The airline ‘crashpads’ that dot the neighborhoods around Logan are almost certainly illegal rentals

Most of the dozens of dormitory-like “crashpads” for airline employees scattered around neighborhoods near Logan Airport are almost certainly illegal rentals, according to a GBH News investigation.

GBH News identified more than a dozen crashpads in East Boston alone that were not registered as short-term rental units or rooming houses with the city. Even if they were registered, they do not meet most of the standards forged during Boston’s 2018 debate over how to regulate short-term rentals through services like Airbnb.

The city’s Department of Inspection Services closed a Geneva Street crash pad on April 6 after a flight attendant who was staying at the apartment called the fire department about a malfunctioning fire alarm. An inspector who responded to the call said the space was “illegal” and would be a “death trap” if a fire broke out. The department has since reviewed the matter.

Asked about the legality of such ‘crash pads’ in general, a Boston Department of Inspection Services spokesperson said in an email: “Although the term ‘crash pads’ is not recognized in codes that we enforce, it is our duty to ensure that residents and visitors reside in safe, sanitary and code-compliant units. … Landlords must ensure that their rental units meet all applicable codes and requirements. »

The city’s short-term rental ordinance makes it clear that the current practice of crashpad owners renting multiple beds in multiple rooms of an apartment is prohibited.

The 2019 ordinance defines a short-term rental as the rental of a residential unit for occupancy of less than 28 days, whether it is an owner-occupied condo or a one-storey building. to three families. For two-family and three-family buildings, the owner-occupier must own all the units and can only rent one.

The city allows three types of short-term rentals:

• Shared rentals are those where the unit is the owner’s primary residence and is rented out for a short period of time, up to 10 people, and limited to five bedrooms.
• A “limited share unit” is a rental in the owner’s primary residence while the owner is staying there.
• An “owner’s adjacent dwelling” is one where the unit is not the owner’s primary residence, but is in the same two- or three-family building as their residence.

According to the 2019 order, lodging houses/rooms and certified bed and breakfasts are not subject to these short-term rental rules and have their own local and national rules, but it is not at all clear if crashpads count as “rooming houses”.

Douglas Quattrochi, executive director of MassLandlords, said any rental where four or more people share a bathroom and kitchen must be licensed as a rooming house.

“It didn’t seem to me that there was anything legal about the crashpad scenario that you talked about,” he told GBH News.

Under state law, rooming houses allow multiple people to live in one room and rent from one landlord. They must be inspected and re-licensed annually, with fees based on the number of rooms. An owner who illegally operates a lodging house, may be fined up to $500 and imprisoned for up to three months.

In Boston, the location must be zoned as a rooming house and approved by the Zoning Board of Appeals. Homeowners must also meet with the local neighborhood association and speak to the district councilman, and obtain approval from the licensing board after a public hearing.

Housing attorney Adam Sherwin, who has represented landlords renting single rooms and has looked into rooming house law, said unlicensed crashpad landlords are “individuals who essentially rent [their units] like hotels but without being taxed. He said taxes are “probably the biggest reason” these landlords avoid taking the legal route to becoming a rooming house.

“You usually have a health code that’s going to apply, and you still have to comply with a lot of requirements,” he said.

He said whether short-term rental standards should be applied to crashpads is “no longer an open question” or debatable, but it seems problematic to have so many people renting a unit.

None of the crashpad owners that GBH News could not identify responded to requests for comment. Flight attendants who live in the pads said they didn’t know much about the housing rules.

Krystal Valdes, a flight attendant who stays at a crash pad in east Boston, said she believes crash pads are legal because they’ve “been around for so long.” She also thinks airlines should offer dormitory-style accommodations for flight attendants.

None of Boston’s four major national airlines — American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue and United — responded to questions about the crashpads.

Andrew Pike, treasurer of the Jeffries Point Neighborhood Association — the neighborhood where the Geneva Street crashpad was destroyed and where GBH has identified several others — wrote on the organization’s public Facebook group: “Most cities make it prohibitively expensive to run a legitimate rooming house and so we have illegal ones. Every neighborhood near an airport, anywhere in this country, has one. Not that that makes things fair.

The board as a whole declined a request for an interview from GBH News because, Pike said in an email, “None of the board members are interested in speaking on the subject.”

Current crashpad owners looking to go legal might be out of luck. Quattrochi said MassLandlords helped a landlord who claimed he unknowingly bought a rooming house and tried to legalize things.

“She went to the Zoning Appeal Board and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I have this property. It is not rented accordingly. Please let me be a rooming house,” he said. Two meetings later, “the ZBA basically told him to take a hike.”

The difficulty of zoning everything out and doing well, he said, “could be why you have this black market or you know, this unlicensed housing.

Margaret Farmer, an activist and community resident of East Boston, said she was concerned about the lack of oversight the crashpads receive.

“There is a lack of safety measures and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt,” Farmer said. “And that’s my biggest fear – we’re going to end up getting tough in the future because someone got hurt or died.”

She said the city doesn’t have the resources to shut them all down, because East Boston only has one person from the inspection services covering the area, and the office is also under a lot of pressure from new developers needing permits.

Farmer also thinks the airlines should be responsible for a legal solution.

“I would like to see housing built by the airport above the terminals. These could be inexpensive and very convenient with staff and security in place to facilitate rotations between visitors and a convenient location for airport workers,” she said.

Later this year, airline employees will have a legal alternative to residential crash pads in Boston.

Bruce McGehee, a JetBlue pilot from Alabama who was based in Boston and stayed in residential crash pads, understands the desire for a safe, inexpensive place. He founded Hotel Crash Pad Network in 2017, which already operates in major cities like New York, Denver, Miami and Seattle. The company partners with hotels like Marriott and Hyatt to rent rooms for 365 days a year, providing hotels with a guaranteed income.

“Typically, hotel maintenance staff or an outside contractor will remove existing beds so that we can replace them with our individual bunk beds or twin beds, depending on the hotel we work with,” McGehee said. The hotel clarifies this with a fire marshal in advance and with their offices.

“Everything is done above the books and, you know, under the legalities of the municipality,” he said. Some cities allow more beds in a room than others, and they comply with local regulations. health codes and rules.

“It’s a win for our customers as they pay about the same amount they would pay for a residential bed in East Boston or Orient Heights,” he said.