NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: The Latest on Mayor Adams’ Corruption Case, and NYC’s Short-Term Rental Rules Stay Tight

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

The Justice Department has directed federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, citing political concerns and federal immigration enforcement. But the Southern District of New York has yet to act on the case. WNYC’s Maia Hibbett breaks down what this means for Adams and his political future. Meanwhile, a push to loosen New York City’s strict short-term rental laws is losing momentum after a key provision was removed from proposed legislation. WNYC’s David Brand reports

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. The Justice Department is directing federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, arguing the case was politically motivated and interferes with his role in President Trump's immigration enforcement efforts. Speaking Tuesday, Adam says he's focused on regaining the trust of New Yorkers. Despite the fact, Patti am no longer facing legal consequences. questions. I also understand that many New Yorkists were still questioned my character.

Joining me now to break this down is WNYC editor, Maya Hibb. Maya, let's start with the latest. What did the Justice Department say in its memo? So maybe first we should start with clearing something up that a lot of people might find confusing. The Justice Department is not the prosecutor in Adams' case. This was an order they sent to the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, which is the office pursuing federal corruption charges against Mayor Adams. And the order really says two things. One, it says that the case was politically

motivated in the first place, implying that it was brought because Adams had criticized the former Biden administration's immigration policies. That's something Adams has said himself before. It's a claim Trump has repeated. And there's no clear evidence for it. The second thing it said is that they need to do this because Adams needs to sort of be freed up so he can help enforce Trump's immigration agenda. Trump has spoken before about how he is really opposed to New York City being a sanctuary city, and he wants that policy to change. There, it's also not really clear what the Justice Department is looking for Adams to do or whether he has the power to do it. But it's also worth noting that this memo does not say the case itself is flawed. It doesn't assess the merits of the case and, in fact, makes it clear that it could be revisited in the future.

So how has the mayor responded? So Adams had a live streamed address today from City Hall. It was pretty short, and he didn't take any questions from the press, as he normally would at a press conference. But he was celebrating this as the end of his case. He was saying that he's excited to move on and put this behind him and really implying that it's completely over. But that's not entirely true. Even though the Justice Department's order is significant, the prosecutors haven't actually formally responded or dropped the charges against the mayor. And again, even if they do, the prosecutors could take them up again in the future.

So far, the Southern District of New York hasn't formally dismissed the case yet. What do we make of that? That's pretty hard to answer. I think we don't really know what the Southern District is going to do. It would be a pretty shocking rebellion if they were to resist the DOJ on this and say, no, we're not going to comply with your order and we are going to move forward with the case. But because they haven't responded at all, we just don't know what's happening next. If they do move to dismiss the charges, they will have to get approval from a judge.

But legal experts who've spoken to us say that judges usually sign off on those things. So what happens next? And what does all of this mean for Adams politically? Politically, it's pretty tricky because, as listeners likely know, Adams is currently running for re-election. And the first contest will be the Democratic primary for mayor, which is on June 24th. he's facing a lot of challengers, people who are in city government or have been, and also people who are in state government, state senators and assembly members. Most of those people are now trying to frame this race as kind of a referendum on Trump and on Trump's relationship to Adams. A lot of Democratic voters who are going to be showing up for that June primary are probably not big fans of Trump in the Trump administration.

And so Adams competitors are really trying to play up this seeming connection between the Trump administration and Mayor Adams. But Adams is still the incumbent and he does have the advantage of name recognition. So we can't say for sure that his campaign is going to be dead because of that. That's WNYC Politics Editor Maya Hibbid. Up next, a push to loose in New York City's strict short-term rental rules is losing momentum. So what changed? That's after the break. This is NYC now.

