New York, NY – City to Seek Broader Power Over Buildings

New York, NY – The City wants to strengthen its hand against recalcitrant landlords by giving itself broad new powers to overhaul entire building systems — like heating, electrical or plumbing — in long-troubled properties, and to force landlords to pay for the work.

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.
The bill, which needs to be approved by the Council and the mayor, and would take five months to be put into effect if passed, would significantly expand the city’s power.

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. [NY Times]