Mayor's Office via flickr

Shot of an illegal hotel at 38 West 88th Street in Manhattan.

In today's Mike-Bloomberg-praises-himself news, we've got for you a story about illegal hotels, fire hazards, and, one of the mayor's favorite things -- numbers.

Late yesterday afternoon, the mayor's office released results of the city's ongoing efforts to curb illegal hotels, which are converted residential buildings that are often plagued by dangerous conditions and are generally disliked by elected officials and New Yorkers who live near them (we imagine some tourists may like them?).

According to the mayor, the city's doing a good job!

These "hotels" are buildings that are designated for permanent occupancy, but are converted, often unsafely, into hostels and hotels by landlords who hope to attract tourists or others looking for a temporary place to stay.

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via nysenate.gov

State Senator Liz Krueger

Some good news today for those of you who pick fights with your landlords, or who are harassed by them for no good reason: New York courts are going to stop selling your names to companies that make it harder for you to secure your next apartment.

This policy change in the New York State Unified Court System is going after a phenomenon called "tenant blacklisting," where landlords basically reject potential tenants whose names are on a list, which says they have been parties in housing court actions. These lists don't say what they've done, or what the situation was, or if the tenant brought the landlord to court, or visa-versa. It just says that the tenant was involved in housing court at some point, and because there's such a high demand for housing in the city, that's often reason enough for landlords to immediately reject an applicant. In some cases, landlords may even mistake a potential tenant for someone on the list with the same first and last name.

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via Facebook

City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who opposes the development of a new hotel in East Flatbush.

​East Flatbush is a lovely neighborhood in Brooklyn -- but it's just not really a tourist destination. So if a developer is looking to open a hotel in the area, it can only mean one thing: Prostitution, drugs, and other bad, bad activity. Right?  More >>

Chhaya Community Development Corporation

South Asians make up one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the city -- increasing by more than 150% over the last two decades -- and one Queens-based nonprofit group has spent the last year-and-a-half surveying the community and documenting its housing and employment trends.

Today, Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a Jackson Heights immigration organization, is releasing the findings of that report, called, "Deepening Roots and Creating Space: Building a Better Future for New York's South Asians." The study outlines the ways in which the recession has hit this specific immigrant community, which is most prominent in Queens. The organization collected information on housing trends of overcrowding, evictions, and displacements, and also looked at larger barriers to employment for South Asians in the city.

The report, which is being released and discussed today at a policy forum at New York University, was based on 440 surveys and six focus groups with 66 residents in seven different languages.

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Cecil Hotel, a supportive housing project in Harlem.

At a time when social services are facing sometimes difficult cuts, one organization is celebrating the funding it received from the city to rehabilitate a housing project in Harlem that provides homes and services to the chronically homeless.

Housing and Services Inc., or HSI, -- an organization that develops and manages affordable housing for New Yorkers with special needs -- announced this week that it has completed construction on its rehabilitation project for supportive housing at the Cecil Hotel in Harlem and the Narragansett Hotel on the Upper West Side. The projects were awarded $16.4 million from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, HSI said.

The Cecil Hotel -- which in the 1990s was one of the city's first supportive housing projects of its kind according to HSI -- is located at 118th Street and St. Nicholas Ave. in a five-story building that once housed Minton's Playhouse, a legendary jazz club famous for its "bebop" music (The site is on the New York State Register of Historic Places).

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Sam Levin

Advocacy group VOCAL-NY at a City Hall rally earlier this year.

An HIV/AIDS advocacy group has got its hands on an internal government document that the group says is cause for major concern -- and not just because the city is making policy changes behind closed doors, advocates said today.

Voices Of Community Advocates & Leaders (VOCAL-NY), an organization that advocates for the rights of HIV-positive New Yorkers, released a document last night that organizers say outlines a risky restructuring of the city agency responsible for supporting this population.

The document, a letter from the Human Resources Administration commissioner to "senior staff," with the subject "Agency Reorganization," lays out a plan to alter the oversight system for New Yorkers who rely on the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, or HASA, which is a part of the city's HRA agency.

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Activists upset with a new drug screening regulation for HIV-positive New Yorkers are going to protest the policy today by marching to a city commissioner and asking him to take a drug test. Y'know, it's one of those protests where the activists try to find the person they're mad at -- those are fun! If you find yourself feeling activist-y today, you can join HIV/AIDS organization Voices Of Community Advocates & Leaders (VOCAL-NY) this afternoon for a protest that the group says will bring together a hundred HIV-positive New Yorkers and allies.

This morning, Runnin' Scared caught up with one of the organizers to discuss what this was all about.

The group is pretty frustrated with the city -- for many reasons.

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Dilan

About two years ago, Picture the Homeless tried to get the City Council to make a yearly inventory of the New York's vacant properties -- asking Councilman Eric Dilan, housing and buildings committee chair, to give the group's proposal a hearing.

The City Council refused, with one member reportedly saying that "it would cost millions of dollars" to conduct an annual census.

Picture the Homeless, however, did its own study -- and found that it only cost $150,000 to analyze 1/3 of New York.

The conclusion: There are more empty buildings and lots than there are homeless people -- and more than enough property to give every New Yorker a place to live.

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Some of these folks have never acted on a stage before, but then again, this is most definitely not your traditional performance.

Tonight, Theatre of the Oppressed NYC is partnering with nonprofit group Housing Works to put on a show centered around the experiences of being homeless and HIV-positive in New York City.

The actors, who have been collaborating on all aspects of the performance since September, are all HIV-positive (except one staffer from Housing Works), and all have experienced homelessness themselves. The production, called The Worm in the Big Apple, aims to tell the personal stories of these New Yorkers and shed light on some of the larger challenges this population faces.

And the audience gets on stage, too.

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Banking on Vacancy

New York City has more than enough vacant space to provide housing for every homeless person in the city, according to a study released yesterday by Picture the Homeless and Hunter College.

The study represents the first effort to catalog New York's vacant spaces, and includes a survey of community districts from all five boroughs, encompassing roughly a third of the city.

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