City approves modular building for affordable housing

Queens Eagle

A proposed 167-apartment development in East New York is one of the first projects using modular construction that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has selected to finance, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Modular construction refers to the off-site construction of prefabricated, factory-produced units (modules) that are then stacked on top of each other to form a full building. The Build It Back program implemented in Queens and Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy also used modular housing.

The modules will be constructed by FullStack Modular at its factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The proposal was submitted by a development team led by Thorobird Cos. and its local nonprofit partner, Bangladeshi American Community Development & Youth Services.

“Doing modular is a really important, long-term strategy for the city,” said New York City Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, whose last day on the job was Friday. “We know it saves time, and as it scales up, it will start saving money.”

Loan program to help homeowners

From AMNY:

The city is preparing to begin accepting applications next year from lower income homeowners looking for loans to finance property repairs.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners are expected to announce Wednesday that they are seeking a third partner to administer the forthcoming HomeFix program.

The final collaborator — which will also be a nonprofit — will be offering technical and financial assistance to homeowners, helping them with loan paperwork, processing the applications and identifying general contractors to perform the repairs, according to HPD.

HomeFix, which was announced last November, is designed to help owners of one- to four-family homes, who may struggle to acquire financing from the private market. Under the program, HPD will issue and service loans to about 150 New Yorkers annually, who earn no more than 165 percent of the metro area's median income.

DeBlasio unfairly seizing properties

From Kings County Politics:

Mayor Bill de Blasio today defended the city’s taking of more than 60 properties in Brooklyn – including those of at least three fully paid off African American owned properties worth millions of dollars – and transferring their ownership for “re-development” to non-profit and for profit companies.

But New York State Attorney General Candidate Keith Wofford took de Blasio and the entire city government to task for incompetence at best, and illegal political corruption at worst, in seizing the properties.

“What’s happening here is disgraceful and likely illegal. Mayor De Blasio lives nearby and sleeps securely at night, while his administration creates anxiety and fear among vulnerable citizens whose largest asset is ripped away without compensation or due process,” said Wofford.

Wofford went so far as to call the foreclosure proceedings “unconstitutional,” and urged the Mayor to act immediately in stopping anymore transfers under the program.

The program that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) utilizes in taking properties is called the Third Party Transfer (TPT) program, which goes back to the 1980s when New York City had many blighted and burned out properties. The program designates qualified sponsors to purchase and rehabilitate distressed vacant and occupied multi-family properties in order to improve and preserve affordable housing for low-to moderate-income households.

Over the years the program has been amended in its definition of distressed properties, most recently in 2016, in which the City Council approved an expansion of the program to include buildings which are subject to Environmental Control Board (ECB) judgments as a result of building code violations in the amount of a lien to value ratio equal to or greater than 25%.

In order for HPD to obtain the foreclosure judgments, the agency sought, needed and received city council approval – an approval that some city council members now say they approved because HPD misled them.

The story came to light, when KCP learned the city foreclosed on Marlene Saunders, 74, a retired nurse, who nearly lost her paid-off and in pristine condition brownstone at 1217 Dean Street on a rapidly gentrifying block in Crown Heights.

The three-story brownstone had been in the Saunders family for 30 years and has been appraised at over $2.2 million. Saunders son showed KCP copies of checks paid and cashed by the city for property and water taxes, but were never applied to the property. He also stated the family knew nothing about the court proceeding, in which a foreclosure judgement was issued and only learned the family no longer owned the property through a flyer delivered to the brownstone months after they lost the deed.

HPD targeting zombie homes

From The Real Deal:

The city is taking on lenders of “zombie homes” — decrepit, vacant, distressed houses with unpaid mortgages, which have forced the city to conduct emergency repairs and maintenance.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is seeking more than $1 million from CitiMortgage, Wells Fargo and other home lenders who have allegedly failed to maintain houses on the brink of foreclosure, the department announced.

The cases target five Brooklyn properties and their lenders including Rushmore Loan Management Services LLC at 581 Saratoga Avenue, Ocwen Financial Corporation at 31 Essex Street, Seterus, Inc., at 1554 Dumont Avenue, CitiMortgage at 1889 Bergen Street and Wells Fargo at 1831 Park Place.

HPD partnered with the New York City Law Department bring the cases under the 2016 New York State Zombie Property and Foreclosure Prevention Act.

The city said it had identified as many as 4,000 zombie homes in the five boroughs since the act was introduced and sends warning letters to lenders and mortgage servicers that failed to maintain properties.

670 "affordable" apartments to be constructed in Far Rockaway

From Curbed:

Following the rezoning of Downtown Far Rockaway in September last year, the city has now announced the first new affordable housing developments that have come about as a result of that rezoning. Together these two projects will bring 670 affordable apartments to the neighborhood.

