NEW YORK CITY-The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has placed 200 apartment buildings with more than 26,700 housing code violations on-watch. The properties have been added into the agency’s fifth round of the Alternative Enforcement Program, an initiative aimed at increasing the pressure on the owners of the city’s most distressed multifamily property owners to bring their buildings up to code.
The properties were selected using the updated criteria that were adopted by the City Council and signed into law by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2011. Of all five rounds, this the second round of AEP with buildings selected under the new rules, which was modified to qualify a larger number of buildings with 20 more units for the program.
This year, the building violations span across 2,373 units in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. Together, the 200 buildings in round five carry a total of 5,484 non-hazardous (A-class), 16701 hazardous (B-class) and 4,525 immediately hazardous (C-class) violations, and owe the city more than $1.3 million in Emergency Repair Program charges. Additionally, the report found that the HPD’s Housing Litigation Division has been active in 410 housing court cases against the owners of 145 of these buildings. Broken down, the lion’s share of these properties are located in the Bronx (56 buildings/989 units), followed by Brooklyn (107 buildings/735 units) and Manhattan (21 buildings/571 units).
Under the new requirements that went into effect in January 2011, the legislation also specifically designated new conditions requiring improvements such as mold and vermin violations, and amends the discharge criteria to allow owners to pay their debt to the city over time as opposed to a lump sum. As a result, the total units more than doubled from 1,476 in round three to more than 3,339 in last year’s round four. Of the 200 buildings, 101 of the properties have been discharged, 29,519 violations have been corrected and the city has directly recovered than $1.57 million in ERP charges.
In a statement, HPD Commissioner Matthew M. Wambua describes the AEP program as an “effective way” to corral bad buildings and deal with them in a comprehensive manner. “It is unfortunate that some owners will only respond when punitive measures are brought to bear,” he says. “There is no question that as much as a tenant must abide by the terms of the lease they sign, the landlord is required to ensure that the property in question is kept secure, safe and up to code, no ifs ands or buts.”
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