New York City has some of the toughest rules on short-term rentals like Airbnb, and a push to loosen them is losing steam. City Councilmember Farah Lewis has proposed letting owners of one and two family homes rent them out short-term, even if they weren't home. A big shift from current laws. But last week, she quietly removed that provision from the bill. My colleague Jenae Pierre spoke with WNYC reporter David Brand to learn more. Now, David, Airbnb and other short-term rental services were pretty popular in New York City until the fall of maybe 2023. Can you remind us what happened? So this may come as a surprise to some people, given the popularity and ease of using Airbnb and other services that you mentioned.

But short-term rentals have actually been illegal in New York City for many years. You're not allowed to rent out an apartment for less than 30 days without getting special permission from the city. But Airbnb made it possible to get around that rule, along with some other services like Verbo, until September 2023. That month, the city began prohibiting companies like Airbnb from processing payments to host for these illegal short-term rentals. So if you're trying to list your unit, list your apartment, you just couldn't get paid for it. To become a host legally, you have to apply with the city and you have to wait and you have to get approval to register the unit. That takes a while. So once that law took effect in 2023, the number of listings plummeted almost overnight by 10,000.

Yeah. And some property owners and the short-term rental companies have been trying to get the rules changed. Tell me, what exactly do they want? Well, they say the new law went too far. You know, there's many examples of landlords turning entire apartment buildings into de facto hotels. They argue it's good to crack down on those offenders because they're taking a lot of housing off the money. market in one fell swoop. But the opponents of the law say it hurts owners of one and two family homes who just want to rent out their unit some of the time or rent their whole home when they go out of town. The existing law requires the owner or resident of the home to be present when a

short-term guest is there. And they don't want to be present. So Lewis's original bill, as you mentioned, had a provision that would have allowed them not to be there when the renter comes. It also would have allowed owners to put locks on their doors. That's something they can't currently do in a legal short-term rentals. This new version still requires the owner to be present, and that's the key difference. You could have locks on the doors to separate from guests, but that key difference, you still have to be there when the guest is there. Yeah. So, David, big question here. Why does council member Lewis say she amended the bill? Well, she says council staff told her that there are legal concerns because the bill, as it was written, could conflict with housing and buildings

rules, and that would trigger an entirely different approval process. Lewis told me she still wants to pass a measure that gives one and two family homeowners more flexibility to do short-term rentals. But she's also calling out the divisiveness of this debate. Tell us about that. Well, it's been going on for years, really intensified again once this bill got introduced in November and there's been some dueling rallies and a lot of advocacy on both sides and a lot of money that's being spent here. Tenant groups say that allowing short-term rentals takes needed housing off the market during a serious shortage. According to city data, there's more than 300,000 rental units in one-and-two-family homes. And they say sanctioning short-term rentals would allow owners to turn permanent apartments

into tourist spots. Group of property owners says, the city cracked down at Airbnb, and that hasn't really had a major impact on the housing crisis, so they are casting down on that argument. But frankly, there is a lot of money at stake here. Airbnb, for example,

spent more than $1 million on lobbying and advocacy around these regulations last year. The hotel industry and the hotel labor union have also spent big to counter that. You know, short-term rentals, they see as competition for customers, and the hotel industry has a lot of influence in New York City. So property owners are accusing Lewis of capitulating to the hotel industry, which, again, she

denies, she says there's some legal concerns about the bill she had. Airbnb in the hotel union are also funding the groups that are advocating on either side of this debate. They are now accusing each other of astroturfing or serving as front groups that are masking the bigger corporations. And so that's where a lot of this ugliness comes in. So what's next for this bill in this whole debate? Well, the bill has five sponsors. It's still in committee and it actually lost a sponsor.

So it does have support from city council speaker Adrian Adams. She's not really talking about the bill. She's deferring to council member Lewis on this. So it looks like it's going to be a really uphill path for this specific legislation. But looking ahead, Airbnb says it's planning to spend a lot more money to boost support for relaxing restrictions, and they've even started a super pack to boost candidates who support relaxing those restrictions. So this fight is not going to go away.

That's WNYC reporter, David Brand, in conversation with my colleague, Jenae Pierre. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. We'll be back tomorrow.