Hotel Belleclaire in New York

The entire hotel was converted to a homeless shelter during the pandemic, but now only a few rooms are rented by homeless services for use by families. The main issue is that these rooms are spread across parts of multiple floors, so sheltered homeless people do live next door to hotel guests. There is no longer drug dealing or anti-social activity happening outside the lobby like there used to be, but it is best to keep your guard up at all times.

We booked a room at Hotel Belleclaire expecting a comfortable stay, but unfortunately, our experience was very disappointing. From night one the hallway smelled like an astray and can smell it through our room. We were willing to deal with that but on night two when we returned from dinner, half of the electrical outlets and lights in our room were not working. The power in our room was at 10% with only 2 lamps working. The bathroom light was out, the air conditioning didn’t work, and we couldn’t charge our phones. Clearly, there was an electrical issue. The front desk sent someone up (Ruben), but he admitted he didn’t know how to fix it. His only solutions were:
1. Move us to another room for one night and then make us return to our original (non-functioning) room the next day, or
2. Use a shower in a different room two floors down and then after our reluctance to travel two floors to shower because we have two young girls in our group, he then offered us a room down the hallway from us but firmly told us to not occupy two rooms, this is at 2am. To make matters worse, the entire hallway smelled like an ashtray, and when the staff member came back to “discuss” the issue because we refused to travel two floors to shower and come back to a room with no a/c and 80% of the power not working at 2am, he actually began recording our conversation without our consent and hid recorder under his arm.

When you pay for a hotel stay, the basic expectation is a clean, functional room and reasonable service. Instead, we were given broken facilities, poor solutions, and unprofessional treatment. This was a very difficult and uncomfortable situation, and I would not recommend staying here until the management takes these issues seriously.

I DO NOT recommend this place. We were deceived by this place when it advertised “breakfast included.” That’s a lie—they only give you a 10-dollar voucher to use with a specific bakery. Shame on this place for scamming people like that. Also, expect crazy pipes and other noises in your room. We couldn’t sleep well with a constantly rattling and vibrating sound inside the walls. Do yourself a favor and choose another hotel. You have so many choices in the area. Do not come to this one.

I really don't understand why this hotel has such a high rating. A room with breakfast, but the breakfast is a 10 yuan voucher. You can choose drinks and bread in the cafe on the first floor. Everyone lined up to get breakfast and ate in the aisle. I've never seen it before! It's a rip-off to choose a room with breakfast.
There was a long queue for the elevator, because the three elevators were small and could only accommodate five people at most, and there was no luggage.
There was nothing in the room except the bed. There was no coffee machine, tea bags, or kettle.
The room was average, there was too much dust on the floor, and there was dust everywhere in the corners.