The first of the two projects will rise at city-owned lot at Beach 21st Street. The city has picked The Community Builders, Inc, a housing nonprofit, to develop 224 apartments at the site, 130 of which will be offered to those making 60 percent of the area median income. The rest of the apartments will be offered at different levels of affordability. In addition to the apartments, the project will also have 90 parking spots, 8,000 square feet of community facilities including an early childhood education center, and 24,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

For the second project, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Housing Development Corporation have secured construction financing for affordable housing developer Phipps Houses to build 457 apartments in the Far Rockaway Village. There, Phipps Houses is transforming an abandoned parking lot into housing, public space, and retail.

Fire doors now a top priority

From NBC:

Chris Glorioso has an update on what New York City is doing to crack down on landlords who have faulty fire doors.

Many automatically closing doors fail inspection

From NBC:

Nearly four months after the Bronx inferno, the I-Team has discovered more than 22,000 other apartment doors that failed city inspections because they did not automatically close. The violations were issued by inspectors with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development within the last three years.

About 13,000 of the door violations have been corrected or dismissed, according to city records. But almost 9,000 of the door violations are listed as current hazards that have yet to be fixed.

There are about 300 HPD inspectors citywide, so it is unclear how many malfunctioning fire doors may have evaded detection.

Will a community land trust work in NYC?

From Curbed:

The huge run-up of prices in the 21st century, which can lead to gentrification, speculation, and predatory practices, has shrunk the affordable housing stock, says Andrew Reicher, executive director of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, one of the community groups collaborating on the Interboro Community Land Trust in New York City.

“People are looking around for a tool that creates affordable housing from the start, and prevents this type of change from happening again,” he says. “I’m not sure people realize how fragile our housing economy can be.”

One of the more intriguing new CLTs, the nascent Interboro Community Land Trust, aims to apply this model to one of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets, New York City.

According to Reicher, Interboro will partner with developers and nonprofits across the city. New affordable homes, apartment developments, and co-ops will be added to the trust, which will help maintain affordability longer than standard subsidized housing developments.

While Interboro has already attracted seed funding from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, as well as a $1 million contribution from Citi Community Development, the organization will need to partner with existing projects to truly grow; even a few million won’t be enough to acquire significant land in New York. Still, despite the high costs of acquisition, Interboro believes it can grow to 250 units over the next few years.

Douglaston residents request park space

From the Queens Tribune:

The grassy lot next to the St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church on 234th Street has been vacant for years. Currently owned by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the lot has withstood several proposals from both the city and the church over the years—including plans for a street, nursery and parking lot. But for the past 10 years, local civic associations have opposed each attempt, calling on HPD to transfer the property to the city Parks Department to create a new public green space.

“The community remains solidly in favor of this as a park,” said state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) during a Tuesday press conference adjacent to the property, alongside representatives from several civic associations.

Water's Edge development is falling apart

From The Wave:

On Friday, Jan. 13, owners of the condominiums, Water’s Edge in Arverne stood in front of their ‘shoddily constructed’ city-financed dream of first-time homeownership for low and moderate income people and proclaimed it a nightmare.

Council Member Donovan Richards stood in solidarity with the homeowners, asking the Briarwood Organization for one simple thing.

“Just do the right thing,” said Richards. “One of the many dreams we have in life is to become the owner of our very own home. Many people, particularly in our city, never get that opportunity, never mind an affordable home. Unfortunately, for many of the residents here, that dream turned into a reality and then a nightmare. Briarwood needs to make this right and if they don’t, we are calling on HPD to refuse to work with their organization on any subsidized projects.”

On Sept. 1, 2016, the condominium board sued the Briarwood Organization Arverne /Briarwood II, LLC, its principals, Vincent L. Riso, Raymond Riso, James Riso, Howard Goodman, and Briarwood Properties, Inc. who built the 130-unit complex consisting of 65 two-story buildings, with a condo unit on each floor after winning the bid of the Request For Proposal (RFP) issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) during the Bloomberg administration.

BdB forcing affordable housing developers to take in homeless

From Crains:

A top de Blasio official has been calling developers of affordable rental buildings about a new regulation that would require them to house homeless families—the administration's latest attempt to stem the city's record-setting shelter population.

Vicki Been, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, recently made the calls to a handful of developers who received a now-defunct tax exemption called 421-a, according to sources with knowledge of the calls. The tax exemption requires that at least 20% of a building's units be enrolled in the city's affordable housing program.

"This is the latest reform in our effort to address the homeless crisis we face," said an HPD spokeswoman in a statement. "Addressing homelessness is a moral imperative. These new marketing procedures are another new tool we are using to help reduce the burden for families who are being forced out of their homes."

