The latest numbers are in, and they are not good. By almost every measure, basic maintenance of New York City’s housing is spiraling downward.  

In response, the City needs to be more diligent about enforcing its building codes and to get tough on landlords who flout them. In our recent report Pathways to Social Housing in New York, co-authored with Celeste Hornbach of the New York City Comptroller’s Office and Jacob Udell of University Neighborhood Housing Program, we spell out some of the ways to do that.

First, though, New Yorkers have to face up to just how bad this problem has become.

Almost all the markers of maintenance deficiencies tracked in the triennial Housing and Vacancy Survey, last conducted in 2021 for New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), have gotten worse. For example: 

• Some 24 percent of New York City buildings had rodent infestations in 2021;

• More than one in six apartments had leaks and 17 percent had cracks in ceilings or floors;

• Perhaps relatedly, 16 percent needed more heat in the winter and 10 percent saw heat shut off in the winter, which can lead to dangerous reliance on space heaters or open ovens; and

• Roughly 16 percent of buildings with elevators had elevator breakdowns. 

The most recent Mayor’s Management Report also states that Fiscal Year 2022 saw a record 583,230 housing complaints, including (another record) 362,180 emergency complaints. The number of heat and hot water and lead paint complaints (131,579 and 39,787, respectively) were higher than any previous year reported. 

Meanwhile, the percentage of Housing Code violations corrected either by the owner or by HPD declined.

We need to turn these numbers around – immediately. Here are two good ways to start. 

First: Increase civil and financial penalties for Housing Code violations.

New York City has the most robust code enforcement system, and the steepest penalties for violating it, in the state. City agencies tasked with enforcement can levy and collect fines either through administrative proceedings or by suing landlords. 

However, the reality is that large portions of any resulting fines and penalties sit unpaid for years, or are forgiven in exchange for agreements that the repairs be made over time. 

As of the end of 2020, in each of New York City’s five boroughs, between 65 percent and 85 percent of open Housing Code violations in rent-stabilized buildings had remained unresolved for a year or more. That translated into over 550,000 Housing Code violations that tenants had to live with over the course of 2020. 

Tenants also often find that reporting poor conditions does not lead to meaningful building improvements. Even when repairs are made, they are often done on the surface level, leaving underlying problems to fester. This cycle, where tenants continually file complaints about issues that are never truly resolved, is demoralizing. Tenants are forced to adjust to unsafe living conditions and lose hope in the potential for collective change. The lack of serious financial consequences undermines the overall code enforcement system.

The City must escalate enforcement against landlords who repeatedly fail to make repairs, and push to recover 100 percent of levied fines and penalties, including the costs of repairs under proactive enforcement programs. For landlords who refuse to pay, public agencies must establish and proactively implement a transparent process to either force collection or initiate municipal foreclosure, and to transfer foreclosed properties to social housing entities, such as the city’s growing network of community land trusts.

Second, expand proactive enforcement.

The City already has several proactive enforcement programs. These include the Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP), Certificate of No Harassment (CONH), Proactive Preservation Initiative (PPI), and the Emergency Repair Program (ERP). These efforts either trigger active monitoring of a building’s conditions or allow the City to directly make repairs in long-decrepit buildings, at the owners’ expense. 

While these programs are a start, they do not go nearly far enough. New York City has more than two million renter households. Yet CONH covers only around 1,100 rental properties; the AEP program targets only 250 properties annually. While AEP is an effective enforcement mechanism that should be expanded to additional buildings each year, a significant percentage of buildings remain in the program year after year, indicating that the City lacks an escalation strategy for landlords refusing to comply with increased enforcement. And while the ERP program is used more frequently, it often leads to shoddy and surface-level repairs.

Throughout 2019, New York City spent close to $48 million across more than 10,000 properties to correct dangerous issues in rental buildings through proactive enforcement programs. By the end of 2020, one data source estimated that landlords had paid back less than $8 million of those costs. 

In order to compel landlords to reinvest in their properties, the government should make better use of its proactive tools. Code enforcement agencies must implement clear timelines for the resolution of violations and transparent processes by which proactive enforcement is triggered, rather than leaving the decision-making to individual code inspectors. 

Further, proactive enforcement must be accompanied by heavier financial penalties, which create points of leverage to convert long-neglected and distressed properties into social housing. And most importantly, agencies proactively enforcing housing codes must work collaboratively with tenants and community groups, who have intimate knowledge of the history of building neglect and of past efforts to force owners to behave responsibly. When landlords continually refuse to keep their buildings in habitable conditions, these enforcement agencies must rely on tenants to drive escalation strategies, up to and including transfer of ownership or conversion to social housing.

As we stressed in recent testimony to the City Council Committee on Housing, strong code enforcement can make housing less attractive to investors seeking lucrative short-term returns. That’s key to reducing the kind of speculative and predatory real estate activity often predicated on tenants living in decrepit conditions. 

In December, Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a “moonshot” program to build half a million new units of housing over the next decade.  But our housing crisis is about quality as well as quantity. When it comes to maintaining our existing housing stock, it’s time for the City to “get stuff done.”

Samuel Stein and Oksana Mironova are housing policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York.

Photo by: Elyaquim Mosheh.