Brooklyn Has Eluded the Sublet Police

The city has begun cracking down on people who advertise illegal short-term sublets under the state’s new “anti-Airbnb” law. But as we reported here last week, even with a beefed-up team of inspectors, at current rates it will take the mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement 43 years to run down all potential violations.

Now comes more jarring news. Despite estimates that the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn has the highest concentration of illegal sublets, not a single violation has been issued there.

"This is likely a lack of enforcement," says City Councilman Antonio Reynoso, a critic of Airbnb and other housing-share sites, whose district stretches from Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, and Bushwick into Ridgewood, Queens. "[Illegal sublets] make property in Williamsburg so rare that they raise the market value on everything around them. It makes my district unlivable for many families.”

It’s illegal to sublet an apartment in New York City for fewer than 30 days if the tenant is not present.

What we have here appears not to be a lack of enforcement so much as a case of selective enforcement. A study by the personal finance website ValuePenguin has singled out East Williamsburg as the hotbed of illegal sublets, with 314 listings that could generate $2.3 million in fines. While ignoring East Williamsburg, the city has slapped 16 landlords in other parts of the city with $284,000 worth of summonses since the law went into effect in February, according the DNAinfo. The bulk of those fines and violations have gone to one man, Hank Freid, who owns three Single Room Occupancy buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Freid has been fined a combined $234,000 for 89 different violations, records show. Only two summonses have been issued in all of Brooklyn.

Mayoral spokeswoman Melissa Grace says the lopsided enforcement is a result of the city’s focus on commercial and dangerous landlords. "We have issued more than $280,000 in fines in three months under a tough new state law,” Grace says, “and won’t hesitate to continue protecting New York City’s housing stock.”

As long as that housing stock isn’t located in Brooklyn.