Q&A
HPD discusses agency vacancies and hiring progress
2:02:15
·
176 sec
Council Member Sanchez inquires about vacancies in key HPD programs, and agency officials provide details on their staffing levels and recent hiring efforts. The discussion highlights the progress made in filling positions and the ongoing challenges in certain areas.
- HPD has significantly reduced its overall vacancy rate from 16% to 8% over the past year
- The agency has made substantial progress in hiring inspectors, reducing vacancies by about 60% in that area
- HPD officials emphasize their continued efforts to recruit and fill remaining vacancies, including partnerships with council members and borough presidents for job fairs
Pierina Ana Sanchez
2:02:15
Thank you.
2:02:15
And I just want to highlight in particular that some of the vacancies that remain in the agency.
2:02:20
And again, kudos for for how much work the agency has done and how much success that you've had in hiring.
2:02:27
But many of the vacancies that remain are in programs that are designed to help tenants.
2:02:31
So for for instance, 9 positions in the AEP, program 5 positions at 7a, And then additionally, while there are 93 active staff in the housing litigation division, there are also some vacancies, how much more capacity would that add to the agency?
2:02:48
Filling this.
Adolfo Carrión Jr.
2:02:49
Do you wanna take that?
Gardea Caphart
2:02:51
So, yeah, so regarding the the vacancy numbers, we have to look into the breakdown that you to compare what our internal numbers are.
2:02:58
But just specifically for the enforcement, the office of of enforcement, our budgeted headcount for that office is 1052 total and we have 969 people owned on board with about 83 vacant overall, but we have to get back to you in terms of a drawdown number for issue of the areas, but specifically for our inspectors because as the deputy commissioner mentioned, we don't have our our headcount broken down as you have.
2:03:29
But the inspectors, we have a total of a a budget ahead count of about 445 inspectors.
2:03:35
That's between a few inspectors and supervisors.
2:03:38
And we have a about 59 vacancies right now and want to add that, that's a significant increase from where we were about a year ago in terms of our in specter headcount and vacancy rate.
2:03:49
Our vacancy rate was caught by about 60% in that area.
2:03:53
So that's something we continue to work hard to ensure sure that we're bringing more more staff in that area.
Pierina Ana Sanchez
2:03:59
Yep.
2:03:59
I I wanna see more selfies of the of 1st deputy commissioner.
2:04:03
Classes.
Adolfo Carrión Jr.
2:04:04
And chair, you know, we we we we've done an aggressive yeah.
2:04:09
I can't speak for the cell fees, but we've done an aggressive recruiting campaign.
2:04:15
And many of the in many of the districts around the city, I believe, in 16, 16 of the members to avail themselves of partnering with us to to do recruitment or more maybe, and we also have partnered with the borough presidents to do job fair days.
2:04:36
These are good solid jobs.
2:04:37
I encourage members to you know, work with us to help us recruit more good New Yorkers to do this work.
Gardea Caphart
2:04:43
Yeah.
2:04:43
And I'll just like to add to that counsel member that just aside from enforcement just overall, the agency overall.
2:04:50
If you compared to where we're around this time last year, to where we are now, we cut out vacancies in half.
2:04:54
We were over 16% vacancy rate overall, and now we're about 8%.
2:04:59
So thanks to all partners that decays with all the different hiring halls that we had.
2:05:02
And as the commissioner said, the job fairs, And the team, I just work hard to go out and recruit and bring people on, and we'll continue to make every effort to fill remaining vacancies.