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Q&A
HPD's litigation team and enforcement capacity
1:12:14
·
3 min
Council Member Farah N. Louis inquires about HPD's litigation team and enforcement capacity, given that the requested budget increase was not included. Commissioner Ahmed Tigani responds by detailing the department's current enforcement activities and achievements.
- HPD has corrected over 52,000 violations through housing litigation work
- The department has initiated about 2,200 cases and collected $5.7 million in settlements and judgments
- HPD is working on making attorney positions more attractive and recruiting experienced attorneys
Farah N. Louis
1:12:14
Your team has been very helpful with some of the properties in my district 1111 Ocean Avenue, 2 Thousand 5 Hundred Bedford, 3 Thousand 9 Hundred Kings Highway, so I wanted to ask three quick questions regarding provisions for addressing repairs.
1:12:28
With the council's FY twenty six executive budget request for 2,200,000.0 to enhance HPD's litigation team, not included.
1:12:37
How does HPD plan to continue enforcement of housing agreements and service implementation when legal intervention is required?
1:12:46
Does HPD have sufficient staff and legal resources to address serial non compliance and what will HPD's enforcement capacity look like in FY twenty six compared to FY twenty five in terms of legal action, physical repairs and inspection volume?
Ahmed Tigani
1:13:04
I'm happy to answer those questions and also Daniel and your team has been great partners on those buildings of course.
1:13:10
Just to stress on the housing litigation part, you know our staffing has held stable since the last time we've come before the prelim and even beyond that we have seen just through our housing litigation work over 52,000 violations corrected.
1:13:30
We have seen, we have initiated about 21, a little 2,200 cases which is not among our highest, but we've also been more involved in tenant activated cases or initiated cases we take just as seriously.
1:13:46
So and then been able to collect about 5,700,000.0 in settlements and judgments which includes everything from violations to monitoring at that point.
1:13:56
So on the housing litigation front we do have a strong team.
1:14:00
We're working with OMB and DCAS.
1:14:02
DCAS because some of the staffing requirements or we were able to get since attorneys are hard to recruit titles, were able to get some help in making our positions more attractive over time.
1:14:15
We have been holding outreach to certain law schools who have alumni networks because we're looking for experienced attorneys to come into the fold and continuing that push.
1:14:27
But I do think that we're working very aggressively on that front.
1:14:31
Additionally it's not the only resource we have around protecting tenants.
1:14:35
We have our anti harassment unit.
1:14:37
And so in fiscal year twenty five through March 31 we have seen an increase, a 21% increase in our proactive building visits when compared to fiscal year twenty four.
1:14:49
It's seven twenty proactive building visits.
1:14:51
22 buildings initiated litigation.
1:14:54
We've collected about $978,400 in civil penalties.
1:15:00
You know, our inspector force continues to be something that we rebuild.
1:15:05
We have about three seventy active inspectors and supervisors, and we hope to graduate another class this summer.
1:15:12
And people know my favorite thing is to take a selfie with every new class that comes in because that's the face and heart of our agency.