Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. New York City Council hearing from the committee on housing and buildings. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone to please silence their electronic devices and at no point is anyone to approach the deis. Additionally, no one is to approach the witness table unless invited to testify. If you have not signed up to testify and would like to, you can fill out a slip located on the table in the hallway outside with the sergeant-at-arms chair. We're ready to begin. >> Thank you, Sergeants, and good morning. Welcome to the March 24th hearing on the of the committee, New York City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings. Today's hearing covers the fiscal 2027 preliminary budget for two critical agencies, the Department of Buildings and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. I am Council Member Bedina Sanchez, chair of the committee. On behalf of the council, I welcome members of the public and the Mandani administration who are joining us here today. Commissioner, first congratulations. Glad to be working with you in this capacity kind of again. Um, so let me let me begin uh with my framing remarks. Um, starting with a simple but urgent truth. New York City, as we all know, is in a housing crisis, and it's hitting low-income New Yorkers the hardest. In my district and across the city, housing is not abstract. Your conditions are, "Will the heat work? Will the ceiling cave in today? Will I be able to stay in my home?" What we do about this crisis must remain multifaceted. We must build more housing, hopefully faster. We must preserve what we have, and we must enforce the laws that we have passed. This council took a major step forward uh major step forward last year through zoning reforms that will allow a little more housing in every neighborhood paired with five billion dollars in housing and infrastructure investment. So one key question I will ask today is where are we on implementation? Turning to the preliminary budget, the department of buildings fiscal 2027 budget is 317.7 million and HPD's proposed fiscal 2027 budget is 1.08 08 building billion buildings billion including NICHA on the capital side HPD's fiscal 26 to30 capital plan totals in 12.16 billion plus 2.27 billion in section 8 conversion pass through funding for a total of 14.65 billion these are significant investments and this committee is going to be focused on the outcomes for HPD uh preservation enforcement and systems in in in distress. I want to focus on the way that that agency, although they're not here right now, sent uh sits at the center of the crisis. The prelim preliminary mayor's management report shows that h housing violations are rising, emergency repairs remain elevated with emergency interventions increasing, and distress in our housing stock is not shrinking. I'm glad to work with the administration as they sharpen tools to go after the worst actors as they did a few weeks ago, announced at 919 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx. and as they are constructively engaging in discussions around overhauling the city's power of municipal foreclosures for buildings in distress. My intro 657. However, with respect to the general financial and operational health of buildings across the city, we know that collections rent collections are down, costs are up, and while we go after the worst of the worst actors, we want to talk about what supports HPD is providing to owners who do want to do the right thing but are financially strained. We want to talk about stabilizing the entire housing ecosystem. In terms of asset management, HPD is also a steward of a great number of buildings, Malama properties, article 11 properties, other rent, other regulated affordable housing portfolios. So, we want to talk about how HPD is monitoring compliance under its regulatory agreements and what is the plan for aging housing buildings that have received substantial public support but are still in disrepair. And lastly, on the HPD front, with respect to equity and home ownership, another concern that we cannot ignore is that New York City is becoming less diverse. Black New Yorkers are leaving the city in record numbers. And what is HPD doing to protect and expand home ownership in communities of color. How are we ensuring that our housing policies are not accelerating displacement? Turning to the Department of Buildings, Department of Buildings is responsible for the structural integrity of over 1 million buildings and tens of thousands of construction sites across the city. The per the mayor's preliminary management report shows that plan review timelines are increasing means delays on the construction front. Enforcement activity remains high, but there is an outstanding unpaid fine total of $310 million uncollected by the city of New York just from the Department of Buildings. At the same time, we are hearing concerns from the field. Buildings that were newly constructed, relatively newly constructed are showing signs of failure and workforce constraints are affecting the our construction pipelines. So I will be asking where are we seeing the most acute labor shortages? Electricians plumbers general contractors. And what is buildings doing to address these shortages? With respect to local law 97, Department of Buildings is also implementing that local law, one of the most ambitious climate laws in the country. With the first compliance deadlines now here, we ask for clarity on how many buildings are in compliance, what enforcement is looking like, and how the department is supporting building owners in meeting requirements. I'll close with the facts. We know what the housing crisis look like looks like. We see it in rising violations, struggling buildings, and families at at the brink of displacement. The question that we have is whether our agencies are equipped for success. Because at the end, this is about whether New Yorkers can live in safe, stable, and dignified homes. I look forward to today's discussion with the administration and the public. Following DOB's testimony this morning, we will hear from HPD at approximately 1:30 p.m. and public testimony thereafter. Before we begin, I'd like to thank the finance staff. Financial analyst Carla Naranho, assistant director Daniel Kroo, deputy director Chima Oucher, and Percy Sutton, the fellow fellow Katherine Mahan, sorry I'm saying that wrong. Mahan for their work on this hearing as well as legislative committee staff Austin Malone, Billy E, Jose Kund, Derk Spencer, Ree Hiro, Noah Slober, and Muhammad Shadid. Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my team, Chief of Staff Maria Valobos, Deputy Chiefs Ben Ratner and Kim Gasos, Gerard Fernandez, Delen Campos, Maria Jose Mises, Brenda Monise, and Stephanie Kuzi. I would now like to acknowledge that we're joined by Council Member Feliz on Zoom, Council Member Joseph and Maloney here in person, and public advocate Williams. And before we turn to uh administration testimony, we're going to allow a few remarks from our public advocate. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Morning everyone. As mentioned, my name is Jamani Williams, public advocate of the city of New York. I want to thank Chair Sanchez as well as the members of the Committee on Housing and Buildings for holding this hearing today and allowing me the opportunity to uh give testimony uh as well. Congratulations to uh the the new uh commissioner as well. Uh like much of us like much of the US, New York City faces a deeply concerning housing affordability crisis coming off the co9 pandemic which saw the sunsetting of the eviction moratorum and a funding cliff for emergency rental assistance. Our housing agencies facing high attrition rates with the depart of the department of housing preservation development or HPD seeking a peak of almost 300 job separation in 2022. Similarly, the Department of Buildings or DOB saw a nutrition peak of 223 during the same year. With this in mind, I am concerned by some of the cuts in the proposed FY27 preliminary budget. While DOB sees very little change with a decrease of $18 million from the modified FY26 budget, HP's expense funding sees a $500 million decrease from the FY26 budget as modified and a $395 million budget reduction. I'm sorry, million dollar budget reduction from the FY26 budget is adopted. While we understand that the FA city faces a real budget crisis, we must grapple with the reality of what these cuts entail, especially as we grapple with the uncertainty of federal funds. I look forward to hearing from the HPD from HPD uh where the reduction comes from and how it will affect the work of the agency. In the same breath, as we consider the budget crisis left to us by the previous administration, we have to look at city fs, the city fighting homelessness and eviction prevention supplement. This rental assistance program has been a critical tool in keeping families housed and preventing evictions. But over the past six years, cost of the program has risen five-fold since the initial $25 million investment in 2019. The mayor's $ 1.64 billion investment in the program has a slight increase from last year's 1.25 million. Yet, as advocates have cited, this number also falls short of the expanded eligibility cost passed by the city council in 2023. The underbudgeting of city fabs program by nearly $800 million under the Adams administration is the single largest contributor to 2.2 budget fall a shortfall uh the city faces. While I believe we must expand citys and move away from costly shelters, I also recognize that in the short term we have a budget that the city is legally obligated to balance. So I look forward to work with the mayor, city council and the com to balance these varying needs. Also remembering that housing is probably the largest expense that most households face. Finally, I want to recognize our partners on the federal level because without their advocacy, New York State and the city at large being a much worse fiscal state with the federal appropriations bill that recently passed funding section A vouchers. In dire times like this, it is critical that the city, state, and federal officials work toward uh and together to protect our communities and mitigate the harms being inflicted by the Trump administration. And the harm is not a byproduct. It is the intention. Uh I'm also hoping to hear from DB to make sure that we have the staffing needed uh for folks who are coming to DOB uh to do what they need either in their single family homes or uh building additional rental units. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. >> Thank you public advocate. I'll now turn it over to our council to administer the oath. >> Thank you chair. Please raise your right hand. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before the committee and to respond honestly to council questions? Thank you. You may begin when you're ready. There it goes. Technology. Wow. Good morning, Chair Sanchez, uh, public advocate Williams, esteemed members of the committee on housing and buildings. My name is Ahmed Tani, and I have the great pleasure to serve as the commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings. I'm joined today by Yagal Shamash, our first deputy commissioner, Gina Ugarte, deputy commissioner for finance, Guatino, our deputy commissioner for policy and legal affairs, and other incredible members of the department's leadership team behind me. We are pleased to be here to discuss the fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget as well as the department's performance and priority initiatives. This past Friday marked two months as commissioner and it has been a tremendous privilege to be back at the department after serving New Yorkers for five years at the department of housing preservation and development in various roles where we focused on delivering for New Yorkers by preserving and creating housing. While DLB's scope is wide, that work in this new capacity is still a responsibility I take seriously. As part of the housing and planning portfolio under Deputy Mayor Bozark, the department supports the construction sector, prepares for emergencies, serves communities that depend on our development and enforcement work, and partners with industries that deliver schools, grocery stores, and hospitals, just to name a few. But this shift reinforces our central role in preserving and creating housing at a moment of urgent need while still maintaining our comm our commitment across all of these work streams. In all of these areas, we will hold owners accountable for maintaining safe buildings and use every available tool when they fail to meet their legal obligations. At the same time, we are streamline we are streamlining processes to remove bottlenecks that delay development especially for affordable housing and are working closely with the mayor's office and partner agencies to advance the city's housing plan and key initiatives outlined by the mayor. While we are excited to be at the table on all things housing, central to our mission is the safety of those who live, visit, or work in New York City. We will continue to monitor the existing building stock for compliance to respond to complaints and emergencies and to make sure that construction sites are employing safe work practices and when possible using our data to effectively and efficiently identify issues before they arise. As I will discuss later in my testimony, we are moving forward with taking a proactive approach to building safety, which will complement our complaint-based strategies. Safety needs to be at the center of everything we do to maintain our buildings, whether we are discussing housing or hospital facilities and is key to making the pro the process of growing the city's physical footprint viable to support the needs of New Yorkers across the five burrows. While I may be at the helm of this great agency, none of what I discuss today would be possible without the talent and expertise of the 1,634 individuals that make up the department. I am blown away by the progress that this agency has made since I was here last and I would like to specifically recognize a few of my colleagues who are leading the charge on transforming the agency and keeping us safe. Olga Suto who has been with the agency for 13 years is our assistant commissioner for existing buildings compliance. In this role, Olga is key to keeping our building safe. Olga oversees a team dedicated to the structural integrity of the built environment, which includes overseeing the mired maintenance requirements building owners must comply with, including those that relate to facades, parking structures, and retaining walls, responding to crisises, tackling the issue of long-standing sidewalk sheds, and moving the agency forward by utilizing predictive enforcement to keep buildings safe. Tar Khalil, who has been with the agency for nine years, is our assistant commissioner for mechanical and plumbing inspections. Tark's team is dedicated to building systems, including elevators, boilers, and mechanical systems, which are building systems that we rely on and the people we serve rely on every day. They have been key to the implementation of local law 152 of 2016, which requires that a large portion of our building stock undergoes regular inspections of their gas piping systems, which has been a herculean effort. TAK takes a thoughtful approach to the regulations that govern their work and constantly finds ways to find efficiencies and to modernize. And on a mo and on a more somber note, I would like to take a moment to recognize Chief Richard Bower, who passed away last week. Chief Bower served the department with dedication for 18 years in various roles where they put safety first as they rose as he rose through their ranks, including as part of excavation, interior demolition, and construction uh safety engineering teams. Our condolences go out to their loved ones. These are just a few of the incredible people that keep the city safe and moving forward. At this time, I'd like to move on to discuss the budget that supports this important work. The fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget allocates approximately 214 million in expense funds to the department. Of this funding approximately 181 million, 85% is for personnel services, which supports 1,864 budgeted positions, and 33 million is for the other personnel services, which primarily supports contractual services, equipment, and supplies. This funding is critical to supporting the department's mandates and priorities. Of note, the department has has received 23 additional positions to support the implementation of local laws passed by the city council last year, which gives which gave the department additional enforcement tools to get sidewalk sheds down faster and 13 additional positions to increase staffing associated with conducting background checks for the trades the department licenses. These new positions will be funded by fees the department is introducing or increasing by rule. As of today, the department's budgeted headcount is 1,853 and our actual headcount as of January ending is 1,635. Our budget headcount includes additional staffing received in recent plans that includes positions to establish a proactive enforcement program to enforce local law 152 of 2016 which requires that buildings undergo periodic gas piping inspections and to support increased development activity which includes positions related to the city of Yes for housing opportunity and basement legalization initiatives. While we have 218 actual vacancies, we have 55 candidates in the hiring pipeline, which includes among them 41 inspectors and leaves us with 163 actual vacancies or a vacancy rate of around 9%. We are actively recruiting to fill these vacancies, including the positions we received in the preliminary budget to support priority initiatives such as reducing sidewalk sheds, uh, and looking forward to keeping you updated on those efforts. In fiscal year 2025, the last full fiscal year, approximately 275,000 construction jobs were filed with the department. And we issued approximately 169,000 initial and renewal construction permits combined, which is consistent with the activity we saw in the previous fiscal year. So far this fiscal year, we are seeing a slight increase in construction job filings and a slight decrease in permit issuance. As it relates to service levels, I will focus on the service levels concerning job filings submitted through DOB now, which represents about 95% of all our job filings. As we continue to transition to the DOB now system, on average for all job filings submitted through DOB now is taking the department about five days to complete its review, its first review, which is an increase over 3.5 days during the same time period last fiscal year. Of note here, during this time period, we received about 2,500 more resubmissions, including four more complex new building and demolition projects, which means the plans came back to us for review more than once. In about 650 additional instances, our customers opted to have us conduct a full plan examination over what can be considered shorter professional certified uh approach for their job filings. Combined, these factors account for the uptick in our service levels for plan examination. The wait time between a construction inspection request and an actual inspection which occurs after a construction project is completed by a contractor has remained at 4 days for construction inspection. has remained at about 9 days for an electrical inspection which is down from nearly 13 days uh from full fiscal year 2025 and increased about 2 to 6 days and has increased by about 2 to six days for a plumbing inspection. With respect to electrical inspections, it should be noted that there has been an increased demand for electrical inspections which could be attributed to the electrification projects uh that we are seeing come online. At the end of last year, the city council passed a law sponsored by the chair, local law 42 of 2026, which would allow for electrical inspections to be self-certified, which is allowed for other trades. This these changes will help improve service levels as it relates to electrical inspections as the demand for inspection from the department will decrease. Overall, there will be an increased demand for development inspections and a reduction in the use of overtime to support such inspections. The department reduced its overtime spending by 5.6 million since fiscal year 2026, which is a 60% reduction. We will continue to identify ways to not only support but also streamline development projects. We are investing in our most important resource, our people. We are working on establishing a plan examination training academy for the first time with a comprehensive curriculum and ongoing training on changes to the vast regulatory landscape we are charged with enforcing which will be similar to our existing inspector training academy. We are also looking to technology to help support these ideas. We continue to partner with the partnership fund for New York City on their buildings tech lab, a public private initiative to find, evaluate, and test innovative technology solutions that will support our work, including to make plan reviews, permitting, and inspections more efficient. We will soon be starting a pilot program with five companies which will come at no cost to the department and are in the process of identifying additional companies to work with in the near future. The department is appreciative of the partnership support with this effort and look forward to working with the companies that have been selected to incorporate innovative technologies into our work with the goal of working more efficiently. Finally, we're working closely with the mayor's office and our partner agencies on an inter agency task force, streamlining procedures to expedite equitable development speed to accelerate affordable housing production. The mayor's office will soon be releasing recommendations related to this effort. While the department's enforcement has largely been driven by complaints in the past, we continue to conduct proactive inspections at larger construction sites and began conducting proactive inspections of existing buildings last fiscal year. Work which was made possible by local law 74 of 2024, which was also sponsored by Chair Sanchez. It tasks the department with establishing establishing a proactive enforcement program. While our efforts were focused on recruiting to fill the 60 positions we received to support this program, which does include inspectors and plan examiners, data analysts and attorneys, we are we have now begun this work. Since we began conducting proactive inspections last March, we have conducted approximately 9,200 inspections that have resist that have resulted in the issuance of 7,000 summones, which includes following up in follow-up inspections, following the issuance of a class one summons until that summons is corrected and the inspections of potentially at risk buildings which are identified and assigned a risk score through our data analytics. Proactive inspections make up approximately 30% of the 1,90,000 enforcement inspections we conducted last fiscal year. From experience, we know that proactive inspections keep the public, including the construction workers on those sites safe. As it relates to construction sites, between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025, we continue to see a reduction in construction related injuries. With construction related injuries dropping by 42% from s from 625 to 363, we urge the industry to continue working safely and to ensure that workers are appropriately trained. We will soon be implementing a new local law, local law 10 of 2026, sponsored by council member Lee that will add to the existing site safety training program and require that workers receive training on mental health health awareness which will cover suicide prevention and substance awareness. We look forward to keeping you updated on this important work. As it relates to our complaint driven enforcement, we receive about a 100,000 311 complaints each year. The most serious complaints, which are those related to conditions that may present an immediate threat to the public, are classified as priority A and are responded to within hours. However, our service levels for other complaints have increased, including for priority B complaints, which capture violating conditions that, if occurring, while serious, do not present an immediate threat to the public. So far this fiscal year, we are responding to those complaints in 21 days, which is an increase over 15 days during the same time period last fiscal year. As with development inspections, this increase can be attributed to existing vacancies, which we are recruiting for, and to a reduction in overtime use. Of note, elevator related complaints have driven this increase as well, given the reduced capacity of the elevator unit that responds to such complaints. To address this issue, we have launched a pilot program that allows for third-party inspections following elevator work in the building, which allows us to use our inspectoral resources to respond to complaints from the public. The inspections must be conducted and witnessed by qualified individuals that are licensed by this department. The program has been wellreceived by the industry and we are closely monitoring it. As it relates to sustainability, the department is responsible for implementing and enforcing a number of sustain sustainable building laws. This includes local law 97 of 2019, which requires the city's largest buildings to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions over several compliance periods, culminating in achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Our sustainability team has worked diligently to implement this important law, including promulgating rules, conducting outreach with our agency partners, and issuing guidance to inform property owners and the industry about how to comply with the law. We have also hired a dedicated team to focus on the implementation and enforcement concerning the law. Last year, we achieved a major milestone as building owners were required to submit compliance reports to the department for the first time. We saw very high engagement rates for the first compliance cycle, but know that building owners have a lot of work