Slumlords getting away with it

From the Daily News:

Manhattan’s worst deadbeat landlords force city hardhats to repair their crumbling apartment buildings on the taxpayer dime.

Among their ranks is Luis Restrepo, the head officer of 593 Riverside Associates, which has racked up a six-figure tab with the city, putting the public on the hook for big-ticket fixes in his three Harlem buildings.

Bills for city-sanctioned repairs performed at 590-593 Riverside Dr. surpassed $108,000, records showed, making it Manhattan’s costliest building.

Restrepo and his management team were also slapped with more than $54,000 worth of city-sanctioned repairs in 49 St. Nicholas Terrace, and nearly $26,000 for 608 W. 139th St.

“We almost finished all the repairs,” Restrepo told the Daily News, when asked about the problems on Thursday. Asked to explain his six-figure repair bill, he replied: “Let me think about it.”

The building is one of 19 Manhattan residences — all north of 96th St. — tapped by the city as part of the Alternative Enforcement Program, which pressures slumlords to quickly their decaying properties or ultimately risk losing them.

Once a building goes into the program, it falls under the scrutiny of dedicated city inspectors who have beefed-up authority to order large-scale repairs. To get their property released, landlords are required to meet stringent benchmarks.

Expand the slumlord list!

From Crain's:

Housing advocates are quite happy with a city program that forces landlords of dilapidated residential buildings to pay for repairs, but they are protesting nonetheless, claiming that it's too small.

Building owners, for their part, say the program is already effective at the current level of enforcement, and the city's housing agency says advocates are off-base.

The immigrant-rights nonprofit Make the Road plans to march Wednesday in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to urge the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to expand its five-year-old Alternative Enforcement Program to better preserve the city's housing stock and protect tenants.

"It is a good idea for the city to make sure that landlords are making necessary repairs in the buildings with the worst conditions in New York City," said Gladys Puglla, a tenant in Bushwick and a member of Make the Road. "The Alternative Enforcement Program should be expanded to benefit more tenants."

Under AEP, the city selects 200 of the most poorly maintained residential buildings a year and notifies their landlords that wide-scale repairs are needed. If a landlord then fails to make them, HPD may have the work done and recoup the cost from him.

Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg created the program, AEP has led to the correction of more than 67,000 hazardous violations in 800 neglected buildings, Make the Road says in a report it plans to release tomorrow. But housing advocates say it's not enough, especially in neighborhoods like Bushwick where blighted buildings go unfixed despite rapid gentrification around them.

HPD says the group's findings are flawed.