Distressed Dwellings

City Orders Owners To Fix Bad Buildings

For having conditions that could be hazardous to the health of its residents, a number of buildings in Bushwick, Ridgewood, Ozone Park and Corona have been marked for emergency repairs and upgrades by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in its 2012 Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP).

Approximately 200 buildings across the city are on the list released on Tuesday, Feb. 14, for having a combined total of more than 26,000 open housing code violations, including over 4,500 “class C” violations, which are deemed to be the most immediately hazardous.

Coordinated by the Department of Housing Preservation and Develop- ment (HPD), the initiative allows the agency to perform renovations on a number of buildings annually which have multiple serious housing code violations found by inspectors. Once the repairs are made, the city bills the property owner for the work and conducts regular inspections to make sure that each site remains up to code.

The HPD has notified all landlords on the list of the problems found by inspectors and informed them that comprehensive repairs are needed to correct the conditions. If the repairs are not initiated in a timely manner, HPD will review the building and hire a contractor at the landlord’s expense to make all necessary improvements.

“AEP has proven to be an effective way to corral these bad buildings and deal with them in a comprehensive manner,” said HPD Commissioner Mathew M. Wambua. “Since the new amendments to AEP were adopted last year, we’ve seen a rise in the rate at which buildings are discharged from the program, as well as a substantial uptick in the repayment of emergency and other repair costs.”

First enacted by city law in 2007, the AEP has been modified in recent years to include multi-family buildings with 20 or more units. The structures are selected using updated criteria approved by the City Council and Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year.

In all, the owners of the 200 buildings on theAEP list owe the city more than $1.3 million in charges for emergency repairs. Additionally, the HPD’s Housing Litigation Division has also launched 410 housing court cases against the owners of 145 of the buildings seeking access warrants to make repairs on the property or to ad- dress other violations such as failing to provide adequate heat and hot water to residents.

More than half of the buildings on this year’s AEP list are located in Brooklyn (107), while there were 30 structures located in Queens. One of the worst offenders was located in Bushwick: an eight-family building at 533 Knickerbocker Ave. has 315 open HPD violations, including a broken skylight, concealed water leaks in several apartments, defective parapet walls and a bulkhead on the roof, exposed wiring and mold growth in a fourth-floor unit and several defective windows and doors.

The program has proven effective in year’s past in improving the city’s housing stock, according to the HPD. Approximately 101 of the 200 buildings on the 2011 AEP list have been discharged after over 29,000 violations were corrected, Wambua noted.

Additionally, the city recovered more than $1.57 million from owners for emergency repairs and payment of outstanding fines and liens.

In order to discharged from the AEP, a building owner must demonstrate a legitimate effort to correct hazardous conditions and keep the building up to code. The owner must remediate all class C and heat and hot water violations, correct 80 percent of violations related to mold and vermin infestation and fix 80 percent of all remaining building code violations against a property.

Furthermore, the landlord must also make all necessary payments to the city for repairs and fines, provide the HPD with a valid property registration statement and submit a pest management plan to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the event of a future infestation.

The agency continually monitors all buildings which have made the AEP list after repairs are completed to ensure that the owners of the structures keep their dwellings up to code.

“It is unfortunate that some owners will only respond when punitive measures are brought to bear,” Wambua added. “There is no question that as much as a tenant must abide by the terms of the lease they sign, the landlord is required to ensure that the property in question is kept secure, safe and up to code-no ifs, ands or buts.”

Properties in the Times Newsweekly coverage area on the list include the following, ranked from highest to lowest based on their total number of open violations (noted in parenthesis after each address):

– an eight-unit building at 533 Knickerbocker Ave. in Bushwick (315);

– a 16-unit building at 38 Cooper St. in Bushwick (282);

– a 24-unit building at 28-02 44th St. in Astoria (200);

– a six-unit building at 1361 Greene Ave. in Bushwick (165);

– a five-unit building at 697 Evergreen Ave. in Bushwick (156);

– a six-unit building at 20 Menahan St. in Bushwick (145);

– an eight-unit building at 729 Knickerbocker Ave. in Bushwick (124);

– a four-unit building at 1306 Myrtle Ave. in Bushwick (124);

– a four-unit building at 33-32 102nd St. in Corona (124);

– a six-unit building at 1673 Palmetto St. in Ridgewood, Queens (118);

– a three-unit building at 180 Schaefer St. in Bushwick (117);

– a six-unit building at 73 Wilson Ave. in Bushwick (117);