to do to come into compliance with the 2030 emission targets and are prepared to support them with that work. In addition, the department enforces the energy code and the existing laws that require certain buildings to report their energy and water use, post energy grades, upgrade lighting, and install subme metering, and perform energy audits and retro commissioning. Concerning the energy code, we worked with the council on local law 47 of 2026 late last year, which was also sponsored by the chair and which resulted in the 2025 energy code. We will begin enforcing the new energy code later this month. We are also taking steps to continue to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers, which includes tenants, business owners, and other members of the public. As it relates to tenants, we are proud to be partner partnering in the renter ripoff hearings the mayor's office is hosting and look forward to working on new initiatives to support tenants that will come out of that effort. This builds on our work to protect tenants in occupied buildings under construction. We have multiple teams dedicated to tenant protection, including our office of the tenant advocate that that intakes complaints and fields inquiries directly from members of the public, including addressing concerns related to required tenant protection plans and our real-time enforcement unit, which responds to complaints concerning unpermitted work in multiple dwellings expeditiously. Finally, we continue to participate in the tenant harassment prevention task force, which includes conducting regular multi- agency inspections with our partner agencies in the interest of protecting and improving conditions for tenants. As it relates to business owners, we have a dedicated small business team that provides one-on-one guidance to businesses, including conducting plan reviews for job filings submitted in connection with those businesses. We encourage small businesses to contact our our small business team to receive assistance before they begin a construction project or at any time during a project should they have any questions. We also took steps during the last administration to improve the regulatory environment for small businesses, including extending cure periods for all class 2 and class 3 violations to 60 days and doing away with the $6,000 work without a permit penalty that was imposed by the department on small businesses. Finally, we are confir we are continuing to focus on reducing sidewalk sheds throughout the city with a focus on sheds that are up at buildings where no active construction work is occurring. Since be since we began this effort in 2023, there has been about a 15% reduction in the number of sidewalk sheds citywide, which benefits the public, including businesses that are negatively impacted by sidewalk sheds. We recently implemented a 90day permit duration for sidewalk sheds down from a year, which will require that building owners renew their sidewalk sheds more regularly and report their progress to repair facade conditions to the department during such renewals. where a building owner does not make progress, we will use every enforcement tool at their at our disposal to prompt repair work, which includes the new enforcement tools we'll be implementing later this year and taking legal action against against the worst offenders. We have also made tremendous progress reviewing the local law 11 program, which requires certain buildings to undergo facade inspections periodically. We issued a report late last year, which includes recommendations made by our consultant Thornton Thomasi. Based on our recommendations and regulatory changes made by the city council last year, we expect buildings to go longer without having their facades inspected without sacrificing safety. Finally, we know there are sidewalk sheds that will continue to be needed in conjunction with new building construction, demolition projects, and facade maintenance. Late last year, we released six new shed designs which are more aesthetically pleasing, allow more light and air to the ground, which will improve the look and feel of the public realm. We expect to make these new designs available for use by the public through rulemaking later this year. In closing, and my throat is definitely happy, uh, at the start of a new administration, we are building the foundation for a renewed vision for our city. The Department of Buildings will continue to evolve through community input and internal innovation, but our core commitments to customer service, accountability safety ingenuity and inclusive growth will remain will remain constant. These principles will guide and support everything we do moving forward. We look forward to working with the city council and community leaders to bring this vision to life. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and we welcome your questions. Uh thank you. Thank you so much commissioner. Um and I I just want to by sharing it is I I share your enthusiasm about the progress that the department has made um in the last several years despite of you know high obstacles the the number of vacancies that were reduced in the beginning of the Adams administration kind of recovering from that. It's really it's really incredible to see the amount of work that the agency has been doing. >> Thank you. Um and you know just a just a note that the a this agency the department of buildings does much more I'm sorry rest of the city agencies but you do much more for the city than the city gives back and so the more that we can strengthen your budget increase inspection inspectoral capacity and all the rest you know the the better off that the city will be. >> Thank you. >> That's certainly my position. So I want to acknowledge that we are joined by council member Epstein and Juan Ju one and salam. Um and I will ask a first round of questions and then we'll uh the question order I have right now is council member Riley followed by Maloney Epste and then Joseph. Um so to begin um the number of complaints that the department receives and the time it takes the agency to complete inspections are rising as as has been noted. The department has long struggle struggled with a persistently high vacancy rate which is now at 13.8% nearly two times more than the citywide average of 5%. Um putting this into context the department of buildings lost a net total of 90 budgeted positions during the Adams administration. So, first can you tell us about the steps the agency is taking to fill its vacancies and specifically where you are seeing the highest vacancies um plumbing inspectors, elevator inspectors. You mentioned a little bit about the elevator inspections, but can you tell us about the steps that are being taken uh to relieve the the delays being caused by a shortage of plumbing inspectors? >> Thank you for the question, chair. I'll start and then I'll invite members of the team to uh add. So there are a number of different ways in which we are trying to make sure that we are staffed to meet the needs of New Yorkers. From an outreach and uh from an outreach and recruitment perspective, we have uh constantly been on the ground. We did 27 job fairs in 24, 25 job fairs in 25. We are regularly working uh with our partners in Dcast on a number of different outreach campaigns. We currently have one uh through social media that we're working on with uh their consultants and colleagues. We are we have 127 bus stops with our job hiring uh information out there communicating to individuals. We're working actually with social media influencers who are specifically uh working to do job outreach and recruitment to get the word out about the work that we're doing particularly in inspector and plan examin plan examiner titles. Uh we have ongoing relationships with technical colleges um throughout the city and uh we also have a number of recruitment pipeline projects with New York City public schools and with CUNI where we are bringing people in as early as interns, externs, uh working with different fellowship programs, uh college aids in in order to find people not only to meet the inspector staff or the technical staff but also our admin and clerical staff. staff as well. I will say that uh right now we have um at least uh 55 individuals who are candidates that we're waiting on approvals for. So our vacancy rate is uh around 9% once those candidates get approved. And the last thing is that, you know, the mayor has been very uh supportive of the work that we're doing. And in the preliminary budget, we saw 23 uh uh lines provide to us to support not only the important sidewalk shed work that we're doing, but also lensure, which is a really key part to getting people out there doing work and helping to build a city. >> Thank you. That's very helpful. Please uh send us all of those advertisements and all of those social media. >> Absolutely. >> What influencers? I want to be an influencer. >> We we'll come up with the list. Yeah. >> Um Okay. Thank you. So, the the fiscal 2026 November plan included an additional $315,000 in city funds to investigate the Nicha building collapse in the Bronx this fall in Council Member Garnion's district. Can you provide an update on the status of this investigation? Has the department made a determination as to the cause uh and who exactly was contracted in support of the review? >> So the uh the vendor that was contracted was IAQ consulting uh engineering. Um they are still doing the work of investigating and uh preparing the report and so we don't have information to share at this moment but the funds are there and the work is ongoing. >> Thank you. And what is the timeline for the termination? uh the the focus is uh wrapping up this work this year. >> So this year this year end of 26. >> That's that's my understanding. Yes. >> Thank thank you commissioner. Um how much has do I mean I have a lot of questions about do now? Um but how much has been spent on it so far uh in the transition? How much is in the budget for fiscal 27 across the four-year plan? and when when will we get to 100% of uh you know projects and and work being reflected on do versus the BIS system. >> So as of February at as of the end of February the department has spent 172.8 million fiscal year 26 is currently budgeted for 8.5 million uh broken out that's 2.7 million for expense and 5.8 8 million in capital and this includes capital funds and all commitments and the outy years are baseline for a million dollars. >> What is the the capital >> uh the capital work is typically associated uh tech work that is longasting is cap eligible. So uh when you look at the scope you can break down what would be capital capital versus expense. This is a kind vendor services like vendor services or consultant services would be expense. >> Copy. Thank you. Thank you commissioner. Um earlier this year the department suspended a general contractor license of Mr. Yakov Eisenbach of Hexagon Industries after an uncontrolled wall collapse at one of his work sites just behind my district office. It happened to be and adjacent to an elementary school. We're extremely fortunate that no one was injured. Furthermore, this was the seventh time that Mr. Eisenbach had been cited for violations uh for violating an active stop work order at a demo or construction site. So, can you describe how the department conducts oversight of general contractors in New York City broadly? Um, and how the department considers expanding the use of this enforcement tool over the next fiscal year. What resources would be needed? So I'll start and then I'll invite our first deputy commissioner to add um as he has worked on a lot of these programs and helped built it up to the place where we are. So in that particular case uh that general contractor since there is not a general contractor license there's a safety registration that uh we can use in order to control whether or not they are doing business with the city of New York. We actually um have information on not only the site that he was working on that we're talking about here, but on other sites across the city. We did a sweep of those sites that gave us more information, allowed us to act quickly on any issues on those other construction sites, whether it was a partial stopwork order and or the issuance of additional summones. And that led us um based on that information to move quickly. and I think in our in our in the first time uh revoke a move to revoke and bring a case to o that safety registration. Um so that is just an example of both the benefit of the resources. Again we thank the city council of proactive enforcement and using data to be able to quickly react. And this is information that we were able to use in order to map out not only safety for your neighborhood but for other neighborhoods. Um, Yagal if you like to add. >> And while first deputy Shamage adds, I just want to thank you for the the swift movement in that in that case. I think you were able to uh suspend that license within days of you know the that collapse. So this is you know I just commend the commend you uh commissioner and commend the agency for really moving swiftly against bad actors. >> Thank you so much. In terms of construction safety, we have um multiple teams, but our construction safety compliance team is one that does proactive inspections. Um last year, last calendar year, 2025, they performed over 20,000 proactive construction safety inspections. our construction safety enforcement team. That's the team that responds to uh incidents, accidents, and complaints, but also sweeps. Um general contractors, subcontractors, performed over 21,000 construction safety enforcement inspections. Uh that team is the team responsible for ensuring construction safety. That team works with a construction safety engineering team that will review the plans and audits the applications that are submitted post incident, post accident. Um those two teams together will refer to our uh attorneys, our licensing disciplinary unit plus our um special uh special inspection, I'm sorry, special enforcement team. They discipline professionals. Uh LDU disciplines the lences and they work together handinand to ensure that general contractors and professionals are performing the necessary duties per the code. >> Thank you. According to the mayor's PMMR, the department issued 2,683 total stop work orders in the first four months of fiscal 26. a 20% increase from the same period in fiscal 25. This is a very significant jump and there's a related uh increase in the number of violations that have also been issued. What are the reasons for the increase in the number of stop work orders? The does the department believe that there has been a city-wide increase in dangerous construction work? So the increase in stock work stop work orders uh can be a result of a number of things but what we're looking at is we're responding to additional complaints. We are doing more proactive inspection. Uh a stop work order can be something that is a short uh time period where we're trying to make or we're working with the owner to make the correction on site or it could extend for a longer period of time. You know, at this point, as I mentioned earlier, construction injuries are down. We are seeing safer sites and given the we are several years into our uh site safety training programs where construction workers have at minimum 40 hours of safety training. We do believe that overall that our sites are safer. We are ju we are just taking more steps to make sure that as conditions laid out and plans exist that they also reflect what's happening on construction sites. >> Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to >> Oh, can I add one, please? >> Thank you. Um our newly formed uh strategic enforcement uh division uh under your um the local law that was passed with you last year. um created our proactive enforcement team, specifically our street our strategic enforcement team. Um that team specifically is um leading the charge with inspections on um on work without a permit um but also unlicensed uh uh work that is happening in the city uh and looking for those bad actors. um they are uh one of the leading reasons that we had an increase in uh stop work orders both full and partial in 2025. So it's the proactive enforcement team that is uh causing that trend in increase in stop work orders and we think that's for a very good reason that we're catching these bad actors before they cause issues for us. That makes me so happy like in the in the you know in the context of just doing better as a city. It's that's really cool. Um thank you. Thank you deputy commissioner. Um on on that note actually before I go go to my colleagues for their first round of questions um on local law 79 of 2024 and the proactive uh inspections. Um can you share of the 60 staff? Did you did you share already how many of those positions have been hired? And you did share the the number of inspections um and the 9,000 inspection and 7,000 violations. Um but can you also share you know just trends what what kind of um you know illegal activity dangerous conditions you have been observing? So I'll ask uh Gina to start and then you go to talk more about the trends. >> Of the 60 budgeted positions received for proactive enforcement and predictive analytics, 49 positions are active and 11 are vacant. >> And what are the vacancies? >> I don't have the break vacancies broken down, but I can get you that information after this hearing. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> So, um the three pillars of the proactive inspection program is focused on going outside and more actively being on uh construction sites on a regular basis. Uh definitely when it's next to or adjacent to s other sensitive buildings given the age of our building stock. We also have our stay vigilant program which is a reinspection program mandated by local law 79 that makes sure that property owners remain accountable for maintaining code and safety compliance. We also have uh what is a called our heightened enforcement work stream. It's a targeted uh force that identifies and neutralizes bad actors uh recidivist property owners, contractors, licensed professionals using data intelligence that we have internal that we're working through from a centralized team and then uh working out with the different units to think about next steps >> in terms of the vacancies. Um as the deputy commissioner mentioned, we have 11 vacancies. Uh five of those are in the class one hazardous reinspection program. Those are five inspector positions. Um we have four in the heightened enforcement bad actor position uh bad actor division. Again those four are in inspectoral ranks. And then lastly we have two vacancies in the request for corrective action um team and those are also inspector positions. So we have filled all the investigative um all the uh attorney positions and all the um analytics positions including all the supervisory positions um in all of those groups >> and maybe not obvious but this team comprises all the different uh skill sets and backgrounds of the agency. So there there's an engineering component. There is quality of life inspectors and then there is our strategic enforcement that includes the front-facing inspectors that work with tenants on a day-to-day basis. And this is also an area where we've actually benefited from working with outside technologists to think about new software and programs to be able to make those connections between portfolios and owners so we see the bigger picture. We're specifically proud of the increase in percentage of proactive inspections. Um at the end of uh calendar year 2024 we owe around 27%. Um and year to date right now we're uh approaching 35%. So that's a significant increase for us. As the commissioner mentioned, we're looking at technology to uh increase that uh specifically um through our um new positions within analytics. Um they have specifically created uh an algorithm for us to um provide a risk score uh on the um on on buildings. And that risk score is helping um focus our inspections on um the riskiest of buildings. Um we would love to show you the um the maps that we've created based on that and the algorithms. Um we would be more than happy to um present that to you and share all that information. The analytics team has really created a machine learning tool where um we input the information, they respond um and it and it's a cycle. We keep feeding that information and the and the machine keeps learning. Um hopefully it doesn't outsmart us. >> Machine takeover. I I'm sorry. I just like we started at a point start as you know generous when I came in and and we had the collapse at 1915 Billingsley. We were at this moment where we were like how could this happen? How how could we possibly not have caught that this person this this owner was working with a risky contractor and now we have you know 75 families that are displaced during the holidays in the cold out on the sidewalk to 35% of inspections at DOB being proactive. I think that is just incredible that an incredible change of course and I'm I'm just I'm very very proud of you all. So thank thank you for that partnership. It it means a lot to New Yorkers. Um I want to I want to turn it over if it's okay with uh Council Member Riley. I want to go to Chair Lee. >> I will be very quick. Hi Commissioner. How are you? Thank you. >> How are you? >> It's good to see you. And all these great things happened in the few months you've been here, right? >> Yeah. I'm so productive. It's just >> I know. Exactly. Super productive. Yes. Um, so no, I I I really appreciate your efforts. And to piggyback off the chair's point, it's interesting because I've been trying to ask a lot of the different agencies how we can better you, you know, I know sometimes tech, AI, all that stuff can be, you know, people have different thoughts on it, but I think this is one of the perfect ways where we can utilize it to not just give us better data, but also help on the customer service side and to allow folks to be able to see more in real time where things are at. So, I really appreciate your efforts in that. Um and and just out of curiosity, well, it's great to see going back to um the vacancies that you talked about, it seems like since actually uh the report was given to us uh cuz as of February 2026, we had 1597 um actual headcount, but now you're saying it's up to 1635, right? Which is great. And so, um, in terms of the buckets and categories, I know you mentioned it, but if you go over really quickly, a lot of that has been positions filled with investigators and different um, engineers, you said, or >> the main tracks I think we organize by is inspectors, inspectoral staff, technical staff, uh, administrative staff and, uh, clerical. So, those are buckets that we maintain. Um though obviously there's overlap and you know uniquenesses in that but I'll let Gina correct me if I 1635 active positions 558 are inspectoral 330 technical 557 administrative and 197 clerical. 197 clerical. What was the second one? I'm sorry I missed it. >> 330 technical. >> Perfect. Thank you. Um and just out of curiosity in terms of the contract budget, I noticed that um from FY26 to 27, the number of contracts are relatively the same. I think there's one contract difference, but then um professional services and computer services dropped a lot. So I was just wondering what that was due to. Those Oh sorry Chair. >> Oh, no. Go ahead. >> Uh, those were one-time expenditures that we do not expect to need to renew. >> Okay. All right. Um, and then going really quickly to new needs. I know in FY26 there was 970 million and then in FY27 it jumps to about 4.6. So, um, I see in the PMMR there's new needs that you've listed out here, but if you could just walk us through generally what that jump is due to. So, we've received 23 positions uh totaling $2 million for sidewalk sheds. These are tax levy funded positions added to our PS and OTPS budgets to supplement local law 48 and 51 of 2025. Revenue brought in by permit renewal fees and extension request fees offset the new need and headcount. We also received 13 positions for licensing backgrounds totaling $725,000. This supplements learning investigations ability to conduct licensing investigations ability to conduct license qualification reviews of the character and fitness of 30 different construction trade license applications. This new need and headcount is also covered by revenue generated by the unit. And that's 13 positions, eight administrative positions, five clerical. And for the 23 positions received for sidewalk sheds, 12 administrative positions, 10 of those are for customer service, nine technical positions, and two inspectoral positions. >> Okay. We also received a baseline increase of $350,000 for um pre-insspec preclarance overtime for DOB elevator inspection inspectors to perform inspections outside normal work hours. The funding will come will be covered by revenue acrewed from inspection fees. And we also received $1.6 million in Modell's space renovation. This re this funding is renovations for the Modell's lease space located at our headquarters 280 Broadway to increase the capacity of our space by 100 workstations. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Um and then actually talking on that point about the revenue generation, the the fees to be increased um or the revenue rather um I noted the FY27 preliminary plan also includes as you mentioned um 353.1 million of DOB miscellaneous revenue uh 1.9 million more than FY26 adopted plan and um it seems like this is largely attributable to the increase of 2.9 million in construction permits and 1.1 million in licens es for trade professionals. So, does DOB anticipate permit revenues to increase? >> Yes, we do expect the permit revenues to increase because we're moving from a n annual sidewalk shed permit renewal to a 90-day permit uh renewal. Okay. >> We also expect fees from the extension requests >> and for progress reports. And on the licensing front um for increase in fees to license uh applications as well as fees for renewal applications. >> Okay, perfect. Um and of course for the chief savings officer uh who was identified as the chief savings officer in your >> our uh deputy commissioner for finance uh was identified for over the work overlaps with our day-to-day work. Also, uh, Gina has been responsible for finding innovation and savings in the agency to date and was a the right choice. >> Okay, perfect. And it's the same across as different agencies with 1.5% savings for 26 and 2.5 for 27. >> That's right. >> Okay, perfect. Um, and will services like code enforcement and inspections that protect New Yorkers be held harmless from the budget decreases or >> we we are working through a plan right now, but uh I think we're on the same page that we have an obligation to keep people safe and so finding a strategy that maintains that obligation uh is the direction we want going. >> Right. And that's one thing we've been trying to emphasize is that yes, we're trying to find savings but not in terms of sacrificing services for New Yorkers. And plus, I know on the council, uh, we've, uh, definitely added a lot more, um, different legislative things that require more staffing, but hopefully these are all things that will work to improve, um, daily lives for New Yorkers. So, thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thanks, Council Member Riley. >> Thank you, Chair Lee, uh, Chair Chair Riley. >> Uh, thank you, uh, Chair Sanchez, and good morning, Commissioner, and good morning to the DOB team. Thank you so much for testifying here. Um, as chair's land use, I see the department of building as one of the most important agencies in the city's ability to actually turn policy into housing production. Uh, we could pass resonance, adopt plans, and talk about affordability, but if the building process remains too slow, uh, too costly or too unpredictable, New Yorkers will continue to feel the housing crisis that we're currently in. So, I just want to focus my questions today on how we could build faster, smarter, and be more sustainable. U so during your testimony, Commissioner, uh you spoke about the agency not being focused on just enforcement but also on production. Um could you just state three ways you believe DOB can most directly help with the city's increase on housing production and also reduce the cost burden associated with development? >> Absolutely. Uh council member and um I agree with you on that position that the OB holds. While there we are the steward of the zoning resolution. So as you pointed out taking policy and language and taking into action is something that we care about deeply. To answer your question directly I think first and foremost thinking uh about how we're investing and the people who are reviewing plans and doing the work of moving projects through our process is going to be a key way to moving projects faster. So the movement to taking continuing education that we currently have and moving it into a formal plan examine examiner academy so that we are updating and continuously building up that staff so we're working through applications faster. I think it's going to be very key. Additionally, we're working on uh and this is a public private partnership talking more about the standardization of the plans that come into our agency so that we are not spending time uh going back and forth over small matters and we are actually looking at material in the same way in the same format which will reduce review times in our opinion. uh the technology that comes with that DOB now has allowed us to create a a a faster back and forth between plan examiners and the industry. But it's also drastically increased the number of applications that people are allowed to submit and when they're allowed to submit. So those two factors better train you know better investment in training to the staff that we have coming in as plan examiners and then also uh creating a standardization of the work that we do including reducing the number of unique objections and coming up with more clarity there. The other part that I think is really important is that it's the formalization and the streamlining of our codes and rules. So, I cannot understate how important the code committees are to creating more consistency and uh more updates to meet the construction industry where they are to create a code format that makes sense. And so, we're grateful to the uh many people who volunteer their time for that. And I mentioned creating housing, but also preserving housing is a very big part of that. We can never >> Well, Commissioner, let me let me just go into some more questions. I only got five minutes. existing building code. The existing building code that we passed and then training and working with the outside world to implement will save time, save money and create more consistency. >> Thank you so much. And and you spoke about something important about the planners um and examiners. Um what are the biggest challenges do faces in hiring and retaining uh plan examinators, inspectors, engineers and technical staff? Does it come with compet compensation uh competition? the private sector. Um we really want to highlight because these are very important jobs and we want to make sure we have the best people for the jobs, but we're seeing a lot of our people um going into the private sector. >> Yeah, I mean on average I think in both inspectors and plan examiners and our deputy commissioner for administration will correct me. We see at separation they're here for about a little over six years. Um within that time uh there is there is a lot of competition. We we compete with the private sector on wages. Though I will say city benefits and compensation package packages are strong. There is the opportunity to train and move up in their career and have a diversity diverse portfolio. So what we're trying to do is create ways to diversify the workload of individuals inside the agency so they get the experience that they need. For plan examiners in particular as they have to go and seek their license. it may not be something you can do within the four walls of DOB because the particular steps you have to take to get it. So, we are actually piloting something uh we're working on a pilot with other agencies to see if we can help plan examiners who are looking for their license be able to stay within the DOB world but get that uh extra accreditation that they need. And then separate from that, we're looking at ways to to and we're interviewing our plan examiners to figure out ways to keep them in city service longer by divers creating more positions and breaking up the flatness of the organization. So very recently assistant chief positions were uh created etc to give people upward mobility into the agency. >> Thank you. Uh chair, if I could just ask uh another question real quick. I'm going to ask these two questions and I'm going to be quiet. Okay. All right. So, um, one concern we hear is that sustainability, uh, compliance can impose real costs, especially on affordable housing providers, uh, co-ops and older multif family buildings. So, how is DOB thinking about implementation in a way that drives compliance without worsening affordability pressures for tenants and owners? So, that's one question. And my next question focus on inter agency uh, coordination. Um, how often are delays attributed to DOB that are really rooted in issues involving other agencies and sequentially uh sequential approvals? Would a more integrated inter agency approval model help move projects faster? So I think the question about inter agency coordination is something that we're working on right now through the speed task force and I I would say that the work that we're doing to integrate systems with partner agencies D uh or um HPD or other agencies we actually have a couple of initiatives we're working on now to cut through that. Um but I can come to you with more specifics just to say that this is something we recognize as a place of work and we're working on it. The first question I would say that right now we have seen great a very high compliance rate with phase one over 91% 89% of article 320 buildings 94% of article 321 buildings uh though the the reality of complying is very difficult. We have the New York City Accelerator which is managed by the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice which provides people with direct technical support. Uh access to financial lending resources uh actual project managing and case managing to get them through. Um our deputy commissioner of sustainability can talk about our work with the sustainability center to also provide that work. Uh we also citywide have uh tools at HPD for those who need lending support to be able to meet uh their retrofit and energy uh upgrade situation. And then we as a city we have been advocating for J51 as a tool in this area. So there is still hardships faced by buildings who have to meet the 2030 requirement and we're currently going through the audits of the phase one reports to better understand what they're facing, who needs to pay penalties and then at that point we'll have a better sense of what the the landscape looks like and what tools we need. >> Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. >> Thank you so much, uh, Chair Riley, Council Member Maloney. Oh, I'm sorry. I need to acknowledge that we've been joined by Council Member Brewer and Jang and Deputy uh Deputy Speaker Williams on Zoom. Council member, >> great. Thank you so much for being here. Um, as a Manhattan council member, I have to ask about scaffolding and I'm thrilled about the 15% reduction and um, as you noted, the council passed a legislative package on this last session. So hopefully we'll see that trend continue. Uh could you give more information on when you expect DOB to fully operationalize those enforcement mechanisms? >> We expect the rules to be out this summer, but we've already started doing the work of um we've already have the 90day shed permit uh rule uh provision in place in DOB now. So going from a year to 90 days, we're already doing the education with the industry and we are hard at work on all uh all the work streams. So the enforcement piece we are working through the recommendations on the design piece. So making sure the new shine ed shine sorry shed designs are available for the public as part of those rules. And then last but not least, we're working on the uh Thorn and Thomasi uh recommendations which will also make it more flexible but still maintain safety for property owners moving from five to six years and then uh going from uh for new buildings under 40 years old with a safe report already under its belt. Moving from one cycle to 12 years, which uh will also include visual inspections in between. And then last but not least, the radius of sheds will now be reduced to 40 feet, which will increase mobility and access to open space while still maintaining safety. Just wanted to add specifically um our local our long-standing shed program. Um we've reduced the number of years uh from five to three years of what we're considering a long-standing shed. So, we are now targeting that group of buildings um most of them in Manhattan um that we're looking at. We're trying to wake up these owners that have not been maintaining their buildings and inspecting those buildings on a regular basis, communicating with those owners that we are looking at them. We want to make sure that they are making progress towards those repairs and if they're making progress, great. If they're if they're not, we're coming after them. This is the area where we're using criminal summones, nuisance abatement. This is usually where the legal work comes in and we partner with affirmative litigation at the law department for it. >> And is there a mechanism for council members andor constituents to identify some of the problem sheds in our in our communities? >> I mean, especially in the Manhattan uh area working through our intergovernmental team, uh Jamila, our deputy director or Vlad uh can reach out to your office after this and we'll make sure. But for any member, reaching out to any member of the senior staff or your intergovernmental representative, we can make sure we follow up on any complaints that come up. >> Thank you. So, it sounds like this summer most of the implementation will have started. So, my my follow-up question is when will we have enough data on if the laws go far enough? Um, when would be a good time for us to reassess that? >> I think we can continue to give periodic updates. we can come back toward the end of the year and let you know um what that looks like. It's a new set, it's a new more aggressive regime and so there'll be still questions, but sharing the outcomes of what those first couple of months are sounds like a good way to start the conversation. >> Great. Thank you. And um the 23 employees that you're staffing, it's great to hear that the revenue generated will likely cover those positions. How far along are you with filling those roles? I think we so they're in the preliminary budget. Uh so we have to move forward with the process, but we already have um inspector staff in our facades unit who is looking at this work. So we're take we've taken the first step of the 90 days and we're responding to complaints. I this is this is a project and a program it's going to take several months to build out. >> Thank you very much. >> No problem. >> Thank you, Council Member Maloney. Just a quick follow up on that uh understanding where we are in the process, but does the department have plans for how those inspectors will be distributed across the city? >> The new positions uh for sidewalk sheds are broken up into essentially um three distinct groups. Um the first one is for our bureau staff to process the permits. Uh, as you can imagine, we have um around 7,000 and 7,600 active sidewalk shed permits. U going from uh one permit per 12 months to four permits per that 12 months, right, every 90 days. That's a drastic increase in volume. Those folks will process those permits. The second group um will be going into our engineering services team uh under assistant commissioner Jill Rebecki. um her team will focus on reviewing the reports that come in every 90 days um per the local law to ensure that those owners are making pro progress towards those repairs and if those if progress is not seen then civil penalties will start acrewing. Uh and lastly is the inspectoral team. We are anticipating the inspectoral team to join our construction safety compliance team under assistance commissioner Juan Aras and focus specifically on inspecting sheds with expired permits uh sheds that are there with no work going on or even if they are telling us work we'll go out and confirm that that work is occurring. So it's three-fold. >> What was the name of the first division? the burough operations. >> Thank you so much. Uh next up, I want to acknowledge we are joined by council member Ailles and next up is council member Epstein. >> Thank you and thank you for your time. So we have, you know, I just want to follow up with council member Maloney on the shed issue. So sheds that have been up, construction sites that have installed 5, 10, 15 years. What is the expectations for kind of those construction sites are in the middle of, you know, there's four stories up and they're not being done. What are we doing with those sheds that are just sitting there with kind of a lot of debris? >> So, I can start and then I'll ask the first deputy to add or correct. So stalled sites, there's actually a building molding that was put out several years ago uh that codifies steps that stalled site the owners of stalled sites who are still responsible for taking action and making safe what they need to do. Additionally, if a stalled site is there and we and anyone sees issues, we respond. We issue complaints and we'll we'll force corrective action. And then I, you know, just speaking more anecdotally, stalled sites who have lenders or uh the individuals who are are part of that process if we need to and we're not getting responsiveness from the owner often will work with the law department and we'll reach out beyond to other people other parties connected to that site to try to compel and get action done. And then if it's a sidewalk shed particularly that's connected to that site, that could be part of the package of enforcement. or if it's just a stalled site itself, then we just focus on the stalled site. >> I just want to just flag that these sites have been I've complained about these sites for years. You know, the entire time I've been in elected office, those stalled sites have not moved and we've seen no change at all except more garbage and debris. So, I think from the from people in our district, they want to see some movement. So, something physically happening would be really beneficial. So, I understand that you're working with the owner, maybe with working with the lender, but we need to see some tangible results. So, something you can do to tell people in the neighborhood, hey, I know this is a stalled site, although this has been looking like this for 15 years, but do on it. Something that communicates to the public would be really helpful. >> I understand, council member. We'll follow up. >> Yeah. Can I talk about um harassment? I just early this morning was at a building at 109 East 9th Street. there certificate of no harassment. There's a finding of harassment. Do you be issued permits for the property? Uh they've taken bathrooms out of the floors where the SRO tenants are living. Um this is an ongoing problem. This has been a problem that we've seen across the city. I know I want to speak for Council Member Brewer. She's got a lot of SRO as well. What are we doing to protect those tenants? And is DOB the appropriate place? You know, I'm responding to Council Member Riley. I know we want to build more housing. We also want to protect the people who are still here and especially some of the most vulnerable residents or SRO tenants to ensure that they are protected during these projects where we know there's a a finding of harassment. What like what are we doing here to protect those tenants? I think again there for the particular I can't speak to the particular address because there's ongoing litigation involving the city to try to protect those tenants and in fact I would suggest that one thing that's happening is that the there was an owner that uh requested permits to do work that they are not allowed to do because they don't have all the paper that's required and we would not allow work unless people meet the requirements that they had to. That being said, we want to make sure that tenants who are in emergency and hazardous conditions that there there could be a path forward to do at least that minimal to um to make that work. So I think there are conversations going on uh about that building. But writ large if a if that we are faced with a SRO that has certain requirements in order to get work done, the owners have to produce and make sure that they show us they have the certificate of no harassment or meet any other zoning or code regulations about special protections that may adhere to that district before they can pull permits. And we look at the scope of work and make sure that the scope of work is within the boundaries of what they're allowed to do if they're doing things without a C. And anything that's permanent work, if they are doing permanent work without permits, we go out, we issue the stop work order, and we issue out the penalties and fines, which could be up to $25,000. >> I mean, at least for this property owner who's still engaging in harassing behavior, and we found that there's been a finding of harassment there. I would love to see other tools in our tool belt to protect those tenants. Like, they took bathrooms out of people's floors, so people don't have bathrooms on their floor anymore. And these are people who just lived in these apartments 30, 40, 50 years and they are in living in really terrible conditions. And I think I worry that I mean maybe we need to figure out what what tools do needs to help those tenants because they clearly what's happening now is not being successful. I will say you know even before but even high highly heightened by the rent ripoff hearings myself other senior members of the team are sitting and talking the members there will be recommendations coming out that likely will overlap with the kind of tools that we may need us HPD other agencies to do more >> and thank you I look forward to seeing those reports thank thank you chair Sanchez I appreciate it >> thank you council member epste and cosign >> yeah Um I want to acknowledge that we are joined by majority leader Abu and the next uh council member is council member Joseph followed by Salam then Brewer. >> Thank you chair. Um I want to continue on the same line of questioning. Um my office feels received complaints about unpermitted demolition and construction projects that happen in my district causing major disruptions and health and safety concerns for people in neighborhood neighboring properties. It seems like the becoming the standard practice that DOB summons are just a cost of doing business with these developers. What do you think is driving this behavior and what kind of changes would need to be put in place to make it stop? Cuz we get constant phone calls about this sometime we go out to the sites. Um I I more than welcome your team to do a walkthrough in my district to come and see these problems ongoing. Um, and also I know you also work on elevators constantly have an elevator on Lefit Avenue that's been out for two years. So that means my older adults cannot go to their doctor's appointments. Their foods have to be brought to them. And when we talk about dilapitated, these are the types of buildings that we're talking about. And we don't feel as if there's any support. So I welcome your expertise. Good to see you, Commissioner. Happy to see you in this role. Hopefully we can move things at a faster pace because these are ongoing harass the harassment of tenants. Um I have one landlord who had one of his people dress as ICE agents to go knock on doors. That's unacceptable. That is unacceptable. So I want to know what can we do to support you as council members and making sure that our our communities feel safe, our most vulnerable New Yorkers feel safe in their homes. I appreciate those questions and everything that you and I know the other members are trying to do. Work around 10 safety and trying to uh push back against ten harassment is something that's very important to me. Working in the council, one of my first bills was working with council member Epstein then advocate on the office of 10 advocate. So I this is something that's very important to us. just to because I know in the interest of time the ten harassment task force the work that we're doing with the mayor's office to protect tenants the things that we're doing now >> does it have teeth we need some teeth now >> we are we are working on building out more teeth you will actually if I think the rule is uh moving or will be out we're working on rules that even more clearly peg just going on the elevators first and then coming to the second question uh more quickly more clearly shows the owner's responsibility when there's an elevator outage in their building. Additionally, what we've tried to set up uh around the changes for elevator inspections is hopefully a way to get more elevators up and running, inspected, and moving faster given that outages obviously have outsized impact on our vulnerable New Yorkers. We are in conversations now to think about what more we can do in elevators other than make clear in our rules their responsibility for reasonable accommodations. Working to get inspections uh happening faster to put uh that work in service. Uh that's in addition to the annual and every 5year inspections and the maintenance contract that are supposed to have. And then we'll have to do more. I think the the elevator outages we see this a lot. There are 70,000 of these units across the city and we know that uh when these outages happen, the disruption is massive. >> How many elevated calls do you get per year? >> We can >> how many outages, how many inspectors you have and what's the timeline to get them fixed? >> So, the timeline varies. It depends on the age of the cab, the part that is broken. Uh we have and we're also in a time period over the last couple of years where elevators were required to modernize. And by doing that, there there are pros and cons. One, they're safer, more up to-ate elevators, but the program for that will have an impact on the repairs. But we can get back to you on as we continue conversations as part of the housing plan and this work that we're doing with the mayor's office to protect tenants, elevators, especially in buildings where there's one elevator, correct, is a priority for us and working out from that. And then on the the first part, you know, the office of the TAN advocate is a key part of that work, but there's a larger office of strategic operations under um assistant commissioner Augustino who is working every day to respond to complaints. So we are working with HPD, working with the AG's office with with our local DAs and we're bringing cases. This is also part of the proactive enforcement that we talked about earlier. So there are multiple ways in which we're trying to make it safer for tenants. What about my demol um demolition question? Demolitions that are happening and by the time they call you give them a summon and tomorrow I'm getting the same phone calls. >> So for this is another thing that's coming up in proactive work. We're trying to understand if there is a whether it's done more broadly or if there's a small cohort of subcontractors, general contractors, individuals who are flabbing our rules and taking on uh proactive portfolio cases. Just to answer your question, in terms of number of single elevator buildings that have filed complaints, um in 2025, that's calendar year 2025, we had 13,166 complaints for single elevator buildings. Uh currently we have uh 28 active elevator inspectors u with uh four vacancies, although just last week we hired two more individuals. So that vacancy number would come down to two in the elevator unit >> and that's 13,000 divided by 28 inspectors to do the to go out and do the job. >> Well, that there that there's in response there's reactive enforcement and then there's the when you know that there's an issue getting the elevator up and running and getting that inspection that allows it to run. That's where the third party inspection program went into place so that we can get elevators running faster. >> And how many people are in each of these units? cuz I'm trying to do the math. I used to be a teacher. So trying to do the math cuz it's not >> making any sense as to the time the timeline that you want to achieve. You're not going to get all of those done. So there will be a building with a elevator out for two years. >> Well, the the 13,000 complaints uh most of those are multiple complaints on a building. So if if the building has a single elevator, we will receive multiple multiple complaints from all the residents in that building. The long-term outages typically have to do with whether or not put aside their owners that are not moving fast enough and we need other tools legal and otherwise to move them. Uh we do see outages that are long term because of the c the age of the cab, the issue of the cab, the parts they have to order. And so that's not that's these are the questions that we're also asking about how do you mobilize a repair in a faster way. What is the city role versus the private sector role? And then you had mentioned the walkthrough. We'll absolutely follow up about the walkthrough. >> Okay. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Chair. >> Thank you, uh, Council Member Joseph. Now, Council Member Salam, followed by Brewer. >> Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. Um, Buroughbased staffing. The report the report that Hold on for one second. The report notes that additional buroughbased staffing should be considered. Is there a plan to decentralize the OB operations to improve response times in outer burrows? And would this require capital investment or reallocation of existing headcounts? >> So I think I'm not sure I'm not sure we would agree the burrowbased uh decentralizing all the parts of burrowbased support but we do have pretty significant and substantial burrow based teams in each of our burrows. uh I I would really want to talk more about what the issue is that we're trying to tackle whether it's quality of life or elevators or a specialty that is seeing a high response time uh for for some of our work but particularly our forensic engineering for instance having centralized teams that are working together and building off their expertise together uh is a more efficient and effective way versus maybe quality of life but you go >> uh our uh burough enforcement team uh specifically under assistant commissioner Ronaldo Hilton um has offices in all five burrows and they are the entity that respond to the majority of complaints uh for the department of buildings dealing with staff lossing during the Adams administration. DOB lost a net 90 budgeted positions during the Adam administration, creating a cascading creating cascading delays. The fiscal 2027 plan adds only 42 positions. Does this restore adequate capacity or will you continue to request additional staffing in future budgets? So I'll let Gina talk about any technical pieces, but we are already I mean we are working to identify and firm what our initiatives and programs will be in the future. Right now we're already seeing the support of the administration around two key initiatives which is on our sidewalk shed work and then also on our support of the sector which is on lenture and making sure that we are uh getting people employed and having being able to do work. So we feel confident that the ongoing conversations with OM will get us the resources we need. In fiscal year 27, the department received 36 new positions, but these are dedicated to its uh specific initiatives. But I would like to note that since the November 26 plan, the department has received 185 new budgeted positions. Um, so we have been in have received investments as of late. Just to name a few, the proactive enforcement and predictive analytics, local law 152 gas piping inspections, city of Yes. basement legalization, parking structures, and sidewalk shed monitoring and removal. >> Thank you. Dealing with um plumbing inspector vacancy crisis, plumbing inspectors have a 21% vacancy rate, 16 out of 76 positions, the highest among all inspector categories. Given that local law 429 of 2025 now requires licensed man master plumbers to conduct gas piping inspections, how will you meet increased demands without existing vacancies? >> We are currently having negotiations with OM on the um the impact of 429. Um that's an ongoing conversation. Thank you. And um I'm going to ask about the sidewalk sheds as well. Um the 2 point the 2 million baseline for 23 positions to implement sidewalk shed local laws assumes the positions are revenue generated. What is the projected penalty revenue from these new positions and how quickly will this offset the 2 million salary investment? The projected revenues from the permit renewals, progress reports, and extension requests are 2.9 million, and those are the revenues that go to support the 23 positions. Um, it's too uh early to speculate on the on the uh civil penalty revenues as it it's not in place yet until at least this summer. >> Yeah. Again, our big hope is that the communication that goes out is really about compliance. This is affecting a wide range of uh folks including vulnerable uh individuals who own property. So we want to make sure that we're really trying to enforce compliance more than anything. Last question. Do has 627 million in unpaid penalties from 2027 2017 rather to 2022. DOB now enhancements uh 370,000 fiscal year 26 is intended to autosue electronic penalties. But will this new programming actually improve collection rates? And what is your strategy for the $627 million backlog? >> Sorry, sir. We just um the number that you're the 620. Oh, I'm sorry. So, is this related to the IBO report specifically? The numbers are we speaking to from the IBO report? Yes. Great. So, um, so the IBO report, just a couple of quick pieces of it. It was issued in 2023. It covers the time frame from 2017 2022. Um, these charges are mostly assessed by HPD and DOF and not DOB. um as it relates to unpaid oath penalties uh includes summones from other agencies. So uh according to the most recent annual report from oaths which was issued by DOF late last year the penalties that stem from do issued summones are around 310 million again over a 8year time span and so that's over eight years 310 million that are due. I will also note that do obs collects somewhere between 75 and 80 million a year. So over that same time we actually have collected 640. It doesn't mean that in a budget crisis that we're in that we do not find ways in order to try to collect money. For instance, do the OB has a number of tools around holding back licenses if unpaid unpaid uh penalties uh aren't issued or permits on specific buildings. if the unpaid penalties are not there. We so individuals livelihoods, their ability to make real estate transactions or decisions on their property uh can be held up. But um we will we're happy to talk with both our partners in city government or with the council about other ways we can in in increase what we collect. Thank you. >> Thank you council member Salam. Now, Council Member Brewer, followed by Jang Abu, and then Alis. >> Thank you very much. You do rock, Commissioner. You both answer every damn question and then you also answer every email 247. That's impressive. >> Very impressive. Um, okay. So, I have local law 97 question. That means the great Laura Popa. I have a question about um after hours variances, which I hate. Expediters. Um, that was three to start with. So the issue with local law 97, I know that your do and Laura Pope are working hard. I guess I want to know because I do support it, but you know it's it's challenging for some of the buildings. Um what is the are we on track? What are the major barriers that the department faces in terms of being on track? And then you know are there places or communities that are particularly challenged in terms of complying? Maybe the older buildings and are there any other resources? Obviously, resources are tight to help individual buildings comply if they can't. >> I'll let Laura talk to that. >> Excuse me. >> Hi, council member. >> First, um, please raise your right hand. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee and respond honestly to council member questions? >> Yes. >> Thank you. You may continue. So, our approach to 97 has been to support building owners through the process of filing their first reports because it was a a tremendous lift to get basically we're looking at 32,000 reports filed and we needed to work with their service providers so they could understand how to file the reports. We had to build a platform and all of that. So, we have, as the commissioner said, about a 90% filing rate for um a 92% 90 to 92% filing rate for for the reports. We don't know yet who's complying with emissions rates because we're still doing the audits. So, part of filing the reports was that people had till December 31st. So now we're going through this massive amount of data, but we estimate that's also in the 90 percentile that people comply. So we need to know this. This is just important. So we decide like how to move forward with the buildings who aren't complying, right? So there are several compliance pathways and we are trying to work with building owners who need extra attention and New York City accelerator is our main venue for that. And there's a relaunch of the accelerator this year with a new provider and they have new software called Momentum and building owners can more easily access their data and go on and get scenarios about you know what might be good for their building depending on the age of the building and the type of the building etc. So we're excited about that because accelerator is very important for non-class A commercial office space buildings. Additionally, we're working with always NAERTA and the utilities um in order to figure out how to get the appropriate amount of funding to these building owners. So the accelerator will hook up a building owner with funding that's available to them. And we're always seeking additional funding from our state partners and others in order to help building owners comply with 97. So we know that a lot more building owners have to do something for 2030. And so we're very focused on that now that we are, you know, dealing with the first first year and now the second year of reporting. >> Okay. I mean, without going into much more, 2030 seems to be the real challenge. And so I guess you'll let us know where you're at and the fines, which I hope don't amount to much because we want people to comply, etc. Okay. Number two, um what are these I hate these things after hours variances? I hate them. So how do you determine and how can we not have every single Saturday automatically? It's more like a policy question. And I don't know that there's much uh cost involved, but when you're in a neighborhood and you have five days of noise and then you have a Saturday also, it's so how do you decide? To me, it should be if the crane is coming or something extreme, you know, needing in terms of uh blockage of the street, but shouldn't be automatic. Is it automatic? >> It's not automatic. There are at least five different conditions in which you is evaluated for whether or not an afterhour variance is issued. So just for the benefit of everyone, emergency work, uh public safety, uh city construction projects under certain conditions, construction with minimal noise and there is an undue hardship uh of variance stream and I I think we have regularly tried to work with communities around deciding whether or not is this could be issued or not. Additionally, we have tried to be transparent through and after our variance map and other uh information we put out there. I think moving forward two things will have to happen. We're thinking more about how to communicate why these go out because without when people see this and don't understand why we've issued it because sometimes it's uh because of uh it to disrupt maybe issues at a school or to keep a small street that could be piled up with traffic from not being a safety hazard and after hour variance may be worse wild or its interior construction versus external. We need to do more to communicate this out and putting the information on our website, but we do work on a case- by case basis. It's not automatic. We have made changes or decide to slow down. >> I would just look to see if somebody I know some buildings that get it automatically and I had a fit and you stopped. But I'm just saying where it is every single Saturday somebody's gaming something would be my suggestion. Number three, I hate expediters. So that's another thing I don't like. Do they help you? I mean, I've just paid $12,000 to an expediter just in my own building trying to because that's what the architect wanted. >> Yeah. >> So, um, do they help you? Is it is it a better for you to have expediters or not? Or do they cost the city money or is it how does that work? >> I think ideally the the perfect state of what our work looks like, you don't need to hire someone else to understand. >> That's what I think. >> So, that's what we're trying to do with DOB. And I think it's hard maybe not on the agency but it's hard on the developer and the homeowner because they spend a fortune on these people. >> So it's through accommodation on making the technology more accessible giving more guidance and education. We're also trying to uh work through um and and give people more access to our staff. So do after hours where individuals can interact directly with more flexible time and get questions answered without having to go through another third party. You know there construction is complicated. There may be a role in other ways for people to help okay folks project manage but we would like people not to have to hire or spend that money to do it. >> Madam chair I'd love to have a hearing at some point on expediters because I do think that they have a role but not the extreme role that they play. All right. Thank you very much. >> Thank you council member Brewer. Uh now council memberang followed by Abrio and Abilas. Thank you so much commissioner and I'm very glad to see you here and know we have good experience working together when you work for HPD. I appreciate that. But uh I know this is not a question for you did not answer before but the previous commissioner we sent multiple letters about some illegal activity in my neighborhood. We never heard back. So I'm not saying it's your fault but I want to hear the answers. The first there are a fraudulent ACP5 abesto report filed by inspector with par paral criminal eviction at um 25186 street. Um the inspector actually never entered in that building. There's a 24hour camera there. Um but we didn't in people in the community never see that inspector come to the building. How we assure this asto report make sure the community is safe? That's my first question. The location is 25186 street. I I don't have the the building file information or the the plan review information, but we can commit to following up with you and your office on this address and any questions you have related to it. >> And also do have gave all the waiverss or mandatory safety and demolition request in that location also 25186 street. Um there's every single item I have a list I'm going to give to you. It's waved upstairs to report waved. That's not acceptable in the community. This is there's a lot of children and senior living in the community. It's not safe and the scope of this waivers is highly in regulated. Um there are a safety concerns in the community and also um DO renewed demolition permit without D give a storm construction permit also in that location. We going to I'm going to ask my team bring the letter to you directly because we send emails send letters. Um we haven't hear anything back. Actually my team is there. Um Jennifer can you bring the letter to commissioner and also there's a lot of fees waved for us in the community. We had 100 community complaints closed without inspection in that location 25186 street. We like to hear what's going on in that location. Why this developer get exempt from every single thing? And this is a minority community and without all the privilege and all the immigrants live there and also we definitely the community deserve the answer there. >> Absolutely. >> And then we just give you the delivered the personal the the letter in person. And also I have another question about some permit stop order issued on 55 Chie Street. Uh it's a a nonprofit location. The stop order was issued in 2008 and the owner and the developer changed so many times and the developer right now and also it's a nonprofit there. They want to reach out to do ob to see what they should do to lift the stop order and they did not hear anything back. We sent a letter in January. I know it's not you are not there yet but we didn't hear anything back. It's also in the pile of the letter. Great. We like hear the director response also. >> Yep. Uh on the first issue it's uh in particular the first question you raised that actually goes to D but not us. Point being all the issues whatever whatever relates to us whatever relates to us ND or DUP exclusively we will circle up with them get you answers on that and um we'll look at the letter about the stop work order and we will reach out to them >> we like to have inspector come to that site request to that site 25186 street >> um because a lot of seniors children live there we get a complaint almost every single day it's a minority group people usually don't speak English, we can have an interpreter come with you guys uh to tell you what's a issue there. And a lot of time for minority group, my community, 78% immigrants. Most of them don't speak English at all. They don't know where to complain. The only comp place they know how to complain is my office because they think I speak Chinese. Um I'm their council member. No matter they live in Manhattan or live in Queens or Stan Island, everyone come to my office. That's the reason we get complaint from all over the place. Um I have one more question. Thank you chair. Um my district has is the least affordable district um have least amount affordable units in whole city. Is any plan DOB can work with us about address this issue? >> Well, I think three ways. One, if there are affordable housing developers looking to build in your community and they need help from do to accelerate and move those projects forward either to just ideulate and do that or figure out how safe costs, we'd love to talk to them about that. We are obviously working under the deputy mayor and the mayor to think about how the housing plan helps communities like yours build more affordable housing. Additionally, existing buildings that are either naturally occurring, rent regulated, otherwise income restricted, preserving those units or rehabbing units that are offline that could be rented, that would be something that DOB can help them with any permits that they need to renovate and put that back on the rental market. And then separate and apart if there is just a planning discussion about how either the existing code uh or the zoning resolution we can talk we can partner with DCP and work with your office to think about what else we can do. But prim primarily as a regulator as the team issuing out the permits as the folks who are helping people figure out the fastest way to get from A to Z on putting housing online or rehabbing housing. That's how we can partner to get affordable housing up. And also in the pile of the letters that one of the letter we sent on March 18th, we actually have the suggestion of the site 25186 street. This is a perfect location and the high demand community needs more affordable housing in the area. Please look into that and we like to hear back from you. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Council Member Jan. Council me uh Majority Leader Abu. >> Thank you. Thank you, Chair, Mr. Commissioner. I want to say you also been very responsive yourself individually, but my team has also had some struggles with getting answers on certain questions. Um, and so I just figured I would ask for the record. Um, if a constituent wants to verify that work at their building was completed properly and inspected by the appropriate personnel, what tools or resources do does OB make available to them? So I could say that on on the online system biz building information system or on do ob the information related to the inspection. So you see a couple notes about the inspection, the badge number of the individual and that's um that sort of record of what happened. Uh it's an abbreviated uh 80 character description but that's one way to ensure and then sometimes people see they have their complaint number but they don't see anything there. That's because we get multiple complaints about a particular issue and they are sort of compacted into one response from the one visit to respond to the multiple multiple complaints about that issue. >> So DOB inspection records includes badge numbers and names but it is not always clear to a >> names. Everything's just bad, >> badge numbers, last name >> and last names. But it is not always clear to a lay person whether those identifiers refer to a DO inspector or to a contractor or Lency. How is a constituent supposed to distinguish between the two when reviewing their permit history? I think >> are you referring to uh complaint inspections or inspections following um work that's occurring? inspections following work that's occurring >> like for a new construction site like through >> I my constituent I'm literally asking on behalf of a constituent um and I believe is for work being performed following the inspection it is not clear whether these identifiers refer to a do inspector or to a contractor or lency and I'm just trying to figure constituent trying to figure out how to distinguish between the two >> if it's a 311 complaint it would be a badge number of a B inspector if it's a another kind of action I think if your constituent can send a screenshot of what they're looking at then we can we can break that down and identify it all you have >> it also depends on the type of inspection that's being done whether it's plumbing electrical or construction um electrical uh we used to do 100% of those but recently we just instituted selferts with electricians and and lenses >> what if it's involving gas work Gas work is 100% inspected by our plumbing development team. >> If a constituent contacts do OB to ask, let's say a consition really wants to get on the phone and ask OB whether a licensed inspector was present and signed off on a specific inspection. Is that information DOB will provide? I mean I my my sense is that and I I can double check this after if you call the burrow enforcement unit the for the burrow then you'll be able to get information about the inspection that happened uh it should correspond to the information that we put also available on the website. Um and so those two things should match. So you can either call the Burough enforcement team, sorry, the burough enforcement office. That information is available on our website or you can look online once the notes are updated for that complaint. And I would just uh make sure that people know that if it's not their specific complaint number that they should look at related complaints since there may have been a bundle of that issue into one inspection where it covers all of them. And then my last set of questions on gas work specifically for inspections involving gas work, who is required to be present and how can a constituent verify after the fact that these individuals were actually there >> the license. >> I have a lot of skeptical constituents that some of these things are being done is what I'm getting at. And I do think to the extent that there's a mechanism for them to have confidence that individuals who are supposed to be present and licensed, you know, I want to make sure that they have that information so that they're not, you know, concerned or living in fear that some serious work like gas work is being done by unlicensed professionals for example. >> First and foremost, if there are specific addresses that you or your constituents are worried about, please let us know. We're happy to work with you on those. Um with regards to uh gas inspections in terms of our plumbing development team um the lency is required to request that inspection and be there during the inspection. Um our plumbing team um the inspection is reviewed by a supervisor and uh by a quality assurance team as well uh before any g gas authorization is issued. >> All right. I'll have uh Jalisa Quigley from my team follow up with your interguff team. I just want to reiterate again, Commissioner, you are so accessible. Anytime I text you, you pick up. You're always responsive and I know that if I had reached out to you about this issue, it would have been resolved, too. It's just something that came into into my lap as I came to this hearing. So, I want to thank you so much for your work and your team's hard work. >> Thank you, council member. And since we're on the record, I just want to say also if anyone has uh any reason to believe that a plumber is unlicensed or doing work without a license, please report that to us. We have a strategic operation team that does investigations into those plumbers. