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A sweeping corruption investigation led to the recent indictment of 16 employees in the Department of Buildings and Department of Housing Preservation and Development, along with various property managers, contractors, and expeditors. The defendants are charged in 26 indictments including bribery, bribe receiving, falsifying business records, tampering with public records, and official misconduct.
Newly elected New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie recently stated that renewing and strengthening New York City rent-regulation laws will be his “No. 1 priority” during his first public appearance with Mayor Bill de Blasio. “When it comes to the issue of affordable housing, he’s going to fight for the people of New York City,” Mayor de Blasio said of Mr. Heastie. “He’s going to see the faces of the families of this city while he’s fighting that fight on behalf of all of us.”
City Council Member Corey Johnson seeks to introduce new legislation that would change the methodology of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) for determining rent guidelines for rent-stabilized apartments. At a rally in front of City Hall, he said that while owners’ operating expenditures have gone up slightly in the past few years, their incomes have risen much faster.
On Jan. 20, the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee held a hearing to discuss various matters related to short-term apartment rentals, especially those listed through Airbnb, the pioneering home rental service. New York has emerged as Airbnb’s largest market. The company says it has 25,000 active hosts in the city and is waging a perception campaign against the idea that its service is exacerbating the housing shortage in New York.
Council members Mark Levine and Vanessa Gibson are co-sponsors of a City Council bill that would establish the right to legal counsel in eviction cases. The bill, Intro 214, would create a position of civil justice coordinator under the commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development. If passed, it would make New York City the first city in the U.S. to recognize a right to counsel in eviction proceedings.
Recently, an owner with illegally partitioned apartments pled guilty to negligent homicide for a 2010 fire that killed five residents. Prosecutors had filed charges against both the man accused of setting the fire and the owner. In February 2015, the owner is scheduled to be sentenced to one to three years in prison.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) updated its flood-zone maps for New York City, it covered 84,596 structures in the five boroughs, up from 23,885 in the 2010 maps, according to a recent report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer. These newly analyzed flood insurance rate maps (FIRMs), which were proposed last year and are awaiting federal approval, could increase flood-insurance rates by as much as 18 percent per year for similar levels of coverage, the report says.
Two years ago the city passed a law to make landlords repair the “underlying conditions” that cause mold to linger and ceilings to collapse instead of simply covering problems with layers of paint. Since the law was passed, records show the city has targeted only 69 buildings, including eight in Manhattan, four in Queens, and one in Staten Island. There were 36 in Brooklyn and 20 in the Bronx. The city has stated that it has the resources to target only 50 buildings a year for “underlying conditions orders.”
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently announced that the state’s Tenant Protection Unit (TPU) has signed an agreement that will end the reported harassment and intimidation of long-term tenants at several rent-regulated buildings in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush and Crown Heights. The owner of these buildings had purportedly been engaging in a pattern of abusive behavior and disregarding rent laws.
Owners who currently participate in government programs that offer subsidies such as bond financing and tax breaks in return for setting aside 20 percent of a building’s units for low-income housing will be able to sell their market-rate rentals—up to 80 percent of an individual building—in exchange for permanently preserving or increasing the property’s number of low-income offerings, according to new guidelines implemented by the New York State Attorney General’s office.
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