either not issued or not enforced. Fines levied were both insignificant and not collected. And repeated requests from tenants for relief from living in dangerous conditions failed to gain any response.

It is ironic that so many landlords do work without a certificate, making their work illegal. Similarly, the resistance from landlords and the city to legislation that would make it harder for landlords to get away with doing work without a certificate is terribly ironic: Statistics show that, of the 649 applications for such a certificate made since January 1993, only 11 were even referred to a “reasonable cause” investigation, and only three were denied a certificate.

Predictably, the Department of Buildings testified against Intro 108A at the hearing. Commissioner Gaston Silva argued that the bill was unnecessary, burdening his department with uncalled-for inspections that would cost nearly $1 million annually.

The Housing and Buildings Committee has not yet voted on the bill, yet proponents are cautiously optimistic. Except for Commissioner Silva, no city agency spoke against Intro 108A, nor did any landlords or their advocates. Committee chair Archie Spigner (D-Queens) showed a high level of interest in the problems described by tenants, and the remedies proposed by the bill have been narrowed to eliminate most of the practical objections raised by Silva.

Frank Brodhead is an organizer with the West Side SRO Law Project.