Opinion | To protect workers and consumers, New York City must pass the Safe Hotels Act

New York City has long been the world’s largest center of culture, cuisine, art and entertainment.

That also means that New York City’s hospitality industry will forever remain the most economically important sector, as more than 62 million tourists visited the five boroughs, spending more than $48 billion on their travel in 2023 alone and generating nearly $5 billion in tourism tax revenue.

Now that New York City’s tourism has finally returned to pre-pandemic levels, our previously empty hotels at the height of COVID-19 are now filled with guests from across the country and the world—all while tens of thousands of hotel workers make a living making their stays memorable.

But a booming hospitality industry brings its own set of public safety issues that sometimes fly under the radar, and ignoring them has become untenable.

Over the past five years, the NYPD has filed more than 14,300 criminal complaints at New York City hotels and motels, including thousands of misdemeanors. Even more disturbing, there have been at least 39 murders in the past 15 years, including the killing of 20-year-old Rosedale resident Robert Williams at the Umbrella Hotel in Kew Gardens on New Year’s Day 2021.

Williams, a former youth football player for the Rosedale Jets, was staying at the hotel to celebrate both the New Year and his 21st birthday when he was gunned down in front of the building the next day.

Robert Williams should still be alive today.

He should still be alive, because the Umbrella Hotel should not have been open that night at all.

Before Williams’ death, the hotel had been the subject of dozens of complaints from neighbors, who noted that the location had become a hub for drug dealing, prostitution and violence. Two shootings occurred there the previous summer, including one that injured a teenager.

Unfortunately, this is far from the only hotel in our city that has become a hotbed of illegal activity, threatening both the safety of our communities and the revival of our tourism industry.

But for far too long, the city has lacked the power to close these hotels. If we want to continue welcoming record numbers of tourists to our city and maintain our reputation as the safest big city in America, that has to change.

That’s why, as a member of the City Council, I introduced legislation to establish minimum standards for safety, health, and worker protection in hotels. And that’s why, as Queens Borough President, I strongly support the legislation — the Safe Hotels Act — sponsored by Councilmember Julie Menin, which builds on that foundation and creates a licensing system for hotels.

Giving the city the tools to better regulate hotels and establish a set of basic health and safety standards that every reputable hotel should already be following is essential to protecting workers, guests, and the local communities in which these hotels operate. You would think that something so obvious would be a policy that we could all find common ground in supporting. When I first started this legislative movement in 2019, the hotel industry had no serious objections. The only reason the bill failed to pass was the near-complete shutdown of the hotel and tourism industry during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fast forward to the present, as tourism returns to pre-pandemic levels, some hoteliers have begun to falsely claim that these new, modest regulations will send the industry into a tailspin. Some of the world’s wealthiest hoteliers are even threatening to spend millions of dollars to block these permitting efforts.

However, many other major cities around the country, including Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas, Denver and Washington, D.C., have already established hotel licensing structures that are much stricter than what is proposed in the Safe Hotels Act, and their hotel industries continue to thrive.

Holding hotels to minimum health and safety standards is not a burden, but rather a basic business practice. Hotels already have to obtain a large number of permits if they want to have a spa, pool or sell drinks on the premises.

The fact is, this bill only requires hotels to be licensed by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) and to meet very basic standards. These include having a 24/7 front desk with at least one security guard on site, providing human trafficking training to employees so they can better recognize sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children, installing panic buttons to protect cleaners, and establishing cleaning protocols to protect guests and employees.

The bill would also ban excessive subcontracting of core hotel functions to protect workers. We’ve seen subcontracting used as a way for hotels to avoid liability when something happens to a guest or employee. It can also be a breeding ground for wage fraud and unsafe working conditions, like forcing workers to clean unsanitary rooms without proper equipment like masks and gloves.

Complaints filed against hotels through 311 have more than doubled from 149 in 2019 to more than 315 in 2023. Last year, six men, including two hotel staffers and a hotel manager, were charged by the Bronx District Attorney’s Office with child sex trafficking. This growing problem is why New York City’s five district attorneys and New York State Attorney General Letitia James have all spoken out in favor of this bill.

Now it’s time for the City Council to pass the Safe Hotels Act, giving the city a vital tool to tackle problem hotels.

Licensing is one of the most effective, proven tools the city has to enforce critical safety and hygiene standards at public businesses. That’s why it’s critical that the council pass the Safe Hotels Act to protect consumers, communities, and workers, and ensure a seamless, safe, and hygienic hotel experience for everyone.

Donovan Richards is the mayor of Queens.