REMARKS
Pierina Ana Sanchez on Tenant Displacement and Agency Coordination Issues
2:07:01
·
97 sec
Council Member Pierina Ana Sanchez highlights concerns and issues related to tenant displacement and the lack of coordination among NYC agencies.
- Acknowledges New York City as a leader in distress support, but identifies room for improvement in handling tenant displacement.
- Points out the lack of accessible information from agencies to tenants regarding the status of their buildings and displacement timelines.
- Describes tenant hardships due to being placed in distant hotels or shelters, lack of cooking facilities, and the accumulating costs of displacement.
- Raises concerns over the unclear responsibility among agencies for ensuring building security against looting and theft during tenant displacement.
Pierina Ana Sanchez
2:07:01
I mentioned some of this the top with my with my testimony.
2:07:05
But there are a lot of issues that have become clear to me and to to my colleagues as you've heard and I wanna highlight them here to make sure that we can have a broader conversation.
2:07:16
Like I said, I certainly acknowledge New York City is a leader in providing for New Yorkers in times of distress.
2:07:24
Other cities don't have programs like the ones that we do, but that doesn't mean that we can't do it in in a better way for tenants.
2:07:31
So there there's been a lot of concerns around the lack of communication from the agencies.
2:07:36
There's a lot of ongoing work.
2:07:38
Coordination between the agencies, emergency management, HPD, DOB.
2:07:43
But that information is not always accessible to to the tenants regarding what is the status of their building when they will be able to go back anytime estimates.
2:07:52
And then just with respect to the experience of being displaced.
2:07:56
You know, there had been a lot of concerns, and these are ongoing about placements in hotels that are far or shelters that are far.
2:08:03
Having access to cooking equipment, not and, you know, the the costs of being displaced piling up because you have to, you know, provide you have to purchase food and you're not able to cook it.
2:08:18
There are issues around Today, which agency is sort of responsible or provides any oversight over ensuring that a property owner provides security for a building so that there's no looting and and theft that occurs of of tenants' properties.