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. >> Thank you, Majority Leader, Council Member Ables, and then I will ask my questions. Uh, and then we'll go to a second round. >> Great. Thank you, Chair. Um, thank you to the whole team for being here and all the work that you do. Um, I would like to follow up on on a couple of property issues, um, in our district. Um and and your team has in fact been responsive. I think these are just kind of these kind of issues that take years and years and years. So the first one is 142 to 156 33rd Street. This is a site that has been ostensibly under construction for well over eight years. Has a shed. Uh has received many violations. There is no work on this site. I live literally a block away from it and I have never seen any work happening and yet we continue they continue to renew all the various permits for the site. I've never even seen a human on the site. Um it is constantly unsanitary. We have to have sanitation there all the time. People are hanging out there. It's just terrible. I just would love to remove this shed finally. their expiration for the shed is coming up. Um, and I don't see any reason why we should renew it because there is no work happening at this site. >> I we'll have >> we'll look into it. I know you don't have it with you, but I I want to flag it. Um, similarly, we have it um 8220th Avenue. This is a residential area, a home that has decidedly somebody has decided they want to use it as a um a storage, a restaurant, commercial manufacturing. Um your team has been out to inspect the site, has observed the legal activity, uh has put forward a violation. I think somehow they think the violation means they should do more. So what I'm receiving from residents is they see more activity than ever before. So I would love to understand how long an owner is given I know they give a warning letter for their violations and then how long it takes for a padlocking operation. U this is clear violation all day long seven days a week in a residential neighborhood. Would love to know like what the next steps for that will be. >> Interested. We I mean we can talk Gamma if you want to talk through our normal padlocking. Yeah, maybe just like to describe the process. >> I'm not familiar with the specific address. I'll definitely look into it. I'll get back. >> No, no, just generically. I think it would help the residents to understand that, you know, it's it's a process. >> Generally, if there's a commercial use in a residential area, then a padlock is an option. >> Um, so we would have to go to court uh to seek a closure in that scenario, but we'll definitely look into the specific issue and then update you right away. And how long does that process generally take? It >> varies. It depends on, you know, when we've issued the violation, what violation we issued, and then um if the um operations continue, which you're saying they are continuing. >> Yeah, full-fledged. >> I'll I'll get back to you right away. >> Um okay, thank you so much. And then in terms of um in terms of local law, local law 97, um I was curious if uh if if DOB has observed particular building types or burrows that are disproportionately at risk of non-compliance and and how the agency has been targeting to support these areas. >> So we're actually going through the auditing and review process now. we had given owners more time at the end of last year since we heard very much from the community they needed that extra time. So, uh we are working on that data and we'll be releasing that as soon as we have it ready. But right now overall, I just say that and reiterating what the deputy commissioner said, we have seen tremendous compliance with phase one and and also reiterating that phase two is going to be a a challenge for some and we're just trying to figure out what the tools are to help them tackle that. >> Great. And is it a Thank you. Thank you for that. I think, you know, we we are in full support of local law 97 and know how important it is and want to continue to push through. Obviously, as we move through the tiers, it will get more complex. Um, but I think, you know, for the record, I think it's important to note that we want to continue to move through um the various phases. Do you anticipate um needing any additional funding or resources to make sure that we can move through this next phase? >> You know, right now we are we've been supported uh by our colleagues at OM and other parts of government. We're also not alone in this. We work very closely with the mayor's office for climate and environmental uh justice on this. So, I feel like we we have the resources that we need. What we have to spend this year doing is finishing up these phase one reports starting the next round of reports. We're also doing some additional analysis and study to see how the changing environment impacts the way we help people comply with the rules on the books with the laws in the books. >> Great. Thank you so much to your team. Thank you for your responsiveness and uh look forward to working together. and chair just to second um council member Brewer's uh request for an expediter hearing. I would very much like to part participate. >> All right. Uh thank you. Thank you, council member. I'm going to move to another set of questions and then and then the final round with our council colleagues. Um uncollected fines, DOB's uncollected fines. In the latest environmental control board report from November 2025, we see that between fiscal 18 and fiscal 25, DOB is owed more than $300 million in fines and acred interests. This accounts for one-third of all outstanding ECB judgement debt. First, is this number inclusive of all unpaid fines and charges owed to the department? If not, can you provide an up-to-date number? Second, uh to the extent I know DOB does not collect, but if you have any insights on why the city has had difficulty collecting these unpaid fines, uh please share. Third, given the multi-billion dollar funding gap we are facing, what steps could the city take to recoup these uncollected revenues? So um of the 300 and excuse me of the 310 million I would say about 2thirds 196 is uh default penalties and interest and so default penalties which as another context set in piece you know DUB violations could be uh higher than some other agencies that up upwards of 25,000 that is uh a default is usually when someone does not respond to their oaring and that plus the interest that carries over time is what occurs. I I I had mentioned this earlier, but the 310 is over, you know, an eight-year period. And so that is something while not uh insignificant during a budget environment, we do have several ways that we collect since uh over that same time period, we are collecting somewhere between 75 million and 80 million a year. And over that same time, I you know, quick math, it's about $640 million that we're collecting. So with DOF there are a couple ways that we um you know we there are a couple ways that we we do this. So for the DOB perspective again we're uh holding licenses we're holding permits. Um DOF is also acting upon Selen authority. Uh from the DOF report in fiscal year 25 converted 1,18 violations totaling 1.9 million to property leans. They received 4.5 million in payments, up from 2.2 million in fiscal year 24 um from owners who were notified about the lean conversions. There's also the option of a firm of litigation which DO works with the law department um when we're dealing with property owners when and this is a mix of addressing violating conditions and collecting outstanding penalties. Uh beyond that, I think we're always open to a conversation and in fact we continue to have active ones internally about what our lean authority is, where our collection tools are. U given that a we want to hold people accountable. We're in a budget situation, but I also don't want to lose sight that still our first goal is to get compliance. So we need these property owners to make fixes, make safe, and if there's a penalty at the other side of that, we collect as well. >> Thank you. And I' I'd want to sort of invite you to invite us to be a partner in that conversation especially what is leanable and what is not so that we can you know do any you know take any steps that the council can take to to increase that collection rate. Um a lot has been asked about sidewalk sheds. So I my only followup to uh council member Maloney's line of questions is regarding the 15% decline in the number of sheds. Um would the what does a department attribute though that decline to what policies exactly are working best. >> So I think there is a mixture of the affirmative litigation which individual cases but also are purposely making known this work is also supposed to send a signal to the community. We've also uh been actively having staff make outreach, proactive outreach to folks who especially those who have long-term sheds, which are now three years and older, asking them more information about what's going on, why the sheds are up. Is it a do permit or plan review issue? Is it something on their financing side? Trying to connect them with other resources that may exist to move their project forward. Um there are a number I think there are a number of things especially the additional external climate and communication and negative perception of sheds that are moving folks along. Additionally having a long-term shed or having outstanding violations or issues with your building can complicate things like uh getting insurance or getting a mortgage or being able to make a financial transaction on your property. So you in order to make your property in a place where you can do those three things, you try to move through, correct the condition, remove the violations, bring down the shed. >> Thank you. Thank you so much, Commissioner. Um, regarding shame people, shame. Shame. That's what I That's what I took away from that. Let's shame people into No, I'm kidding. But it's it's really helpful to understand that litigation is working and and that the deep conversations are are working. Um, speed and lift task force. Can you provide an update uh to the extent possible on where these task forces are when we can uh the public can anticipate uh reports coming out, recommendations? Um yeah. >> Yeah. So uh I believe that all or all of the all of the housing plan and the speed report is in the first probably the end of second quarter of this year. Um the conversations have been robust and ongoing. um and they involve multiple units within DOB in addition to the the larger team that the deputy mayors have set up. So uh between speed the speed task force which is focused on activating public land uh the work around the rent ripoff hearings and that task force plus a series of other um working groups that the mayor and the DMs have sent around affordability and protecting New Yorkers. There's a lot of active work focused not only on the housing and building space, but on the process, fines, fees, and affordability questions. >> All right, a lot of uh hopefully spring break reading coming our way. Um, local law 97. So, picking up where colleagues have left off. Um, heartened to hear about a 90 to 92% compliance rate. Um is this just making sure I understand is this compliance with reporting requirements or with actual emissions reduction requirements for the the first phase. >> So this is reporting we are working through the details of those reports and doing our audits now and you know for those who um have met their obligation that's great. For those who haven't filed a report they'll get a notice of defect and then they'll have an opportunity to cure and file that report. For those who have exceeded their emissions condition, they will get a notice of defect to tell us what that tells them what the fine is or their ability to rectify that fine if it's within 10% um through an offset uh which is actually a program that helps support funding uh improvements on the energy side for affordable housing. So there there is a a connection there. Laura, I'm not your friend. >> Yeah, for the notice of deficiency. Who didn't file? That's very, very good. Who didn't file getting notices of deficiency and we just want them to file, but if they don't, then there'll be petitions uh sent to oath >> and we started issuing for those who are over their missions limits and those will need to pay. >> It'll be fine. Um, thank you. and any trends uh that we're noticing about who hasn't filed. >> Is there any indication that it's about their typology or >> I think once we have the information we'll know as a whole you know we continue to hear you have um you know low-inccome co-ops who have questions about how to reconcile. you have building owner like new buildings versus old buildings and you know the question the questions may be different for them but overall you know we're also working with an industry who is working on financial modeling um lending services uh alternative materials all trying to be responsive so that they can meet their obligation under this law >> thank you are we confident in our uh progress toward the 2030 goals >> I think we too early >> yeah I think it's it's too early but We we've we have done a lot of work to give people the technical assistance to figure out what they need to get there. Between the NYC accelerator program, the work we're doing with CUNI with their sustainability center, the there's a a slew of financial tools that have been out there, uh the renewal of J51 will, I think, give more confidence and support to help a lot of people meet those needs. And we through city of Yes for carbon neutrality and subsequent code changes that we've been working on trying to modify the building code and the multiple dwelling law to allow for uh new technologies to better filt rehab better fit rehabs you know that gives us more confidence that we can move forward. >> Thank you. Um my next question is about changes being contemplated in the state with with respect to the CLCPA. Um, does the department have a perspective on the impact of the pro the governor's proposed changes on our ability to implement or the building's ability to um our buildings sorry New York City's building's ability to comply with local law 97. Um and my understanding is that the targets uh are being changed and that could um the targets are being changed and deadlines are are being changed and specifically if requirements are softened at the state level uh wouldn't that mean that utilities would provide dirtier energy or could provide dirtier energy to buildings and make it harder for our city to meet our targets? >> So if the changes happen, we'll be looking at the effects on 97. We've projected out the emissions associated with electricity based on the state's CLCPA goals. So, we'll have to see if anything happens at that point, but it's too early to say, >> but our projections are based on the existing CLCA goals. >> Okay. Uh, thank you. Um, city of Yes and City for all funding implementation. Can the department of buildings provide an update on uh your commitments under city of yes and specifically there was a line in the points of agreement around city of yes for housing that required 200 additional staff lines across HPD department of buildings and city planning. Sorry, I'm going to bring up Deputy Commissioner for Technical Affairs Gus Sakis. >> Hi. >> Hello, Deputy Commissioner. First, >> please put up your right hand. >> Um, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before this committee and to respond honestly to council member questions? >> I do. >> Thank you. You may proceed. I'm I'm sorry. Can you please repeat the question for me? I missed part of it. >> Show me the positions. Uh the the city for all commitments required 200 additional staff lines uh at DOB, HPD and DCP. So where where are we in terms of that funding source for positions at uh the Department of Buildings? >> Okay. So do received 83 positions for both city of Yes. and basement legalization. For city of Yes, we have 38 budgeted positions, 18 active and 20 vacant. For basement legalization, 45 positions, 21 active, 24 vacant. And I just want to note that the positions come in in a phased approach. So, we are not able to hire um maybe six to 10 positions until the later years. Okay. Um, thank you. Would love to just confirm if you could send that as a follow-up in writing. We're just trying to gather all of the city for all commitments, the status of all the city for all commitments. >> Absolutely. >> Um, great segue. Basement legalization. Um, last week the mayor announced that the applications for the plus1 ADU program would reopen. Can you share with us, remind us what kind of support, financial and otherwise, this program provides? um how many homeowners have taken advantage of the plus one program to date and could you provide a breakdown by council district, community district or any sort of geographic breakdown? >> So many of these questions are actually questions that would defer to our colleagues at HPD that's managing the program. You know, I'll just say that the ADU for one uh for you know, the ADU program is going to do a number of things. In this particular announcement, uh like with the shed designs that we talked about earlier, we have created a template, uh a set of different diagrams and floor plans to help expedite the type of ADUs people can choose, feel confident about the OB's review and acceptance of this. It would still have to go through plan exam review, but we are trying to take the guesswork and trying to make this feel more real and uh available to New Yorkers. Um the city has seen millions of dollars and we're grateful for the state support uh through their IDU pilot program that's funded part of this. The work on the website is to not only let people know about the different technical assistance that they can receive, the guidance around the templates to be able to envision this more easy, but it also reopens the uh the weight list, which I think at that time uh when we closed it, there was nearly 2400 interested parties. Uh the program within the pilot areas laid out by state law will continue under this um refresh and we look forward to helping out homeowners who can take advantage of the city of Yes. and the MDL changes that have happened over the last couple years. >> Thank you, Commissioner. Do you just want to stay for the HBD? >> I I feel like I've covered um my part. Um uh two more I think quick questions from me. Um and then I I know council member Shang if did she have did she leave more questions? >> Okay. Okay. Great. Um so one super myopically I have a set of constituents whose home whose homes are two family homes. They're classified as three family homes and they're getting these notices from HPD uh from Department of Buildings regarding uh the inspection the requirement to inspect gas piping systems via pursuent local law 152. How do they um fix their building's designation from a two from a three family to a two family? >> So online there on their website there are some steps and forms that you may need to fill but go I don't know if there yeah I think it's it's two parts. one would be looking at the department's website to confirm that what their certificate of occupancy or anything says. Uh if they have that information, I believe they can file a challenge with the local law unit that handles the uh 152 inspections and confirm that. Um, otherwise if the property is listed legally as a three family on the DOB's website, then they would need to file a change of use to to change the CFO to a two family and they would need to hire an architect to file plans. They can either come to they can reach out to their burough office come to it's the first and third Tuesday of every month is uh buildings after hours or they can come and speak with DOB staff about their issue or your office can you know reach out through Phil or your your DOB IGA contact and we can work with them. >> Excellent. Okay. Thank you. Asking for some friends. Um okay so regarding vacate orders fires uh communication uh between agencies when there is a fire um one can you share uh what is in the event of a fire whether it's one alarm to alarm a million alarms a lot of alarms um is do automatically or in every instance notified by fire when there is a fire uh so triggering an inspection or is it case by case number one um and then on the sort of after the fire um situation. Uh does the department prioritize inspection of vacant um or of vacated units and uh units with vacate orders to help uh rehouse people or help people get back home faster. >> So I'll answer the second part first. So we are absolutely trying to do more to get people into housing more quickly and typically we are working in combination with HPD because often when it comes to a residential property we're seeing both do if there's a DO vacate for a structural integrity issue. Uh there may be housing maintenance code issues as well where HPD has a vacate. So, we're working together on that and um we actually the new local law that was passed by the council, council member Gutierrez's bill creates a brand new apparatus. We're working very closely with that team to set a new strategy for helping those who are vacated out of their units. Not only the city helping them directly with their case management, but also working with us to see what we're doing to get the vacate working with the owner to get the vacate lifted. Um and the first one you know is in terms of instances and accidents and issues where we get called there are thousands that happen every year. uh Do has a very specific role in this emergency response work and is often at the initial assessment done by uh the first responders on the site, the fire department, burrow marshals who have decades of experience with structural and um structural integrity issues that would fall under our perspective or uh the New York Office of Emergency Management that may call us because they see an issue that requires our attention. Then we will deploy inspectors, engineers, whatever is needed in order to follow up. Again, it's really important about the timing of phasing. We can only go into a site once the conditions under control. And so that also attributes to when the call happens and when we deploy individuals. I'll just add that um we have a a flyer that we give out uh anytime we do um uh vacate uh tenants. Um it was worked on uh with HPD and buildings um directly. Uh we have QR codes. We have informations about what happens if you lose right if you're vacated and and and what assistance the um the city can offer. and that's handed out every time um we do issue a vacate uh specifically when residents are displaced. >> Thank you, Deputy Commissioner. Um I guess I'm I'm still I I heard you say that DOB often is conducts an initial assessment. So does that mean that you do not always conduct an assessment? >> No. So the initial assessment is done by the first responders on the site. So, if we're talking about a fire, uh, you have, you know, you have, uh, engines and ladders that are deployed, burrow chiefs that have the FDNY burough chiefs that have, um, you know, that usually a long experience history, understanding the issues that would require DOB's involvement, uh, particularly around safety issues, questioning structural integrity, uh, or egress address, things of that sort. Then we are uh then we get an alert to be deployed to the site. Our emergency operations team, which continues to be staffed seven days a week, we will then deploy uh in, you know, we'll deploy DOB personnel there and then our DO personnel on site will then determine do we need forensic inspections, the facade unit, who else whoever else we need, we send. How often is FDNY uh determining upon that initial assessment that DOB should come on site after a one alarm or above? All hands are above. >> I don't know if you >> I did not share that question with you in advance. So >> yeah, I can get the number of fire incidents that we've responded to. Um, specifically, um, I have I have the list, um, in terms of the last calendar year that we've responded to. Um, it's it's let us get you that full list. Um, a more comprehensive list. Um, but specifically, uh, with regards to what the commissioner said, FDNY will only call us if there is a structural stability concern. Got it. All right. Um, thank you. Thank you so much for for that response. And you all know what I am getting at. Just making sure that um buildings that need to have vacu uh vacates issued whether it's by buildings or by HPD um which we'll continue this discussion later that those are are issued in a timely fashion because it impacts uh the access that tenants have to uh emergency support services. Oh, the only thing I'll point out is that American Red Cross ARC operates on a different schedule than the send parallel. So, uh, if there's emergency services, emergency uh, residential services that need to be provided, it's not predicated. It can, it may not be needed that's predicated on a vacate that those services can be provided otherwise. >> Okay, that's that's very helpful. All right. Okay. Well, with that, thank you so much, uh, Commissioner and team. Uh, we're we're going to take a short recess and, uh, get back together at 2:15 for HPD. >> Thank you so much. Have a great day. >> Sir, I don't I can't get used to you in the tie. This doesn't make sense. All right. Good afternoon and welcome back to this afternoon's continuing hearing on housing and buildings and the mayor's preliminary proposed budget. I want to start by reggrounding us, repeating a bit of what I said earlier today, just making sure to set the table from the council's perspective. Our city is in a housing crisis. It is hitting low-income New Yorkers the hardest. And what we do must remain multiaceted, building more, preserving what we have, and enforcing the laws we already have on the books. Right now, we're seeing real strain in the system. The mayor's preliminary management report shows that h housing violations are rising. Emergency repairs remain elevated with interventions increasing and distress in our housing stock is not shrinking. I appreciate the administration's efforts to sharpen tools to go after the worst actors as we saw a week and a half ago at uh 919 Prospect Avenue and your engagement in discussions around overhauling the city's power of municipal foreclosure via intro intro 657. At the same time, there is a broader issue across the system. Collections are down, operation operating costs are up. While we go after the worst actors, we also need to understand how HPD is supporting owners who are trying to do the right thing but are financially strained. Stabilizing the housing stock requires addressing both. HPD is also responsible for overseeing a significant portfolio of housing including super city supervised Mitchellama buildings, article 11 properties and other affordable housing with regulatory agreements. How are we monitoring compliance? And what is the plan for aging buildings that need substantial support? Another concern is displacement. Black New Yorkers are leaving the city in record numbers. Everyone feels the squeeze. What is HPD doing to protect and expand home ownership in in communities of color? We are uh and how are we ensuring that housing policy is not accelerating the displacement we see? With respect to our housing lottery, we need to move faster. There is more work to be done to cut red tape in the system, faster inspections, faster approvals, faster leaseups, uh removing redundant uh steps in the in the lease up process so that families can move into permanent housing more quickly. Uh so that families can move into permanent housing more quickly. We also continue to see individuals remain in HPD emergency housing after vacate orders for extended periods, nearly two years for a single adults and over a year for a family. What steps is the agency taking to improve these metrics and reduce the census there? And with respect to vouchers, we see utilization rates down with our section 8 vouchers and fewer vouchers are being issued by the agency. At the same time, related to the point above, uh households in HPD shelters and the families that HPD helps cannot currently access city fees vouchers, although hopefully that may change someday, but this this tool is very important and I want to continue that conversation. Finally, there are broader system issues that intersect with HPD's work. Um, collected fines and charges also applied to HPD. Concerns about construction quality in newer buildings have surfaced in the media in recent weeks and how our capital dollars are being deployed is important. Uh, the final note is that our council took a major step forward last year through zoning reforms that allow a little more housing in every neighborhood paired with five billion dollars in housing and infrastructure develop in investments. And so we would want to see an update on how we're doing uh in spending those funds. And with that, I look forward to today's discussion. I'll turn it over to our council to administer the oath and hear your testimony. >> Please raise your right hand. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to answer all council member questions honestly? >> I do. >> Thank you. You may begin when ready. Give us one second. >> We got it. >> Okay. >> Keeping it interesting. >> Now we go. Chair Sanchez, members of the committee, thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here for the first time as the new commissioner of HPD. I've been working in affordable housing for many years, but a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to hear testimony directly from tenants at the rental ripoff hearings in the Bronx and in Queens. Several of the residents I met came from buildings where I had actually been a community organizer almost 20 years ago. It was striking that despite the passage of so much time, the same group of landlords were being called out and the tenants stories were basically unchanged. refusals to make repairs, overcharges on rent, and disregard for tenants safety. It's been more than two decades, and yet there are a small group of landlords who continue to wreak havoc on a new generation of tenants. My takeaway was clear. We need to do better. We must be the ones to end this cycle to ensure that future generations of tenants will not have the same stories to tell 20 years from now. This will not be my only priority while leading HPD, but it will serve as a daily reminder for how I plan to approach this work. When it is clear that our strategies are not working, we have to change course. We need to remind ourselves every day that there is urgency in our work and we cannot let the shortcomings of our past limit our vision for what will be possible in the future. I have held this position for little more than 10 weeks. But in that short time, I have marveled at what this agency accomplishes every day and the incredible potential that lies ahead. Already, several key priorities have come into focus. First, we must build more housing across every neighborhood in every burrow, and we must do so at a faster pace. It will take a multi-pronged approach, bringing all parties to the table, labor, tenants, developers, and of course, the council. We must work together to build housing faster, more coste effectively, and without compromising quality or safety. Second, we must preserve and stabilize the existing affordable housing stock. We will not build our way out of this crisis if we do not preserve and protect the affordable housing that already exists. We must tackle rising expenses and find additional ways to assist tenants in making sure that they can afford their rent. Third, we must fix what is within our reach. Whether that's how we contact sorry contract and pay our nonprofit partners or how we handle marketing and leaseups, we know that these problems are fixable and they are within our control. Where are there where there are duplicative steps, we will eliminate them. And where we have let government make things too complicated, we will find ways to simplify. Finally, we must do more to protect our residents. HPD will use its entire array of enforcement tools to put willful bad actors out of business once and for all. Sorry. We will work with organized tenant groups to be our partners in code enforcement and we will create avenues to connect well-intentioned landlords and homeowners to the resources they need to succeed. I believe that these goals are achievable, but we are sober about the current climate that we are in. Federal funding is under attack. Construction prices have skyrocketed and operating expenses are strangling property owners. The Mandani administration has inherited a difficult financial situation and a staffing shortage due to the last administration's hiring freeze. This is the environment we are in and it is a hard reality. HVD's total expense budget under the fiscal year 2027 preliminary plan is just over $1.4 billion. Nearly threearters of that funding comes from the federal government through section 8 CDBG and home. Our federal funding is irreplaceable and it must be maintained. On the capital side, our current budget for 2027 is just over 2.9 billion. 1.9 billion for our direct pipeline and a 10-year plan totaling 22.6 billion. Behind all of that work, there are 2400 people, our staff, who show up every day to do this work with dedication and determination. That includes 345 staffers on our development teams, 324 code inspectors out in the field, and 421 public servants connecting New Yorkers to housing and rental assistance. HPD currently has 431 open positions, roughly a 15% vacancy rate. We are actively working to meet our vacancy target, at which point we will no longer be subjected to the two for one hiring freeze, offering us a renewed path forward. And despite these challenges, the teams at HPD continue to deliver for New York every day. In calendar year 2025, HPD financed or supported the creation and preservation of almost 30,000 affordable homes, including more than 13,000 newly constructed units through our capital and tax incentive programs. This includes construction starts of 1,900 units of supportive housing and more than 2500 units that serve extremely lowincome households. With respect to our as of right programs, 485X is now operational and we have 188 projects in our pipeline. And under the universal affordability preference, we have already closed on more than300 units. We continue to advance home ownership, particularly in underserved communities. Through our homeowner help desk, we have connected New Yorkers to critical resources like our home first down payment assistance program and our home fix rehabilitation program. We have reached nearly 9,000 people, provided assistance to 2,900 homeowners, and stabilized 471 families. We are also carrying out Mayor Mandani's directive to use our public land for public good. Since 2014, HPD has financed construction of 26,000 new homes on public land, the vast majority of which was 100% affordable. And through the mayor's executive order 4, agencies across the city will identify public sites to support an additional 25,000 new homes over the next 10 years. We must continue to expand our development capacity and make sure that every neighborhood in every burrow is building their fair share of affordable housing. In partnership with DCP, we will be putting forward the fair housing framework and our strategic equity analysis to assess housing needs across the city and name specific production targets in every community district. At the same time, we are mindful of the need to increase our preservation efforts, which will also require multiple strategies. We know that responsible landlords are struggling and we must address the challenges related to rising expenses, particularly insurance and the need to improve rent collection. We know that most often when a tenant does not pay their rent, it is because they simply do not have the means. We must do more to intervene early and connect residents with resources to ensure the stability of our citizens and also our housing stock. In 2025, we preserved over 16,000 affordable homes. Over the past 10 years, we have invested 1.1 billion dollars to preserve our Mitchell Lama housing. And we are currently working with 15 Mitchell Lama projects to provide financial restructuring and/or major capital improvements. We know there is more to do here and we are actively looking at ways to increase our preservation efforts for our 92 Mitchell Lama projects through the ANCP program. There are now 40 resident controlled cooperatives under active construction, putting the promise of home ownership finally within reach. There are still 64 buildings totaling just over,00 units under city ownership and we are working to find ways to move these projects to closing more quickly. We know that they have waited long enough. Finally, we are actively working with our colleagues at HDC and the mayor's office to protect tenants to identify interventions to preserve our privatelyowned rentstabilized stock, particularly those that are in physical and financial distress. Whether through intervening in bankruptcy and foreclosure proceedings as we did in Pinnacle or by bringing aggressive legal action to stop harassment and disinvestment as we did with the A&E portfolio. This administration will ensure that rent stabilized tenants get the protections and the housing they deserve. We are also deeply committed to improving how New Yorkers get connected to the housing that we create. Through our rental assistance programs, HPD administers subsidies to more than 44,000 uh households every year. Last fiscal year, HPD connected over 10,000 households to affordable homes through our housing connect lottery system. And we moved more than 4600 households out of shelter through our homeless set aside program, a 15% increase over the prior year. But these improvements are not sufficient and we plan to rev revamp both our housing lottery and our homeless placement systems. Incremental fixes here will not go far enough. We are taking a hard look at every part of the process and if necessary, we will migrate to a more efficient and nimble system. Finally, we are committed to redoubling our efforts to ensure that tenants are protected once inside their homes. In the last fiscal year, HPD's enforcement team issued over 870,000 code violations, initiated or joined more than 12,000 legal actions, and resolved more than 22,000 code violations through comprehensive litigation. We spent $25 million on emergency repairs impacting more than 177,000 units of housing. And we discharged 199 buildings from the alternative enforcement program. With regard to tenant harassment, in fiscal year 2025, we completed a thousand site visits at almost 600 buildings and initiated 25 court cases related to those inspections. Through our partners and preservation program, we support a network of grassroots community groups who have knocked on 21,000 doors in distressed properties across the city and organized new tenant associations in 86 buildings. and we are collaborating with the mayor's office to protect tenants with whom we share a vision for how or organized residents can play a critical role in improving our code enforcement system but also serving as a primary partner to local government in holding landlords accountable. I would like to add that we do know the overwhelming majority of property owners and managers in this city are working in good faith and that they care about their tenants and are important partners to our agency. But for that small group of landlords who have willfully ignored the year the law for decades functioning in essence as professional slum lords, I would like to make sure that our message here today is clear. Their time is up. In closing, I would like to reiterate my uh admiration for the incredible staff at HPD and the magnitude of work that they have accomplished during very difficult times. It will be my honor to work alongside them as we set out to achieve the affordable housing goal laid out by the new mayor. Getting there will be hard, but our marching orders are clear. We have been tasked with realizing an affordability agenda for the city of New York. That mandate begins with the recognition that all New Yorkers are entitled to a decent, safe, and affordable place to call home. I look forward to building a strong partnership with the members of this council and to working collaboratively to achieve our shared goals. I thank you for the opportunity to present here today and I am happy to answer your questions. Thank you. >> Thank you so much commissioner and uh congratulations. Really look forward to working with you in this capacity. First hearing of of many I'm sure of many. I know. Um, >> I'm so sorry. >> It's good luck. >> It is. It is great luck. It is great luck. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um, no problem. So, starting with uh And first I just have to say it is completely refreshing to to hear the priority of going after the the worst actors. We know that that is not the majority of uh owners in the city of New York, but they are here and they are terrible and I'm I'm very glad to to have that partnership across the hall. Um and and that HPD in in this form of leadership, this iteration of leadership. Um okay, so my first question is looking at the HPD capital budget. Can HBD provide an update on on its funding commitments under the city of Yas city for all points of agreement? Um, specifically capital funding. There was two billion in capital over five years promised, including a billion dollars from New York State. How much of the $1 billion from New York State has the city drawn down and which H uh for which HPD programs and term sheets? And then you mentioned some some statistics about who we're serving with uh the home ownership programs, but if you can give us a breakdown uh in terms of how many families we've been able or households we've been able to help with h home first down payment assistance with home fix with legal services and outreach via the homeowner help desk technical assistance uh for creating ADUs in the plus one program. >> Okay. Um so maybe we could start with the city of Yes, council member. Is that okay? Um so again just to make sure I'm speaking um to two different pots of money. So there's the money that was allocated by the state um and that money is going to remain with HCR right so it is allocated directly by them into projects many of which we are co-unding with them in New York uh city so uh I think their uh total allocation breaks out to there's a number of different um categories but it's for new construction um Mitchell Lama preservation and then I think it's 250 million that they're passing through to Nitra projects. Um, and then there's other categories which guardier can sort of break down into smaller numbers. Then separately there's the the city money. Thank you for providing to us which you will see reflected in both our expense and our capital budget over the fiscal years 2025 through 2029. So again, multiple categories where those dollars are spread out. Um, it's 875 million for our budget and then 125 million that is being passed through to NIH. >> Yeah. Yeah, just uh so thank you uh for the answer uh for the question, council member. So for the city's portion of our capital for city of Yes, it's 825 million for HBD uh and 175 million for Natcha Pact. Uh and for Yeah. >> Copy. Um for for the uh 250 million in state funds focusing in on the state money the state funds going to NICHA um is that for packed RAD conversions or is that for section 9 support? Do you know? >> No. So we have to confirm that. Uh we don't have the details on exactly uh which part of that uh but we can confirm that. >> Okay. >> But I I can say council member we do have active projects now for the new construction portion that the state has committed through city of Yes. And if you'd like to hear, I could also introduce our new DC for development who can name a couple of those projects or we can come back to that. >> Yeah, I Yeah, >> Patrick, join us. >> It's a party up here. It's really fun. >> First on. >> Yep. >> Just raise your right hand. >> Do you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to answer all council member questions honestly? >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Phenomenal. Uh so the new construction pot of money that the commissioner referenced before uh is being deployed in affordable housing projects across the city. The HPD and HCR work on a jointly financed portfolio of of projects to stretch our resources as far as possible. Uh in particular, the city and the state um focus on and finance supportive and senior projects together. That's really where we kind of carve the lane out and carve our collaboration out and really trying to stretch the state dollars as far as possible. in addition to the city dollars as far as possible. So, of that $500 million that will be deployed to those types of types of projects. Uh within the next week, we are going to be closing a supportive housing project with spatial equity, a MBE developer in addition to housing plus a supportive housing provider in Brooklyn, 193 units. So that gives you kind of the type of flavor of projects that we that we work on jointly with with HCR and that capital will be deployed uh across the city for those specific kind of senior supportive um senior supportive independent but also senior supportive together as well. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. I just like I want to just like pause because it's just so incredible to go from this like wonky numbers conversation to like there's going to be 193 apartments for seniors and that's you know >> it's real and it's really really exciting to hear >> and customer just just a quick correction and na uh figure is 225 uh million so just wanted to clarify >> the state >> but from the state correct >> okay and then you will let me you will uh follow up on >> we can provide more details and break down there >> what about For the city capital, you said $825 million over what time frame? >> 2025 through fiscal year 2025 through 2029. And it's broken out amongst many categories including both capital and expense. >> Okay. >> And and then um Oh, so 825 is both capital and expense. >> No, that's okay. That's all right. Uh so the 825 uh is for capital and that's broken over FY25 to FYI 29 over various programs. We also on the expense side did get a little over 30 million across uh similar time frame for 94 positions that we're working uh 94 positions in the prior fiscal year uh last year and we are working to fulfill those positions. We have filled most of them and we're still working to hire more people. >> I I want to come back to the 94 positions and and what they are uh code enforcement versus development etc. Um but just on the 175 million passing through to NICHA just same question. Is it for packed in the city budget? Is it for packed or is it for section 9 support? >> Uh I know it's for packed. That's correct. >> Okay. Just saying out loud that um does HPD have any does the HPD have oversight over the pack funds? >> I can uh we do not have direct oversight over the pack funds. We did though, as you've probably seen in the preliminary budget, get four new staff to be working at HPD who will be working more closely with my job specifically on the pack deals. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um and just to highlight that as we were having the city for all discussions, the council really wanted to see an emphasis on section 9 support um not packed uh packed rad conversions. And so I I want to follow up and I know you're saying that you don't have oversight, but want to follow up on that. Um, in terms of the 94 positions, so there were 200 positions that were supposed to be spread from city of city for all between HPD, DOB and uh, planning. So you're telling me 94 positions are within HPD and and so what is the breakdown of those positions and where are we on hiring? >> So we can also provide more detail to you uh, later as a follow-up, but we do have a breakdown of the list of positions that uh, make up the 94 positions. And one second. Can you uh give us a breakdown? Um yeah, in relation to the uh amount of new construction and preservation u that was done by HPD in fiscal year 25 or calendar year 25 as you described. Um can you tell us how much of that was uh new construction versus preservation? How much of it was supportive housing and uh a breakdown by income band? >> Again, Guardia will correct me if I get these numbers wrong, but um on preservation, so this is calendar year 2025. There were six just over 16,000 units preserved. There were just over 13,500 new construction, which is across both our financed projects and our tax incentive projects. uh within the supportive world there were just under 2,000 units that were part of that. Uh in senior there was just over 1300 units and within that there were 2500 roughly uh very low or units created for extremely lowincome households. >> So out of the universe of 16,000 preserved you're saying 2500 were extremely low income. That is the combined total between new construction and uh preservation. >> Um are we as a city in compliance with the homeless set aside law requiring 15% of units in new construction projects uh that receive city financial assistance 40 units and above? Um are we compliance with in the set aside for homeless households? We are and all of our projects require the 15% set aside and in some cases we've had developers go above the 15%. >> And do all of these households receive voucher support? >> So a gra a big majority of them do get fabs right we are doing through the homeless set aside we are doing outside of the housing lottery system placements directly through a process we have with DSS. So, uh, most of those families come to us with a FEPS voucher. >> Thank you. >> Excluding packed funding, the HPD 5-year capital commitment plan in fiscal 27 um, has 12.6 billion, which is up from 10.55 billion in fiscal year 2026 adapted capital budget. Can you explain the change in uh HPD's five-year capital commitment plan? Where where uh where is the agency adding additional resources? >> So, I think I can take the first part and then Gardier will have to take the second part, but um for 2027, the increases is roughly $16 million. Uh and sorry, is that not the question? >> Oh, sorry. Was this capital? Okay. So, um go ahead. So, >> sorry, just before I go there, just quick uh point of correction uh council member on the uh city of Yes funding for the Natcha the Natcha uh amount the 175 million have confirmation that that is specifically for section 9 with emphasis on vacant units. So, just I just wanted to correct that for the record. Um >> I was very pregnant but I was paying attention. So, so, so yeah, we're used to the uh the NICHA funds usually being packed. So, I just want to make that correction. Um, >> thank you. >> And then for for the uh for our capital plan, part of it is that as we mentioned last year, we added we did add 825 million in capital for city of Yes. So, that increase our fiveyear capital with the last uh last year. Uh and then also uh there were some advanced capital uh for the current fiscal year uh to mostly in the new construction uh to advance projects and take advantage of some lite-cheek changes that we're trying to take advantage of before the end of the calendar year. So those account for uh the increase in capital that you see in the first uh few years of the capital plan and then it uh goes back to uh the normal range uh for the outer years. >> Thank you. Um, how is HPD's capital commitment plan changing due to passage of local law 57 of 2026, which mandates that at least 4% of new construction be for home ownership opportunity programs? >> Yes, council member. So, we are uh still trying to finalize what we think we need to make sure that we are in compliance with the 4% um of new construction being for home ownership, which I just want to say I'm a big fan of home ownership and worked on that issue for many years. So happy to be doing more of it. Um we don't yet have final numbers and we will be working with OM to sort of make sure we understand the full cost associated with that requirement but we have every intention of meeting it. >> Thank you. I want to acknow thank you for coming back. Welcome back. Um, okay. I'm gonna I'm going to just interperse my questions in between so that uh I can get to my colleagues as well. So, we are going to hear from Council Member Joseph first, followed by Jang and Brewer. Uh, Council Member Joseph, you're you're up. >> Well, in the meantime, are you good? >> I'm ready. