This year, New York City has been trying to recover from the onslaught of terrible events it has been facing. Unfortunately, its full recovery is being hampered by a budget shortfall of several billion dollars. This is causing problems, including rising crime rates and structural issues.
Last year, thousands of New Yorkers lodged over 21,000 emergency complaints with the Department of Buildings. Tenants have lodged over 364,000 complaints with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development for things like heat and hot water unavailability.
Not long ago, a Bronx building partially collapsed. Nobody died. But it highlights the structural problems buildings in New York City are facing.
At the press conference following the collapse, Building Commissioner James Oddo said there was ongoing work on the apartment building’s façade and that the cause of the collapse was under investigation.
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Joel Kupferman is a public interest attorney. He leads the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project, representing tenants and workers with serious environmental issues. According to him, the city’s real estate industry donates large amounts to the city’s politicians. So it can easily escape accountability under current law.
“We are doing cases with major complaints, and they [DOB] go to inspect, and they are not allowed into the building,” Kupferman said. “So, there’s no seriousness about investigating. A landlord with just a few smarts will just bar entry and avoid on-site inspection.”
The annual Mayor’s Management Report supports Kupferman’s observation that gaining access is a considerable problem for the DOB. There have been cases where the agency was investigating an alleged illegal residential conversion. But it only got site access 30.9 percent of the time, down from 41.4 percent the previous year.
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“We make every effort to get inside buildings with potential violations, visiting properties multiple times to investigate complaints if we can’t get inside the first time,” DOB press secretary Adams Rudansky says.
Unfortunately, there is only so much they can do. After all, the agency must also respect property owners’ Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. However, according to Kupferman, landlords and developers usually ignore the law and continue to prosper even when city enforcement issues a fine.
According to an April report by the city’s Independent Budget Office, close to $800 million in uncollected fines are outstanding and accumulated between 2017 and 2022.
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Glenn Corbett is an assistant professor of fire science and public administration at John Jay College at the City University of New York. He believes that the collapse of the apartment building in the Bronx should trigger a citywide review of all structures of a similar vintage.
He says: “We need to consider doing a routine inspection of all of these old buildings, perhaps using a threshold of 50 or 75 years old.” Corbett also conceded that the city doesn’t have the workforce to accomplish the vital task. So it would have to rely, as it does now, on third-party certified professional engineers.
Undoubtedly, the structural deficiencies in New York need some attention. After all, for a city to be a city, it must have standing buildings.
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