The city has struggled with a surging homeless population that topped a record 60,000 this month, with families with children making up two-thirds of that total. And earlier this year, domestic violence surpassed eviction to become the No. 1 reason for being admitted to a shelter, according to Crain's.

While it is not unprecedented for the city's top affordable housing official to personally call developers to inform them of a new policy, Been's entreaties are a sign that the administration is serious about getting this one off the ground quickly and is willing to exert more pressure on companies to comply.

Housing inspector illegally converted his cellar

From the DNA Info:

A housing inspector endangered the lives of his tenants by violating the same building codes the city employed him to enforce, the Queens District Attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

Derrick Allen, 58, a Brooklyn inspector for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development who owns two buildings in Queens, was charged Tuesday with illegally converting the cellar space in his Rosedale and St. Albans properties into dangerous living quarters, according to the DA’s office.

The units — hooked up to illegal gas and water lines — lacked adequate exits and natural light, which District Attorney Richard Brown noted made the residencies dangerous not only for tenants, but emergency responders as well.

“Such conversions jeopardize the lives of not only the buildings’ residents but firefighters and other personnel who in responding to an emergency are confronted by a maze of rooms with no way out,” said Brown in a statement.

“As a code enforcement inspector himself, the defendant should have known better.”

The Housing Department first became aware of Allen’s practices as a landlord on Aug. 18 when an illegal tenant in his Rosedale building called 311 to complain about building maintenance, according to the DA.

Housing inspectors arrived one week later to find four illegal single-room residencies in the basement with access to only one exit, as well as a shared kitchen with an illegal gas stove and a bathroom with a hole in the ground where a toilet once stood, the DA said.

Tenants were ordered to vacate the premises immediately due to the unsafe circumstances, the DA said.

No good deed goes unpunished

From PIX11:

Neighbors say the empty lot on the corner of Columbia and Woodhull streets needed the clean up.

"It looked like hell," said Roger who works right next door. "It was rodent infested."

So [Louis] Formisano started cleaning.

Formisano said items in the lot ranged from refrigerators to rodents.

"I caught 13 possums," he said.

Despite the undeniable improvement, a neighbor called the city and reported Formisano for trespassing.

The Department of Housing and Development put a padlock on the gate and told Louis to hit the road and take his things with him.

His things? A riding mower and some Christmas decorations he used to decorate the lot each year.

HPD accused him of cutting a city lock and using the lot as his own backyard, which Formisano denies.

Affordable housing disaster was a waste of time and money

From the Daily News:

A city program to convert deteriorating Brooklyn tenements into rehabbed affordable apartments failed big-time, with most of the buildings now abandoned and controlled by a convicted felon, a stunning new report has found.

The report by Public Advocate Letitia James, to be released Monday, found that after 13 years, 17 of the targeted 26 Crown Heights buildings remain a decrepit mess. Pigeons roost in doorways. Windows remain bricked over. Graffiti-scarred doors are boarded up. Squatters have moved in.

The current owner of these squalid eyesores, a for-profit entity called Heights Houses, is run by George Armstrong, a developer who participated in the biggest bribery scandal of the Bloomberg administration.

Armstrong pleaded guilty to bribery charges in October 2011, admitting that to win work with the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, he paid off top department official Wendell Walters. Walters is the highest-ranking member of the Bloomberg team convicted of corruption, and Armstrong’s involvement in that case has been public for more than four years.

Nevertheless, Housing Preservation and Development has yet to take any steps to cut off ties to Heights Houses, which continues to own 17 buildings meant for rehab, James’ report revealed.

All of this has occurred as the value of properties in the surrounding neighborhood has skyrocketed, buffeted by a wave of gentrification spreading east over the past decade across Brooklyn.

Vicki Been suggests you stop resisting development

From the Observer:

A top de Blasio housing wonk warned critics of the mayor’s ambitious affordable housing plan that the dream of stopping new construction altogether is hopeless and that only building apartments for the poorest New Yorkers is economically unfeasible.

“We have to shape development rather than just react to it. And too much of the discourse is about stopping development,” said Vicki Been, the commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “You don’t stop development in a city like New York. So our approach is, let’s work to shape it, to serve the interests of the neighborhoods across the city.”

With Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vision to build and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing encountering increasing criticism from some corners that it is insufficient, and might even accelerate gentrification in the outer boroughs, Ms. Been took the podium at New York Law School this morning to explain and defend the plan. Ms. Been argued that the city could use a toolkit of zoning, tax abatements and public financing to encourage the private market to accommodate more low-income people—but said efforts to stop the city’s shifting real estate landscape are futile.

Labor violations alleged at affordable housing projects

From the Observer:

Building trades union members and left-leaning community groups again blasted city-subsidized below-market housing development—protesting alleged labor violations by one of the subcontractors while touting a study reporting systemic wage theft in the city’s affordable housing industry.

