Thursday, April 12, 2007

A bill that could be better

A bill to be introduced in the City Council today with the Bloomberg administration’s support would give the Department of Housing Preservation and Development the right to go into buildings that have dozens of serious housing code violations and a history of emergency repairs, do cellar-to-roof inspections and fix not only immediate problems, but also the underlying systems.

City to Seek Broader Power Over Buildings

The new rules would apply to buildings with at least 27 uncorrected code violations, over the previous two years, of the sort considered hazardous to health and safety, and with an average of five such violations per unit. The buildings must also have unpaid charges left over from earlier instances when the city had made emergency repairs.

The housing agency would give an owner four months to correct the violations and pay all outstanding charges.


Only 27 violations considered hazardous to health and safety? You'd think one would be enough. And why are previous unpaid charges necessary?

Photo from Wikipedia

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I assume there's a landlord with deep pockets and 26 violations out there. That's why they made the magic number 27.

Anonymous said...

The city was never a good steward of property either. Something tellls me this will either never get off the ground, or be open to corruption.

Anonymous said...

Ha....the city will keep catching these crooked violators and letting them off the hook to swim in that dirty pond again!

It's the same old system all over again with new packaging and little improvement!