How the Hotel Lobby Is Undermining Black & Brown Homeownership — With Help from the City Council

New York City’s housing crisis is not simply the product of economics — it is the consequence of a coordinated strategy that has placed a powerful hotel lobby above the homeowners our leaders claim to defend.

Local Law 18 was advertised as a crackdown on illegal hotels.
In practice, it became one of the most damaging homeowner-targeted laws in decades.

Families — disproportionately Black, Brown, immigrant, and middle-class — relied on modest short-term rental income to stay afloat as property taxes, utilities, mortgages, and insurance soared. These were not speculators or corporate landlords. They were school teachers, retirees, essential workers, and multi-generational homeowners trying to preserve what little stability they had left.

Yet Local Law 18 wiped out over 90% of homeowner-operated listings overnight.
People who lived in their homes were suddenly treated like commercial actors.
Fines designed for corporations were imposed on middle-class families.
Surveillance-level disclosures were required just to remain compliant.

Meanwhile, the true drivers of housing instability — developers, speculators, and investment-backed landlords — were untouched.

To support this crackdown, HTC-funded groups launched a citywide propaganda campaign built not on data, but on fear. One of their most notorious ads even depicted a Black male Airbnb guest as a criminal intruder, a clear attempt to stir panic and redirect anger toward homeowners instead of corporate interests.

This narrative worked — politically.

But it worked by punishing the wrong people.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is how selectively “equity” has been applied by the city’s progressive leadership. Many of the loudest voices claiming to defend “vulnerable communities” have been the least willing to meet with the homeowners harmed by the law. Constituents requested meetings. They were ignored. Their concerns dismissed. Their realities sidelined.

Into that void stepped activists like Tom Cayler, a key figure whose messaging consistently framed primary-residence homeowners as perpetrators rather than people with legitimate financial struggles. His narratives, amplified by lobby-backed campaigns, treated homeowners as obstacles — even when those homeowners were long-standing members of the neighborhoods he claimed to protect.

DEBUNKING CAYLER’S FALSE CLAIMS

Tom Cayler’s claims about Intro 948 are completely false. Here are the facts:

• “This bill would let every dwelling unit become a permanent short-term rental.” — False.
948 applies only to primary-residence natural persons.
LLCs, corporations, and absentee owners cannot qualify.
No commercial operator can use 948 — period.

• “Removing host presence turns apartments into hotel rooms.” — False.
Even in apartments, 948 can only be used by a named primary resident who actually lives there.
LLCs can’t live anywhere, and cannot host under 948.
Host presence has nothing to do with commercial abuse — primary residence does.

• “Up to four adults and unlimited minors raises safety issues.” — Misleading.
948 does not override any NYC building, fire, or safety codes.
All existing occupancy limits remain intact.

• “Guests could get only a bathroom and sleeping area.” — Fiction.
948 requires access to common household areas (kitchen, living room, bathroom).
Only private bedrooms/offices may be locked — exactly as under current law.

Bottom line:
Cayler’s scenarios aren’t in the bill, aren’t allowed by the bill, and aren’t even possible under the bill. They’re fear-based talking points crafted to mislead the public, not facts rooted in any actual language of Intro 948.

This is not a fight between tenants and homeowners.

It is a fight between political power and political expendability.

The families harmed by Local Law 18 are the same families progressives highlight in campaign speeches — long-time Black, Brown, immigrant, and working-class New Yorkers fighting to remain in the city they built. Yet when the consequences of bad policy land on their doorsteps, they are met with silence.

The pressure created by Local Law 18 has accelerated displacement, increased foreclosure risks, and destabilized entire neighborhoods already vulnerable to rezoning and speculative buying. Homes pushed into distress become easy prey for investors looking to flip multi-generational households into rental units.

This is how a city transitions from a place of ownership to a place of permanent tenancy.

Intro 948 offers a narrow, targeted fix: restoring basic rights to primary-residence homeowners — the people who were never the problem. It does not weaken tenant protections. It does not expand Airbnb. It does not help corporate landlords. It simply corrects an injustice.

And now, the fight enters the public square.

On Thursday at 10 a.m., the City Council will hold a public hearing on Intro 948 — and the Hotel Trades Council is expected to flood the chamber with its operatives, propagandists, and paid surrogates to drown out the voices of real homeowners. Their goal is simple: trivialize the harm, distort the facts, and overshadow the New Yorkers whose lives have been upended by Local Law 18. It is our responsibility to cut through the manufactured noise, reject the narrative engineered by lobbyists, and confront the inconvenient truth about how political power is being used — and misused — in New York City today.

New York stands at a crossroads.
It can continue down a path that hollows out homeownership, accelerates displacement, and deepens inequality. Or it can protect the families who built these neighborhoods and make homeownership attainable again.

This is not just a housing dispute.
It is a struggle over power, policy, and the future of ownership itself — especially for the communities that have the most to lose.