Stuy Town residents combat illegal rental listings

Stuyvesant Town’s new neighborhood watch doesn’t patrol the complex’s vast grounds at night watching for lurking trouble. Instead, it trolls Airbnb and other internet listing sites that facilitate illegal hotel-like rentals, looking for listings in their neighborhood. The New York Times said it’s another symbol of the growing divide between long-time residents of the middle-class apartment complex and the young, wealthy, transient community Stuy Town’s new management is working to attract.

“Management doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it,” Janey Donnelly, who has lived in the complex for 30 years, said of the illegal apartment rentals. “There could be as many as 20 people doing it.” She and others check the sites for listings that appear to be in Stuyvesant Town and alert CW Capital and Rose Associates, which have managed the property since BlackRock and Tishman Speyer defaulted on their mortgage.

Rose Associates said it is aware of the problem and has sent cease-and-desist letters to 50 tenants in the last year as a result of these listings. The city first made the practice illegal in 2010.

Still, longtime residents complain the growing number of these listings is making a community that once felt tight-knit even more transient. [NYT]