Though rents in this financial quagmire of a city tick up faster than you can say "Real Property Law 226-b," one cab driver has managed to find the most mythical of golden unicorn Loch Ness Monster dragon dwellings—he scored an apartment in Chelsea for $226-a-month, thanks to a little-known rent loophole. Maybe we don't all have to move to Brooklyn, Mississippi after all?
The Post reports that cab driver Hamidou Guira will be paying this insane rent at the Chelsea Highline Hotel, a former SRO located on 11th Avenue just a block from the High Line. Apparently, a little-known Rent Stabilization and New York City Administrative code law dictates that SRO occupants who request a lease of six months or more in writing will be made permanent tenants, and the regulated rent rate is a mere $226/month. Guira, who paid for one night's occupancy in the hotel, did just that.
Guira's buddy Joe Stevens, who is also a cab driver, has been living in the hotel for the last 20 years, and it appears he helped Guira navigate the bylaws—Guira even took his case to Manhattan housing court and won. But the really exciting news is that we can all start squatting in hotels if we get desperate: "That part of the law means that at any hotel in the city, [you] can claim a need for relief like at The Waldorf and the Marriott Marquis. It applies to everybody, but it’s fallen out of use,” Joe Restuccia, executive director of the Clinton Housing Development Corp., told the tabloid. Yup, it's the Carny Code!