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Um, good afternoon, Commissioner. Thank you for being in this role right now. We look forward to working with you, but we got a lot to work on, right? For example, apartment repairs and tenants harassment complaints, especially from rent stabilized tenants, have become prevalent in my office. My office receives a ton of complaints on a daily basis um from 311 calls, which becomes an acute problem, especially during wintertime. Um, what does HPD plan to improve the users experience for tenants reporting complaints via 311? >> And the sec and the second one since I don't have a lot of time. >> Yep. >> HPD violation, the A program and tenantled HPD action housing court. We all have shown their limited effectiveness in reversing the overall trend of landlord neglect for rent stabilized properties in my district. Example, 80 Clarkson Avenue, 75 Lennox Road, um was discharged from AP. 80 Clarkson was discharged from AAP program last year after showing improvement, but as of today, it still has 61 open class B, 36 open class C violation, and my office still received frequent complaints from tenants. How does HPD plan to make sure that buildings leaving the programs like A are not merely not distressed, but that they actually becoming the safe, warm, well-kept building all New Yorkers deserve. >> Thank you, council member. Um, so I'll start with the harassment question. So, this is also something I've worked on historically in my career. We will be working very closely with the mayor's office to protect tenants where this is a primary focus. I think one of the strategies that we're hoping to employ which we actually used in in the Pinnacle buildings and then also in some pilot programs in Brooklyn >> and I have some Pinnacles in my district as well 470 Ocean Avenue. >> Got it. Um, so the thinking here obviously is that where there are patterns of both harassment and distress across these larger portfolios, we do want to work more directly with tenant leadership to sort of schedule times for when we will come out to the buildings and really do a full sweep of those portfolios. I think that would significantly change some of the sort of predatory behavior that we see in that space. So that's part one and then again working with the mayor's office of tenant uh to protect tenants. I think there will be more capacity to make sure that tenants are organized and serving as partners to code enforcement so that we are more responsive in real time. On the AP question, I would be happy to set up a conversationally happen there. We obviously have statutory requirements that guide us in the AA program. Um, but if the building has been discharged, which usually means compliance and things are slipping again, we would want to know that. >> Yes. and and as wide range along with Pinnacle, there are quite a few other buildings in my district that are also facing bankruptcy. So, I'm working with another another building, 55 East 21st, the owner filed for bankruptcy. So, we're working with those and we're attending um tenant tenant meetings as well, 75 Lennox Road is also facing it is if you watch their Instagram page, >> it is horrifying to see what's happening currently at a 75 Lennox Road. And I do these walkthroughs in real time. I go to tenants homes to go see 80 Woodruff Avenue when the public advocate and I we did the worst list, the worst landlord list. That's in my district. We actually did a walk through through the basement through the tenants homes and what we're seeing dilapitated and some and folks can't move. It's like a there trapped. >> They can they're not getting the repairs on time. No one is coming to help them. But again, they cannot move because they cannot afford anything else. when we talk about the affordability crisis, it is right here where these communities are trapped. So, to me, this is a trap and I look forward to working with you and see how we can support these tenants turning these buildings around. I would love to see more HDFC's. Um, Count Chair Chair Sanchez, that's something we should look into. People who are long-term tenants, they're not going anywhere. So, they might as well invest in that property and make it their own. And we know when people invest in their properties, they're tend to take it take care of it more. the rent is paid on time and they feel a sense of ownership. Right? So, I think those are the along the lines where we should start looking if we're looking at affordability, keeping the black community in place where we lost 200,000 and I'm sure my community lost 20,000 constituents in the last 10 years and we want to make sure we're aging in place and we're supporting communities where they are. >> Understood. Can I just ask you quickly so I don't lose it? 75 Lennox, do you know who owns that property? No, we can get that to you. My my team can get that to you ASAP. >> So, I'll just quickly say to your point about tenant ownership as a preservation strategy, this is also something I worked on a lot. I'm going to name all my old careers at UHAB for many years as the head of organizing. It is a very, I think, appropriate strategy when a building is in distress or in bankruptcy and therefore going through foreclosure and can be transferred. One option certainly that should be available to tenants is to work with the nonprofit but also to own it if that is you know where they're inclined. >> Right on time right chair >> you get extra points for that. Thank you council member uh council member. >> Thank you chair. Um very good to see everyone here. I have a question. I like to know as a lot of time we see in poor and minority neighborhoods many um homeless shelter bill in this area. I would like to know what's the metric you guys use to pick the homeless shelter site. >> I'm sorry just to make sure I understand you council member. Are you asking when we choose a site for a homeless shelter? >> Yeah. >> So generally that's not how our development pipeline works, right? projects are brought to us by developers and we're typically building housing not shelters. Uh so if a shelter is being built, it's it's not necessarily because HBD is choosing to build it there. >> Okay. Thank you. And I have another question. Um with affordable crisis in New York City, do you what's the plan for senior housings? And uh from a lot of provider the feedback said it's very hard to get Kasa program moving. Yeah. So I will say I just to repeat you know we did do a fair amount of senior units last year through our new construction pipeline. So uh 13 over300 units of senior housing and we do have uh I think about 11 projects right now in our devel development pipeline that are for seniors that also have an award for projectbased section 8 which is critical to making a senior project get to closing. So I do think we have on deck a lot more senior housing coming. It is challenging and we do need to marry se uh senior housing with section 8 and we are resource constrained on section 8 right now because of the federal government uh and they're you know all of the things right that they're doing. So we are very committed to building more senior housing and I think we've been doing a lot of it and we intend to do a lot more of it in the coming years. >> What's the reason the Kasa program move very slow? >> I'm sorry. Are you saying the CASA program? I'm not sure I'm familiar with the CASA program. Not K what's that Sarah Sarah sorry Sarah >> yeah those are the statistics I was just prevent uh providing to you so the 1300 units that we produced last year were through the Sarah program and the 11 projects that I mentioned that are in our pipeline right now are also Sarah and that's about another 2,000 units. >> So is any particular neighborhood you guys preferred because I don't see anything in southern Brooklyn. >> So I do want to say again we don't select the sites where developments happen. There are publicly owned sites that we um do control and there we do competitive RFPs to select a developer and sometimes they're appropriate for senior housing and sometimes for very low income housing and sometimes for you know a mix of things. But mostly we're responding to where developers come to us with their projects. So if we're not getting enough senior housing in your district, we should have a conversation about how to get developers more activated. And then a lot of um developers said to me because they don't make money of senior housing um accurate. >> Okay. And then >> same amount whether you're building senior I mean we have limits in our term sheets for how much the developers can make and whether they're building supportive or senior or you know a mixed income project the compensation to the developers is rough roughly the same. >> Okay. And then also they said either it's so slow or lower profit if they build a homeless shelter they can make more money. >> That that does not strike me as accurate. I'm happy to have a conversation about this afterwards or if there's a particular developer who you're having that conversation with. I would love to join you in that conversation. >> That's what I was just going to offer. We would love if there are particular developers that are in contact with you. We'd love to set up a conversation and talk them through the program, the term sheets, what's available to them. And as Dena said, like we'd love to to identify opportunities in the district if we can. >> I approached a couple uh developer about building senior housing, but they always said that's not going to make money. >> We we'll get you to the right developers. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Council Member Wang, Council Member Brewer, and then I'll continue with my questions. >> All right. Thank you very much. Insurance. So, um, there's a lot of, uh, discussion, I think, going on about how to lower it because I assume that you agree it's a big challenge in terms of affordable housing. So, >> I would say it's one of the number one challenges. >> Yeah, I have lots of material here, but how are you approaching that issue of curtailing? I think my understanding is lawsuits unfortunately do focus on affordable housing. You have more lawsuits on affordable housing than for whatever reason the nonaffordable. So how are we gonna this is you know a big issue lots of people are trying to work on it Albany and here but what are you doing about that issue? >> So so first I want to acknowledge council member um we saw the presentation that John Kra did about uh the lawsuits and whether they are sort of showing that there's like an in a disparity in terms of how many lawsuits are being filed in affordable housing versus market rate housing. We just saw it but we are digging into that conversation. Okay. Um, secondarily, what I would say is we agree it's probably one of the biggest drivers right now of what is causing fragility in all types of housing. So, both the housing that we finance and then have under our regulatory agreements and also just in the private market in the rent stabiliz. And it has to be addressed. Again, I've been here relatively short time, but in that time, we've had a number of conversations with city hall and external partners on what can be done to to re in cost. I think we're in process of developing some proposals and we'll be working both with OM and with city hall to figure out exactly what the government can do to drive down those prices. I you know I think we don't regulate insurance. Yeah, that's the state and the federal government, but I do think there are interventions the city can play uh and we just need to finalize those. >> I'd love to be involved if possible. Number two, HCFCs. As you heard earlier, we have a lot of them still in Manhattan. I don't know how many tills you still have and how you're looking to as we suggest do the home ownership. I guess it's called ANCP now and there are some challenges in terms of the new program. So what how do you have the division is focusing on it? I know you're trying to get Tills to become home ownership etc. But there are some groups that are challenging on this topic. I think you know who they are. So, we're trying to see what what where are you at with this HFC and what's the financial >> aspect to it. >> Yeah. So, a couple things. Um, as I said in my testimony, there are still 64 buildings remaining in the till. >> Uh, it's about,00 units. We happily are moving about 40 projects right now through construction. So, they will get to the other end and be able to actually take ownership of their building. >> 40 of the 64 or that's something different? >> Separate 40. Okay. Mhm. Um, and then there is additional funds that we were able to get for both 2026 and 2027 through the attorney general settlement fund specifically to work with the till building. So, it's about 3 million for 2026 and 2.5 million for 2027. >> That all said >> that doesn't go very far. >> It doesn't go very far because >> I have 8 million left over from the burough president's office and one building. Yeah. Still sitting there. >> Agreed. It is not sufficient. I think we need to do more to move these projects through with be my honor to have finished the till program during my time here since I started working in the till program when I got to UHAB. It's challenging for a couple of reasons and and not least of which we want to make sure that tenants are organized and ready for the challenge that collective home ownership requires. And I say that with all due respect to to the model and to you have I love co-ops but it is a challenging style of homeware of it. So, I think we're we need to do more to move the ones that have been particularly where folks have been out of their units for the longest. We are going to be moving those to the front of the pipeline >> like Louise and 1610 West Street. I'll give it to you. >> And I was just going to add council member, we want to thank you so much for your partnership. This is actually an area where partnership with council members where you are constituents and where you have till buildings in your district can be so valuable. >> It's not just my district. I got all of Manhattan in many cases. >> Yes. A final question is Bloomingdale. So that is a project that I think is EDC, but they would like to have HPD be in charge. So it's one of those above the library blah blah blah, but nobody's happy with EDC doing it. They'd rather have you do it perhaps more affordable housing. It's on city- owned land. I thought that when something was on city-owned land, it should be 100% affordable. This is not. So we could use some help um making it 100% affordable. I am happy >> like the Eliza just maybe Robin Hood has to get involved again. I did that project in Washington Heights. So it would be a shame to put market housing on a for on land that is city owned land. >> Council member, can you say the name of the project again? >> Bloomingdale library 100 street between Amsterdam and Columbus. >> Okay. I'm happy to reach out to to EDC and then follow up. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member Brewer. Whatever what all the things she says, cosign every time. Um, thank you. So, I want to move toward uncollected fines and charges. As I was discussing with the Department of Buildings earlier today, there's an alarming gap between the amount of fines and penalties issued by our agencies and then those that are collected. And I understand that at HPD we're looking at 80 to 85% of fines and charges not being collected. So first question is can you give us a breakdown of the amount of HPD charges and fines that are issued versus how many are collected say for the last fiscal year? Um and can you share uh your assessment of why that is? Is it >> is it finance collecting? Is it you? So I can um so let me start with uh where collections are generally higher uh and that is in the ERP program. So uh last fiscal year we levied or let's use the term levied $26 million in fines. That has generally been hovering around a 70% collection rate. So that's much higher. Um the numbers then go a little lower as we get into the AE program. there was a $5 million of charges uh in 2025 of which only 30% was collected and then in our de emergency demolition program it's about 24 million that was levied and around 13% collection. If I could just I mean I don't know this for a fact but I can give you my instinct as to why collections are down in both a and in demo. These are obviously the more distressed properties. In the case of demo, there's no property. And so I believe the incentive uh in those cases. I think in the A program, it's financially challenging for those owners who are obviously both physically and financially distressed. I think in the demo, again, this is like somewhat speculation on my part. There's less incentive to pay when you've already lost the building. Um that said, I will just say um with all due respect, I do think the purpose of these programs is less about collecting fines and more about forcing compliance. So, you know, where we see 199 buildings being discharged last year from the A program, we assume that's good and that we're getting to the point, right, which is compliance first and foremost. >> Thank you. And and I know um there Well, first just a narrow question on distressed properties, the demolition um component of this. Are those are those fines are are are is are that amount levied? Is that going to become a lean against that property? >> Yes. So all of the uncollected and collect well all of the fine uh charges initially go to DOF for collection and when not paid convert to tax leans. Got it. And there is an increased budget line and I'm losing it in my my uh >> rolling document here. Uh but there is increased uh there is a new need for emergency demolition in this year's budget. Can you help us understand uh why that is and >> Yeah. >> Yeah. what what can we do to reduce that? >> So, if I'm to be frank, I don't think it re represents necessarily an increase in the number of buildings where emergency demolition has been uh called for by an order by DOB. I think it really has to do with just the general cost of construction and in this case deconstruction, but because it is generally the same the same idea, right? All cost is going up when it comes to this type of work. So, I think that is why we're seeing an increase in the cost of demolition. Thank you. And HPD does that work uh through contractors, right? Correct. >> Um and can you tell us what percentage of those emergency demolition contractors are MWBEs? >> Yeah. So there's about 125 pre-qualified contractors on that list and I believe 76 of them are MWB. Sorry, I'm being corrected. >> Oh, sorry. I was I was quoting you that the correct numbers for ERP, not for the demo contracts. >> So do we not have that, Emily? We don't have it here, but we will get you that information, >> but it's good to know for ERB. I was gonna follow up. Okay. So, for emergency demo, you'll circle back. >> Somebody takes >> um the current fines for hazardous and immediately hazardous violations are comparatively low. After an initial fine, owners are only required to pay 25 to $125 per day for Bclass violations and 50 to$150 day uh dollars per day for C-class violations. For how many owners? This is I don't know if you can answer this, but for how many owners is does this become simply a cost of doing business? And would the department consider working with the council to raise these fines for repeat offenders uh or those who have consistently failed to correct these violations? Yes, I want to make sure I don't jump ahead of my colleague Anory here, but um I would say we would be happy to sit down and have that conversation. Again, I think um our primary goal is compliance more than collecting or you know, levying charges, but again, you are correct. It is a deterrent, right? And if it is not as serving as a sufficient deterrent, I think we should definitely have a conversation about whether increasing those fines might. >> Thank you. Do you want to add anything deputy? >> Yes. Okay. >> I'm checking with the boss. >> She started she started that. Gonna read the body language. Okay. >> Um Okay. So, u moving to emergency housing. According to the PMMR, the average length of stay in emergency housing increased the most in the first four months of fiscal 2026 for adult families from 445 days to 494 days and for families with children from 300 to 353 days. HPD attributes this increase to families being impacted more uh by fires, vacates, and housing availability. Makes sense. Um, so how does HPD plan to work with other agencies to better prepare for emergencies like fire and winter storms? Can you explain the reduction of 136.3 million dollars of city funds in the emergency housing program given these increases? Um, can you explain the removal of emergency funding for asylum seekers and are all HPD shelter contracts expiring in fiscal 27? >> Okay, so starting with the vacate orders, council member, um it is true it is taking a very long time to get folks um back uh into their homes after a vacate order is issued for whatever reason, whether it's illegal occupancy or whether it's a fire. I think you may know a little from our conversation. This is a high priority for me and figuring out how to get owners, particularly where there's been a fire, to repair their buildings more quickly is challenging, but is definitely a place that we need to pay some attention. And if they will not repair the building, perhaps there are alternative ways to remove them from the building. So, that is something we're definitely exploring. We currently have 800 as of now families living in our shelters. That's across our 14 SRO's and our three family shelters. Um, in terms of who's been moving out, um, in 20 fiscal year 2025, 20% of those who left our shelter were able to go back to their original unit. >> 28% >> 20 20%. um 60% of families who left our shelter moved into new housing and 40% of single adults who left our shelter also moved into new housing. I think one of the big challenges here again in not just the limiting factor of units not getting repaired quickly is that we also as we've discussed have limited section 8 tools available to us at the moment. That said, I do want to point out that through the state housing uh HIV program, right, the vouchers that were allocated by the governor and the legislature, we will be making about 330 of those new vouchers available to folks across our shelter population in order to get them out. So, we'll obviously be targeting folks who have been out of their buildings the longest. Um, and because I gave you a long answer, I forgot the second part of your question. Sorry. >> Do I remember this? Oh, yeah. I just want to jump in also because uh council member, you mentioned about uh emergency housing uh funding being reduced. I just want to clarify excuse me >> second part of the question. Thank you. >> Sorry, excuse me. I just want to clarify that uh that's in reference to our asylum seeker uh program. So what happened is that that the funding that uh is in our budget for that program is also in the same uh funding area where emergency housing service uh is. And that's because as you mentioned our um perks our emergency shelters are closed were down to one shelter at this at this point and that shelter is scheduled to close this year and so as a result of that we will not see money in the out years to support that shelter. Our uh asylum seeker funding was over 120 some million dollars and that funding is uh only in this fiscal year and it goes away next fiscal year because the program is winding down. I will say though for the caveat the last shelter that we have open uh it may stay beyond June we don't know yet but just uh it was on schedule to close this fiscal year that's why no funding is reflected in next fiscal year if it is open beyond this fiscal year then we will work with our colleagues at OMB to ensure that we do have funding in our budget to cover the cost for the shelter for next fiscal year. Now, on emergency housing services, uh specifically, we did see an increase in our budget because we did get uh one of the new needs items that we got was for our uh single room occupancy uh uh uh shelters for single adults. Uh so we did see a small rate increase uh for providers there. Uh and so we did see an increase in our budget to support that. Uh so they uh the funding for emergency housing services actually went up uh instead of going down and >> that was 1.6 million. Uh so yeah no actually it was two million uh 1.6 million this year you and then two million uh in out years each year in the out years. >> Thank you. Um just uh stay bless you bless yourself. Um just staying on asylum seekers for a moment um where are they going? >> So uh there is a plan. So right now for asylum seeker programs we have our sister agency uh the mayor's office of housing recovery operations. that handle assemb uh um operations. And so uh they the plan uh overall as we know is to have uh those transition into the regular DHS system, but that's a plan that is still being worked out. It's not being finalized yet. Uh but HPD uh is not at the forefront of that uh of that plan. And so we'll have to get more information from our sister agencies around that plan. But the idea is that uh the any migrants or asylum seekers left in our last remaining shelter is supposed to be transitioned into a regular shelter system. >> Right. And who who was being housed what were the characteristics of the uh household or families being housed in the Herks >> uh single adult men in the last minute shelter. