Did your last Airbnb look nothing like the pictures? Did your host ghost you days before you were supposed to arrive? That’s all better than showing up to a building in Bushwick where investigators found 34 people squished into nine rooms for exorbitant rates of $85 and $115 a night!
The New York Post first reported that the building’s owner, George Lebovits, was fined an initial $11,000 for alleged overcrowding. Lebovits’s eventual fines could amount to as much as $54,200.
The building is located at 19 Fayette St., and the Department of Buildings issued a full vacate order. So do take a second to make sure that none of your visiting friends had made arrangements to stay there within the coming weeks!
The Airbnb host for the rooms is listed as “Erika,” who the landlord says is his son’s friend. Lebovits claims to have not know what was happening within the building he now plans to demolish.
Airbnb is an international company that has run into some trouble operating within NYC because the city has some stringent laws regarding short-term rentals in apartments where the host isn’t present. In addition, a plethora of other restrictions leads some experts to estimate that over 50 percent of active Airbnb listings in the city are illegal.
Photo courtesy of Google Maps.