From View From The Wing, October 3:
A guest checked into the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan in 2018. He wouldn’t leave, and keeps getting the hotel’s deed transferred into the name of a non-profit he created. He’s tried to take possession of the hotel’s bank accounts and even gone to its lenders to borrow against the property. And the city’s administration and courts even, in part, backed him up.
Here’s the trick:
- Hotels constructed in New York before July 1, 1969 which cost less than $88 per week or $350 per month on May 31, 1968 are subject to rent stabilization laws. The property opened in 1930.
- A person becomes a permanent tenant upon requesting a lease for six months or more. Hotels are barred from “prevent[ing] such occupant from becoming a permanent tenant.”
Mickey Barreto made a reservation for one night at $149. He then requested a rent-controlled lease. Naturally, the hotel said exsqueeze me baking powder? And please leave.
So Barreto filed a deed with the Department of Finance transferring ownership of the hotel to “Mickey Barreto Missions,” a non-profit....
....MUCH MORE
Rent stabilization is not the same as rent control which is what gives rise to this one weird trick.
