The owner of a Brooklyn bed and breakfast is saying that the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement is targeting her business under the guise of fighting Airbnb, even though she doesn't list her building on the website.
Liz Mandarano, who owns a bed-and-breakfast at 7 Arlington Place—the brownstone from Spike Lee's Crooklyn—told the Times that her business is a casualty in the city's battle against Airbnb. In September, two police officers, two firefighters, and two Buildings Department officials rang Mandarano's doorbell, ordered everyone in the building to leave immediately and said anyone who returned would be arrested.
"We are not Airbnb. We are classic B&Bs, but we were targeted to show that OSE was doing what it was supposed to do," Mandarano told the Times.
The inspector returned a second time and was turned away by Ambyr D'Amato, the bed-and-breakfast's live-in host. He returned again 19 days later and was turned again—this time, D'amato showed him a letter of support by City Council members Robert Cornegy Jr. and Jumaane Williams.
"The inspector refused to look at it and got angry and said, 'I'm coming back with a warrant,'" Mandarano said. Buildings Department records show that after the last visit, the building's "violation conditions"—individual locks on guests' bedroom doors—were resolved, but Mandarano says the city is refusing to withdraw the building's violations and fines could total "in the low six figures."
In October, Governor Cuomo banned New York City residents from advertising apartments on Airbnb for less than 30 days (renting apartments out for less than 30 days was already illegal). The new law is complaint-based, meaning landlords with illegal listings—Airbnb or otherwise—are only punished for renting out apartments if the city manages to find out about them.
When the latest anti-Airbnb law went into effect, Buildings Department officials said they weren't out to get independent bed-and-breakfast owners. But according to the Times, an inspector went to 7 Arlington Place in September after an extremely detailed complaint was called into 311 on November 3rd, 2015.
The complaint said the building "was a one-family home now has been constructed into bed-and-breakfast, rents the rooms and has people coming in and out with suitcases. Advertises events there." But Mandarano doesn't believe that her neighbors were the ones who made the complaint—she alleges that the caller was someone from the OSE, which has been denied by a spokesperson.
"I feel like there's harassment here," Mandarano said. "We're the people who serve you tea in the morning, we make muffins, we make eggs, we show you guides and say 'Have you thought about taking this walk? You'd enjoy it.'"
"There are bad players," she added. "There are people who violate their co-op and condominium bylaws. We are not those people. We are not fly-by-night people. We are vulnerable because we are easy to find."
