| Releases & Statements
New York City Public Advocate Betsy
Gotbaum today released a report detailing the failure by the City’s
Department of Homeless Services (DHS) to adequately house homeless
families. The report, titled Subsidy Shame: City Pays Landlords
for Hazardous Housing, reveals that DHS houses families in buildings
with serious code violations without ensuring that necessary repairs
have been made.
The report finds that among buildings
recently registered in the program, nearly 40 percent had maintenance
code violations in the past year, and 20 percent had over 25 violations
each in the past year. Thirty-one percent of the buildings had
Class C violations including: rodents, lead-based paint, lack
of heat, hot water, and electricity. The most egregious offenders
had hundreds of violations, including dozens of Class C violations.
“Families are being moved into
housings units where the landlords maintain deplorable conditions.
This is disgraceful, especially because of the amount of Class
C violations such as lead paint in homes with toddlers,”
said Gotbaum. She also blasted DHS for providing landlords with
an assistance unit to call upon when they have problems with tenants,
but failing to provide any form of structured tenant assistance.
When I moved into my apartment, the
conditions were really awful. There was no stove and no refrigerator,
so I couldn't cook food for myself and my son in what was supposed
to be our new home. With pealing paint, exposed electrical wiring,
no fire detector and no locks on the doors to the building or
the fire escape window in my apartment, I really didn't feel that
we were safe,” said Angela Ortega, a Crown Heights tenant
and mother of a three-year old son.
Housing homeless families
is now conducted primarily through a rental assistance program
known as Housing Stability Plus (HSP), which has drawn frequent
criticism from Gotbaum since taking effect in December 2004. According
to Gotbaum’s latest report, DHS allows families to move
into buildings with dangerous and hazardous conditions because
of a lack of an adequate screening process for prospective units.
"The declining value of HSP means
that unscrupulous landlords are often the ones most likely to
accept it, with the intention of getting a quick cash infusion
and then evicting the family after they cannot continue to pay
the rent. By subsidizing some of the city's worst property owners,
it undermines the ability of low-income building residents to
organize and improve conditions," said David Greenberg, Policy
Director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development,
a coalition of 90 neighborhood housing groups.
“Landlords who fail to keep their units safe see HSP as
an easy way to collect taxpayer money, especially if DHS is allowing
into the program units with serious building code violations as
documented by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development
(HPD),” said Gotbaum. DHS claims to screen buildings by
reviewing HPD issued violations, but allows into the program buildings
with hundreds of violations. Additionally, DHS does not re-inspect
apartments where they have deemed repairs are necessary. The City
has a blighted record in the area of paying rent to landlords
known for maintaining substandard housing conditions. A May 2003
report by Gotbaum exposed slum-like conditions in the City-funded
scatter-site shelter program.
“These landlords have no reason
to repair the buildings if the city keeps writing checks for them
to maintain slum-like conditions. There needs to be accountability
here,” said Gotbaum, citing an audit by the City Comptroller’s
office which found that over a three-year period almost one-third
of building owners falsely certified code corrections following
HPD inspection.
Gotbaum’s report makes several
recommendations to address this situation, including:
• Before allowing an individual
or family to move into an apartment with an HSP voucher, DHS should
ensure that the building meets the requirements of the City’s
housing maintenance code.
• Buildings found to have significant
housing maintenance code violations issued by HPD should be screened
out of the HSP program.
• If HSP is to be the primary
path out of shelter for homeless New Yorkers, as the City expects,
the program must be made attractive to landlords who can provide
safe, decent housing.
“Apartments should pass inspection
before anyone moves in. That is currently not happening,”
added Gotbaum.
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