New York City is responding to more reports of housing code violations that threaten the health and safety of New Yorkers, but not every repair is an easy fix. Violations are highly concentrated in a few Bronx and Brooklyn neighborhoods.
“It will happen again. It’s not a matter of if, but when. The average building age in New York City is around 90 years, and we’re grappling with a shortage of building inspectors as well as an ongoing housing crisis—giving building owners little to no incentive to address violations.”
“Vulnerable New Yorkers are suffering from predatory landlords, an overburdened court system, and an economy that continues to sideline them. They deserve better from their city.”
The City Council’s resolution implores the state legislature and HUD to “take strong action and increase NYCHA accountability by auditing the responsiveness of NYCHA managers to tenants,” citing complaints from residents about work orders languishing or getting closed without an actual fix.
Nonprofit legal service providers often file group lawsuits that assist tenants fighting landlord harassment across an entire building. But a new solicitation appears to impose limits on this preferred strategy for winning repairs and rent reductions.
“In 1890, Jacob Riis photographed and documented the inhumane conditions of tenements in New York City: the lack of light, air, space, and basic sanitation. Today, 132 years later, much of New York City’s housing stock is still bad: unsafe water, broken elevators, mold, lack of heat, roaches, and rats.”
It’s the latest civil penalty leveled against Jason Korn, the former “Worst Landlord” on the Public Advocate’s annual list of terrible property owners.
A new report from NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams details conditions he witnessed in public housing after visiting six NYCHA complexes earlier this year and speaking to tenants about mold and rodent infestations, leaks, broken fire exit doors, out-of-service elevators and heat and hot water outages. “I think folks sometimes don’t understand how bad those conditions are,” he told City Limits.
Advocates want the city to take a more proactive approach to lead paint inspections and enforcement, saying the current system contains loopholes that allow property owners to skirt the rules. Their push comes as the Health Department considers lowering the childhood lead-level threshold that would automatically trigger an investigation.
Brothers Stuart and Jay Podolsky—long known for profiting off of poorly-maintained housing, and who are recent clients of Adams’ Chief of Staff Frank Carone—are leasing at least three of their hotels to the city for use as shelters for homeless families.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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