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Q&A
Council Member Salaam questions HPD on code enforcement and legal services in Harlem
2:02:57
·
3 min
Council Member Yusef Salaam inquires about code enforcement, repairs, and legal services for tenants in Harlem. Acting Commissioner Ahmed Tigani responds, explaining HPD's citywide approach to code enforcement, litigation efforts, and partnerships for tenant protection.
- HPD does not have geography-based budgets for code enforcement but can provide data on violations and response rates for specific areas.
- The department has increased the number of violations corrected through litigation and collected more in settlements and judgments.
- HPD partners with DSS and the Office of Civil Justice for legal assistance and has expanded the Partners in Preservation Program to work with tenants and community organizations.
Yusef Salaam
2:02:57
Thank you.
2:02:57
And I'll try to be quick on these two.
2:02:59
One is court enforcement and repairs in Harlem, and the other is dealing with legal services and tenant harassment in Harlem.
2:03:08
So with code enforcement, the preservation code enforcement and emergency repair budgeting seeing mixed funding trends, can HPD break down how much is being specifically allocated for code enforcement in Northern Manhattan, specifically Harlem?
2:03:21
How are you prioritizing enforcement and repairs in buildings where landlords neglect conditions that disproportionately harm our constituents?
2:03:31
And for legal services, the council called for $2,200,000 to expand HPD's litigation team to protect tenants from harassment and illegal eviction evictions.
2:03:44
Yet the executive plan does not include this legislation.
2:03:48
What is HPD's plan to expand legal services and protections for Harlem's tenants who are facing rising harassment amid gentrification?
2:04:27
Is possible to I mean if it's a collection, can there be a zeroing in on that so that we can see exactly how different districts are being
Ahmed Tigani
2:03:57
So council member, we don't have those numbers broken down specifically for Harlem.
2:04:03
We can give you our overall numbers for code enforcement.
2:04:07
Again, our approach is a citywide approach and it's designed that way so that if Harlem sees an uptick in complaints, the funding goes in that way.
2:04:16
But if Corona Queen sees an uptick, we're able to move that way.
2:04:20
We don't have geography based budgets for codes enforcement.
2:04:25
But we're happy to provide those numbers now.
2:04:37
What we can do I think rather than the budget side, we can look at violations, response rates, work that we're doing in any community districts or however geographically you'd like to define it.
2:04:49
That is the work that's being funded and then you'll see a demonstration of what we're doing to respond to constituent complaints and what the outcomes are.
2:04:58
Okay.
2:04:59
Well we can follow-up with that with you sir.
2:05:03
On the litigation side, so there are probably two ways to talk about this.
2:05:08
From the housing litigation side, we have talked about the fact that we have held steady in that staffing team.
2:05:16
We continue to look to fill vacant roles, but we've increased the number compared to this time last year, the number of violations corrected through litigation, over 52,000.
2:05:28
That's an increase.
2:05:29
We have less cases initiated by us, but we've increased the number of cases we're involved in through tenant initiated cases, and we've collected more money in settlements and judgments, dollars 5,700,000.0.
2:05:43
Separate and apart from our litigation work, we have the Anti Harassment Unit that has done has had an increase in the number of proactive building visits, initiated litigations with buildings, and collected civil penalties.
2:05:56
And on the legal assistance work, we partnered with DSS and their Office of Civil Justice.
2:06:01
And I think through City of Yes and other ways, they've been restored dollars.
2:06:06
So our enforcement team does work with DSS and the Office of Civil Justice, and I'll just also use this as opportunity to talk about the Partners in Preservation Program, which again was also expanded through the City of Yes, which is government not doing it alone, doing it with people on the ground, where it's us, legal aid, CBOs in about six different areas of the city able to work with tenants, identify issues, help organize tenant associations, really try and build out that capacity that gets us to things like better enforcement or litigation to get changes.