Steelworkers and plumbers union members demonstrated alongside groups like New York Communities for Change outside a new 50-unit construction project today in the swiftly-gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, a development that—according to the architect’s website—will be 80 percent market rate and 20 percent affordable and receive financing from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The umbrella organization Real Affordability for All used the occasion to drop a report claiming subsidized developers, most belonging to the New York State Association for Affordable Housing trade group, and their contractors have underpaid workers some $19 million since 2011.

HPD ignores fire escape safety complaints

From NBC:

More than 2,000 complaints about fire escape safety were called in to 311 over the last year and a half, resulting in nearly 500 violations, an I-Team investigation has found. Many of those problems went months before being fixed.

Data from 311 shows it takes an average of three weeks for investigators to resolve safety complaints about fire escapes. For some residents, it can take months to get a response. Some complaints are quite serious, from blocked exits to missing slats. Rust is another common violation.

Crooked housing inspector heading to the pokey

Jefferson Seigel/Daily News

From the Daily News:

A crooked city housing inspector was sentenced to up to 7 1/2 years in prison Thursday after being found guilty of taking cash bribes in return for the dismissal of code violations.

Luis Soto, 52, a former inspector with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), was sentenced to 2 1/2/ to 7 1/2 years in prison for accepting bribes of up to $2,500 per property to remove housing code violations, prosecutors said.

Soto, of Staten Island, and Oliver Ortiz, 51, received more than $41,000 in bribes in total, prosecutors said.

Squeaky wheel in Brooklyn gets DOB attention

From Brooklyn Daily:

The Department of Buildings has at last stepped up enforcement against illegally converted homes in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, residents say. Locals have long battled the practice of dicing one-and two-family homes into multi-family apartments without city permits and contrary to building codes — now residents and the city are advancing the line of scrimmage, according to local leaders.

“We seem to be making some progress,” said Bob Cassara, who heads the Brooklyn Housing Preservation Alliance. “Out of the last four or five complaints, we’ve gotten four stop-work orders.”

The alliance filed the complaints less than a month ago, and the quick turnaround suggests that the buildings department is starting to take the issue more seriously, he said.

Another civic leader echoed the sentiment, crediting the city’s swift response to complaints.

“You would hardly ever hear about a stop-work order being issued before — now it’s constant,” said Fran Vella-Marrone, who heads the Dyker Heights Civic Association. “That’s because we have been diligent in reporting them, and they’re being good about getting out there as soon as they can.”

The Brooklyn Housing Preservation Alliance and the Dyker Heights Civic Association held a joint meeting with the Department of Buildings and the fire department in March that drew hundreds of concerned residents. During the town hall, pols promised legislation to increase penalties for shady landlords, and buildings department honchos pledged more resources to Southern Brooklyn and announced a task force to meet with concerned citizens.

The legislation is still pending, but in the meantime, the task force is working, Cassara said.

“The big difference is that we have our community task force going with the DOB, fire department, building marshals, and [the Department of Housing Preservation and Developmen­t],” he said.

Indeed, overall enforcement appears to be up in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights this year, according to city data.

Astoria landlord accused of tenant harassment

From the Queens Courier:

Some residents of one rent-stabilized Astoria apartment building say they are tired of having to fight for what should be their basic rights as tenants.

Sally Aponte has been living at 28-28 35th St. since 1995 and said she started having issues with the building’s landlord, Peter Hiotis of P & T Management CO LLC, when it came to getting repairs completed within her apartment.

At first, Aponte decided to verbally ask her landlord for help with regard to these repairs, such as fixing a kitchen stove or repairing broken bathroom tiles, but after receiving what she calls “patchwork repairs,” she decided to finally file a formal complaint to 311 in 2007.

“He tends to always blame the tenants whenever you ask for repairs and I think he uses that to discourage you to ask for repairs,” Aponte said.

During this time, an attorney for the landlord also sent Aponte a letter advising her that if she made any further complaints, Hiotis would have to pursue eviction because she was allegedly violating the “rent stabilization code.”

Aponte added that the stove was fixed because Hiotis was fined by the FDNY but the rest of the problems in her home remained ignored until an inspector from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) went to the home.

The inspector found nine violations within the home, such as exposed and sparking electrical wiring, defective and broken plastered surfaces on walls and ceilings, and a defective smoke detector.

And although some of the repairs have since been completed, albeit improperly, Aponte is facing eviction.

According to court documents, Aponte is facing eviction because she is being accused of withholding rent, harassing other tenants, and defacing vehicles of her landlord and other tenants. However, Aponte says she has evidence proving all those accusations as false and believes the eviction comes as a form of retaliation for reporting past and present neglected repairs.