The 234 Apartment

AT least two projects nestled in a mature residential precinct in District 9 near Somerset are being run as serviced apartments - despite not having the regulatory approval to do so - and a third one is opening. Oxley Thanksgiving Residence , a freehold condominium at 328 River Valley Road owned by Chinese temple Poh Ern Shih , and St Thomas Lodge , which also sits on freehold land at 32 St Thomas Walk , are listed for short-term stay on the website of accommodation service provider Atas Residence . The Business Times' visit to these projects confirmed that they are being run as serviced apartments. A third property, Devonshire Apartments at 17 Devonshire Road , has just undergone a major renovation, and the units there are understood to be starting a new chapter as serviced apartments this month. BT's query to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) confirmed that these three properties are currently approved for residential use, but "do not have planning permission to...

T wo weeks ago, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge handed down a decision designed to strike fear in the hearts of landlords. Justice James d’Auguste ordered that an independent receiver be appointed to manage two Midtown residential buildings where the landlords allegedly allowed illegal Airbnb rentals to occur. The case, which began when the city sued the landlords in February 2015, has become one of the battlegrounds in a larger war between city enforcement agencies and short- term rental sites like Airbnb. Airbnb, which was recently valued at $31 billion, refuses to release the exact addresses of hosts who break the law by renting their entire apartment for less than 30 days without being present. Without the addresses and names of Airbnb violators , the city mostly targets the owners of buildings that rack up the most illegal hotel complaints from 311 calls and the New York City Department of Buildings. “This entire model—and it was intentional [by the city]—is complaint-drive...

When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York City in 2014, he made no secret of his intent to place affordable housing at the center of his term. Not long after his election, he rolled out his Housing New York plan–a 10-year strategy to build or preserve around 200,000 affordable units across the city’s five boroughs. advertisement Affordable, when it comes to housing in New York, is a slippery term. Critics of de Blasio’s plan have pointed out that the majority of the units built or converted under Housing New York remain out of reach of low-income New Yorkers–those earning less than $43,000 per year. And while the plan has succeeded making a nearly 100,000 unit dent in the city’s 550,000 affordable-unit shortfall, the terms of the new unit’s affordability are ephemeral: The majority of the units created and preserved under the mayor’s plan are only regulated temporarily, often for as little as two decades. There is no guarantee that a unit designated as affordable today will remain...