HPD Says Code Enforcement Improved
But Money for Lead ‘Safe Houses’ Nowhere to Be Found
by Jenny Laurie

The city housing agency’s performance on code enforcement has improved slightly, according to testimony by Commissioner Richard Roberts Nov. 16 before the City Council Housing and Buildings Committee.

Citing figures from the annual Mayor’s Management Report, Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Roberts reported that the number of city housing-code inspectors was the highest it’s been since 1992, when then-Governor Mario Cuomo eliminated $8 million a year in state funding for the department’s code-enforcement unit. With an increase of about 20 inspectors since last year, HPD now has a inspection staff (including supervisors) of 271. The number of attorneys in HPD’s Litigation Unit, which takes owners to court to force them to make repairs, has been increased as well.

These increases are “thanks to aggressive and effective lobbying on the part of advocates and elected officials,” says Councilmember Stanley Michels (D-Manhattan). But the number of inspectors remains less than half of what it was at its peak.

The annual report indicates that HPD is doing better at both inspecting violations and reinspecting to see if landlords have fixed violations. Celia Irvine, a policy advisor who watches HPD closely for Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, observes that “productivity changes” have probably contributed to increased code enforcement as well. She explained that HPD inspectors, thaneks to contract changes last year, now work in staggered shifts, allowing for squads to go out on weekends and evenings in response to complaints and reinspection needs.

Commissioner Roberts claimed that the agency now reinspects 85.5% of “self-certified” repairs. This means that when a landlord swears that he fixed the violation, HPD is doing a much better job at sending an inspector to make sure the owner actually did the work. Councilmembers, other elected officials, and housing advocates have criticized the department’s policy of promoting “self-certification” since a report from Comptroller Alan Hevesi showed that landlords lie about 30% of the time.

They still lie about 30% of the time, but now, according to Roberts, landlords are getting punished for it. For the first time, the commissioner admitted that HPD is suing landlords who file false certifications. In past hearings, Roberts, under intense questioning from Michels and other committee members, had denied taking any action against these owners.

In his prepared testimony, Roberts focused mainly on the department’s great success at unloading city-owned buildings through the controversial Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program and similar me- chanisms used to pass these buildings into private hands. While it’s clear to tenant advocates that these programs have created enormous hardships for tenants in the targeted buildings, the Giuliani administration’s policy has been to get these buildings off the city’s books and back on the tax rolls, no matter what.

The hearing also showed echoes of the bitter battle over the landlord-backed lead-paint bill that the Council passed last June. On the eve of that vote, Mayor Giuliani and Council Speaker Peter Vallone sent messengers to the homes of every Councilmember, promising that if they voted for the bill, the city would build “safe houses” for lead-poisoned children to stay in while their homes were being decontaminated. (Were they assuming that more children would be poisoned under the new law? —Ed.) But under questioning from Michels, Roberts confessed that the money for the promised lead safe houses was never allocated, and he had no idea where it was.

Councilmember Mike Nelson (D-Brooklyn), who voted for the lead bill after promising constituents that he would not, scurried around during the hearing, conferring frequently with the committee’s counsel before asking pre-prepared questions of the commissioner. Some observers quipped that he was trying was trying to sound intelligent on code-enforcement issues to throw off his reputation as a landlord lackey.

One final irony was Roberts kvelling over how many resources had been poured into enforcing the new lead law. As the new law substantially weakened a previous law which HPD never came close to enforcing, advocates assumed that HPD would need far less money to enforce it.