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Thank you. So the council should be seeing a shift in in the her in HPD's HEK funding somewhere else. As far as HPD uh yes uh uh if you look at our budget right now we do not have uh funding for contract for contracts for asylum seekers in our budget for the out years and again the caveat there being that if this last shelter stays open beyond this fiscal year then there will be funding reflected but of as of this point uh is not. >> Thank you. And then um just rounding out the question on uh families exiting from HPD shelters from emergency housing shelters um what percentage of those have either section 8 or access to city feeps or or some other kind of rental assistance for the ones that are going into a new home >> or back to their old home? >> So, at the moment, we have the the set aside of the HAVP vouchers, which is about 330 uh vouchers that we're going to make available to do the permanent transition out of temporary shelter and into permanent shelter. Um, beyond that I, you know, we do not have at the moment the ability to issue new vouchers. These are the HUD housing choice vouchers that we get annually. So, we are not able to offer more than right now the HAVP to this population. It is possible some of those households could qualify for FABS, but I don't have exactly what that number would be. >> Got it. But looking backward to exits, say in the last fiscal year, um is it safe to assume that most of those families or households were not receiving vouchers to exit? >> I want to confirm with Amory, but do we know? Yes, it's safe to assume is what she said. >> Okay. >> Thank you. So, moving on to section 8 um and housing choice vouchers. According to the PMMR, the utilization rate for section 8 housing uh choice vouchers over the first four months of fiscal 26 was just at 87% which is down two percentage points from the same time last year and over the same time period HPD issued 20% fewer vouchers. Can you explain why uh there is a downward trend on voucher uh issuance and utilization? How many section 8 vouchers are currently being utilized? Um excuse me. and uh please explain the increase in 15.4 million in city funds and decrease in 13.9 million in federal funds to the rental assistance program. >> So yes, council member, let me start with um the utilization. So we have between the federal government uh both the major program which is housing choice vouchers and then the smaller programs and including uh the HAVP vouchers we're basically at a total of just doing the math about 44,000 families that are getting this ongoing operating rental assistance. The utilization rate is really a function of the shortfall situation that I've described in which we cannot issue new vouchers. So we have in some cases the funding to allocate but we are unable to issue those vouchers while we're in shortfall. That is a result of HUD having swept reserves from HPD. Um so we are working very hard with what partners remain at HUD to try to get out of shortfall. Uh and then we will be able to issue new vouchers which should improve that utilization rate. >> On the capital side or on the funding side I would ask Gardier. >> Yeah. So uh so council may I have to get back to you on the uh section 8 changes uh uh there uh just trying to confirm as far as the exact figures uh because we um the only program it may be our emergency housing vouchure program is a program where this funding is in this year but not reflecting the out years but we do have section 8 funding uh and we did see a slight uh increase in section 8 funding. So I just have to confirm just to be sure uh we can follow up with you in terms of the breakdown you just provided around section 8. >> Thank you. Um, moving to housing access vouch the the housing access voucher program. In 2025, the state law lawmakers allotted 50 million for HAVP um with 32.5 million going specifically to the city and is projected to create between 900 and 1,100 vouchers in New York City. So, um, one, can you help us understand the delay in dispersement of these vouchers? What has HPD been doing during this time frame to make the program operational? Mhm. >> Um and second, if the state were to increase HIVP funding to 250 million per year, uh would HPD be able to administer these vouchers? >> Yes, council member. So, um as I started to say, you're correct. It's we estimate it's about a thousand vouchers and we're going to be prioritizing about 330 of those for emergency shelter population. The remainder will be focusing on families in shelter. So all the different regular, you know, families who are living in shelter. Um, and I am happy to report that that program is now operational and we've started taking in applications and are processing people to get those vouchers. To your second question, of course, if we were to be given new resources through an increase in HAVP, we would 100% take those vouchers and use them. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. And just to add quickly to uh what the commissioner just shared in terms of what we've been doing so far, we have the staff up of the program. We are we work with OMB to schedule uh headc count into our budget. So you see reflect reflecting our budget from last plan. There were 15 lines that were added for the staff to stack up that program so we can start ramping up and uh as we do issue vouchers, our budget will be adjusted to reflect what we expect to spend each fiscal year. >> Thank you. And so any any increase in the number of vouchers, if if we were able to see these $250 million materialize through the state budget, that would require additional staffing up at HPD to process. We'll see. It might, but as we get more, we assess and see what the needs are and uh work with uh uh this our state partners and be to increase our budget accordingly uh based on what the implementation will look like >> would be an excellent problem. Wouldn't it be Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, you know, now that the program is functioning, I think having more vouchers, yeah, obviously if you get to incrementally larger numbers, you do need additional staff. We can't say for sure what we would get. We were sort of guessing a little bit about what what portion of the two 250 million would come to us. We we could guesstimate that it would represent another 5,000 vouchers for us. >> Thank you. Um, housing connect. Yes. Our favorite Well, they're all our favorite topics. Okay. Um, this month the New York Housing Conference reported that it took about 27 months to lease 180 apartments in a newly constructed apartment building in the Bronx for low-inccome renters. Uh, New York Housing Conference attributed delays to repetitive documentation requirements, inspection requirements. Um, especially for tenants who use rental assistance like section 8 and city fs. For example, even though the Department of Homeless Services determines if a household qualifies for an affordable housing referral, additional income eligibility reviews are conducted and additional inspections are required even though this building just got its CFO and all of its uh all of its approvals um for a new building. What are HPD's current strategies and tactics to improve the housing connect process, especially for low-inccome renters? How does HPD currently work with DHS and HA to streamline the referral process for the homeless? And one recommendation that housing conference had is to limit HPD oversight uh step-by-step oversight and have uh more of a audit process. Um how how time inense intensive is step-by-step oversight uh of the marketing plan for HPD? >> Yes, council member. So uh again it's been 10 weeks but um uh I can say frankly I have spent a good chunk of that on housing connect uh and we have new staff at the agency who are also working on housing connect. I do want to say first uh in support of the team that built that system that oversees that system. It is a very challenging challenging um sort of uh tension that exists between having a system that works well and quickly and a system that is fair and transparent uh and and you know complies with fair housing. So there's just a lot there and they have been working really really hard to look at where the choke points are. I will say we are all on the same page. It is not working. It needs to be overhauled. I know there's a lot of folks who have a lot of I've been given three different unsolicited proposals about what's wrong with housing connect and what needs to happen. I did want to take a look myself and I have been deeply deeply engaged in it. Uh I think we are getting close and I hope uh as part of the speed initiative this will be probably recommendations will be coming out about what specifically we intend to do about housing connect but we are very much open to really significantly changing if not migrating to a new system on the DSS homeless shelter set aside there too. It has been too long. It t it is too over there are too many duplicative steps. I think that are those are all fair comments. I am happy to report that that has been largely a spreadsheet email system which is not working and that we are moments away and maybe we can get Emily up here. come up here uh Emily up here to say how many moments we are away, but we are going to be launching a a you know a 21st century technology solution to make that transfer of information and getting folks out of shelter and into vacant units much faster. It is to me unacceptable that we have vacant units and people living in shelter with a FEPS voucher. Um but Emily here who's been doing all the hard work will tell you how long >> when will it be live? Oh, you have to swear in. Yeah. Yeah. >> Sorry. >> Raise your right hand. Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to answer all council member questions honestly? >> Yes, I do. >> Thank you. >> We are working closely with the Department of Homeless Services and HA constantly at HPD on our homeless placements process and have been for years. It has taken uh we've had a tech development process to roll out what will modernize email spreadsheet, a very old access database uh into an actual system that coordinates, provides clear and transparent data and tracking um of our homeless referral process this spring. We're very excited about that. It is in the testing phase right now and we're eager to show it all to you as soon it is ready as soon as it is ready for a demo. >> Great. I hope you hire a DJ and have a big celebration. >> That's that's great to hear. That's uh that's been a very frustrating uh point that we've talked about a lot over the last few years. Um okay, let's see. I just like to jump around in my questions list. So, my apologies. Thank you. Um, this is this is not on my questions list, but because I'm looking at Michael, I I wonder um in terms of the the housing plan that the mayor is going to be putting forth, I'm sure HPD is central, if not uh if not integral to that process. Um what can we expect in terms of uh well you mentioned it in your testimony the fair housing framework implementation but uh what level of detail can we anticipate in terms of you know community district targets for development preservation? Um are there going to is there going to be more neighborhood planning that's going to be an outgrowth of the housing plan? How are you all thinking about the big picture? >> Yeah, I think there's three focal points that I can speak to, but we can also have Michael come up and elaborate if need be. But um the first is really a city-wide assessment for where there is low affordability areas and then the second are extremely specific actual production targets for how much housing is needed by community district. And then the third is the strategic equity analysis that HPD has committed to the council to do to really evaluate whether any of the changes, the zoning changes that were included in city of Yes and elsewhere are having an impact of any kind on production of uh extremely low income units. And I think Michael, please correct me if I'm wrong. I think all of this is expected out in the fall. the plan is expected in the fall or the the fair housing component. >> Well, I guess they're they're fighting to come up here. >> Okay, let's do this. If you're from the administration, you think you're going to come up to the day, just raise your right hand. >> Okay, >> I'm new. >> Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to answer all council member questions honestly? Yes. >> And when you come up to the day, just state your name. >> Thank you. uh Michael Sandler. Um so I think the fair housing framework we'll be implementing that's set to be released in the fall. Uh the housing plan um agencies and city hall are working on together right now and um expect the two to speak to each other and if you have anything to add there. >> Yeah, just that we that analysis is really important to us. So we are going to take the time that is required to do a full uh assessment of it. It will build off of where we live as we've talked about the housing plan. All of these things will work together, but that exact analysis we are not going to be able to complete any earlier than the time that we had negotiated amongst ourselves. >> Got it. Uh thank you. That's really really helpful. A lot of fun reading coming our way. Okay. Um asset management uh within the agency. It's it's been a long time since we've talked about uh HPD's asset management function um at a hearing. So, I'm I'm wondering, you know, thank you for the outline of, you know, the number of Mitchell Lama properties and um you know, 485X properties and and all the rest. I'm wondering if you could just provide us uh some 101 about what is it and I'm sure it can vary by type of regulation or regulatory agreement, but what are you asking uh properties that HPD manages? What what is what do Mitchalamas have to share with you? What what are you overseeing? What about Article 11 properties? >> Yeah, I think it's a great question. Um and I think actually we are kind of taking fresh look at all of that because we know there is so much distress even within the affordable housing stock. Uh there are at for the Mitchell Lamas there are financial documents that they are obligated to send to us. I can't frankly recall, Rosa, maybe you can help us whether that was a new requirement or an old requirement, but we do uh now have like a um a list of financial documents that the Mitchell Lamas need to report to us every year. Uh for the HDFC co-ops, there are about a thousand of those in the city and only about 280 of them have a regulatory agreement with us. So those are the ones where we do have asset management responsibility. We can go out and inspect the buildings. We can check on their financial health. They can come back to us for additional financial assistance. I'm just going to say frankly to you, I think one of the places we need to spend some time is digging in a little deeper into how all of those portfolios are and buildings are performing. Um, and I do think like the private stock, they are struggling with things like insurance and with taxes and with utilities. And so we are looking really hard at ways to bring more stability to those portfolios, both the rentals and the co-ops, particularly in the Mitchell Lama set. >> For the thousand HDFCs, you say 280 have a regulatory agreement. The rest of those uh who is sort of responsible, is it us for oversight of their affordability restrictions? Are they getting >> are they getting >> Thank you, council member. Um so there's Yeah, it's delicate. um you know they we can't we don't directly regulate them. They do um I think in most cases have an article 11 taxatement which does subject them to like scrutiny from say the attorney general's office but we don't have any kind of asset management relationship to them. We do have a contract I think you know with UHAB who goes out and provides technical assistance to HDFC's and they will work with more than just those that are under regulatory. So they have technical assistance support through that contract, but but it is in fact true they're private as as private in as much as they're they're not uh city government regulated. >> I was particularly in Manhattan where it's very lucrative to put your 1099 and then put money under the table and I see it many times. So, I wish that we could have more regulation on it, but it's it's controversial because they don't want regulation on them. And so, I think it's a longer discussion. >> We're losing out on HDFC's being affordable as a result. >> And and these uh 1,00 minus 280 600. Okay. The the remain the non 280 they're they are subject to receiving damp right? >> You're asking if the non-regular wins get the damp tax cap. That's a good question that I don't know the answer to. uh let us somebody in this room knows so we will get you an answer. I know they get article 11 but I don't know if they actually are eligible for the damp tax cap if they're not regulated. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah, it's always been a conversation about how do we get them back into regular discussion with the city. Um speaking of Uhab, how much is included in the FY27 preliminary budget for that contract compared to past fiscal years and how many um how many of these HDFCs are they reaching? Excuse me. Thank you, council member. Uh so for UHAB right now, uh as far as the funding for that contract, uh we are somewhere around about $1.3, uh million dollars per year, uh for that contract, but again, as as needs increase, uh we work to uh see how best we can uh provide additional funding as needed. >> And the reach, >> so I would need to get specifically that information for you. I mean I can only talk about it when I was there 20 years ago how many they were reaching but today I would like to get an updated number for you. >> How many were you reaching >> answer? >> Um did you want to uh we can clarify what the requirements that we oversee as part of the Mitchellama no the Mitchellama compliance. Um so essentially uh as part of the new requirements um we do uh have uh annual certifications that boards are following the uh requirements specified in the rules that includes um in annual apartment inspections, the rent roles. Um they submit a monthly financial documents to us. Um so that is part of the new required financial oversight that we see. But we also have long-standing financial requirements um that uh we are we just like certified as part of our um annual compliance uh >> role. Got it. >> Um thank you. I'd love to understand that better. I don't remember where we had or who I had this conversation with, but we need to remove Mitchel Lamas from the A program. does not make sense to find them repeatedly for, you know, their operational issues, their their uh physical challenges when, you know, these are affordable homes, um that are already struggling. Um okay, thank you. Oh, uh I'd like to acknowledge that we're joined by Council Member Wrestler. Would you like to ask your questions? >> Thank you so much, Chair Sanchez. Appreciate your tremendous leadership of this committee. Um, Commissioner, congratulations. It's nice to meet you. Um, I wanted to ask about some legislation that we passed at the end of last year to uh, mandate. >> They put these screens up that are just pictures of ourselves talking to ourselves. It's very strange to just It does. It's not a computer. It serves no function. It's just to see myself while I'm talking. Um, no. Do you disagree with me? It's wholly useless. I'd rather have the space for my laptop as Pyina would too. But I digress. um at the end of last year uh thanks to uh some tremendous work on the part of some of the staff at HPD including the former commissioner and others across city government at the law department and MOCJ in particular. We passed legislation that is groundbreaking to mandate indoor cooling uh and mandate access to indoor cooling for every tenant in New York City. Um this is going to be a major sea change for HPD. Um, no longer will cooling season be a time for uh Deputy Commissioner Santiago's team to catch their breath. Um, I'm sorry to say. Uh, well, I'm not really sorry to say. Sorry that I didn't mean that. Um, but wanted to understand as you're coming into this new role with many, many priorities on your plate, has the agency begun to look at uh, planning on this initiative, what you know, the undertaking of public awareness campaigns, educating landlords, educating tenants. um and also you know uh what will be the needs for the agency to be able to successfully implement this law. We do have a couple years to get a few years to get ourselves organized but it's going to take that long for a law of such scale and consequence. >> Yes. Thanks council member. Nice to meet you. Um, so I I'll start just by saying I haven't had a chance yet in my 10 weeks to get deep into this though I want to say at the top uh you know I worked for uh the state and there one of my duties was overseeing resiliency and energy efficiency improvements and so you know this is hugely important. We agree climate change we know is is getting worse and uh heat is probably the number one risk to both citizens right tenants homeowners. So, it's hugely important that this has happened. In terms of getting up to speed on this, I'm not yet. We might have uh Lucy here who's already sworn in and can come up and maybe give you an update on where we are in implementation if there is more to say. Where's >> Hi, council member. Thank you for that question. uh Ann Marie and I were grateful to be working with you and your team on this legislation for a while. It is an issue that we care deeply about and is reflective of our current circumstances. Of course, um we uh recognize that there is a lot to do to comply with this law. Uh we look forward to continue to working with the council. In terms of some of the upcoming deadlines, we are working with OM to ensure that we're prepared uh for some of the more immediate parts of the law. Um but generally we'll uh look forward to continue to working uh more generally on how we address this issue. >> Yeah. I look I I wasn't expecting for you to say commissioner or associate commissioner that there's been a tremendous amount of progress done in the you know 10 weeks that you've been there since 10 weeks since we passed the bill. But I I raise it because it is such a substantial piece of legislation. It's going to require years of planning and coordination and I want to be an active partner with Deputy Commissioner Santiago and with the agency as a whole in making sure that you all are resourced appropriately to be able to effectively implement this and that tenants have an understanding of their new rights uh to ensure safety because as you know extreme heat is by far the number one killer uh for climate related uh uh deaths. Nearly 600 New Yorkers die every single year from extreme heat. we can save lives and we will with this legislation as long as we implement it effectively. So, um looking forward very much to working together on affordable housing projects across District 33. We have produced more housing in Council District 33 than any other district in New York City over the last 15 years. It's not particularly close. Um uh and we hope to produce a whole lot more uh especially affordable housing uh where folks in our community just like every other are getting priced out. So, uh, we'll look forward to, uh, meeting one-on-one to go through some specific projects in the district. Um, and as always, appreciate Chair Sanchez's great leadership of this committee. Um, and thank you for the time today. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Member Wrestler. Um, I just wanted to go back to a question that I don't think uh, we got to earlier uh, when we were talking about um, City of Yas and homeowner help desk and all of that. Can you give us a a breakdown of uh family households served per program? Um how many have gotten down payment assistance? How many have gotten home fix that? >> Um so uh the numbers for uh the combined numbers of new production so that would be primarily through Open Door and ANCP. Uh, this is in calendar year 2025 was about 136 units. I'm sorry, that's wrong. 336 units that were produced uh through the down payment assistance program. We reached 142 uh first-time or I don't know if they were all first-time but home buyers, new home buyers. Um, I would say, you know, we are looking hard at how to expand that program as well as the home fix program. you know, we do that program in partnership with the Center for uh New York City Neighborhoods. It's been a little slow going, but I think we've just sort of made some strides in getting that up and running. Um, so that is actually what we did historically and again, home ownership is very close to me, so something I'm looking to do more of as we keep going. >> Got it. Got it. So, 142 um households and there this is uh the eligibility for the down payment assistance program is a very specific income levels, right? >> Correct. >> So, okay. So, that tells us how much. Um and then for home fix, do you have a number of uh households? >> I don't have the home fix numbers in front of me, but I'm sure we can get them here. >> Oh, yeah. So 53 units, which I think we would agree is low. Um, but again, hopeful that uh that program is going to pick up now that we've had some changes with the program and met with the center to figure out how to get it moving. >> Thank you. Um, two more rounds of questions and then council member Brewer, since you're rocking out with me, if you have anything else, let me know. >> Great. Okay. Do you want to ask it now? >> Okay. >> So, in terms of the housing connect artist housing, it doesn't fit into housing connect and because of the way in which artists get their paid. Um, so I just didn't know Melissa Marrio did PS 109 and there hasn't been much since. There have been some in the way past. So, I'm just hopefully you can put on your agenda artist housing. Um, we desperately need it for our city. You mean the creation of new units specifically? >> Affordable housing for artists. It's a obviously a city that thrives on our artists and they are leaving in droves and may not come back. I just want to bring it to your attention. I know form is got their 25-y year plan going and Lincoln Center. I'm going to urge them working with you to do artist housing. They're right next to Lincoln Center. But I'm just in general I'd love to see and hopefully the chair agrees as part of any affordable housing program that we consider artist housing. Thank you. >> Understood. >> We we will definitely set up a time to discuss >> Excuse me. >> We would just love to set up a time to discuss that after this. >> Exactly. I have a long list already for you. >> All right. Thank you. >> I look forward to it. >> Um thank you, Council Member Brewer. So, I want to turn to this fascinating article uh that um Gothamus put out a couple of weeks ago, maybe days ago, what is time. Um a recent analysis from Gothamus found that nearly 10% of roughly 1600 residential buildings that have opened since 2016 have at least one housing code violations per apartment. That set of properties averages 2.1 violations per unit compared to 0.8 average uh per unit citywide. Each building in the analysis received a property tax abatement through the state's 421A program. Um, and a lot of these are considered luxury apartments or luxury buildings. What corners are being cut um in the new construction that we're seeing? And why is it materials? Is it labor? What what is happening um to lead to this low quality of new buildings? So, I would be a little careful here, council member, not to speculate too much. Um, and I understand we read the the same article. Um, what I can say is obviously these are generally private buildings. They're not buildings financed by HPD. So, it's a little hard for us to sort of see through what is going on there. Is it a trend? Is it a trend across, you know, a subset of developers? Is there anything more to be done? What I will say is, you know, they like any other person in the city who's subject to the housing maintenance code can call 311 and when they do call and Marie and her team go out and inspect and record violations and then expect those violations to be cured. I would say um we would need a little time to look into this and to see whether or not there is actually a pattern and whether that pattern is again project type specific or developer type specific. It's a little challenging because we don't finance those buildings. >> Got it. And we don't have over speaking of regulatory agreements and um HPD oversight over 421A buildings. Are we able to ask any questions about >> We only have there I think a recorded deed structure for the set aside units that happen but we do not have a regulatory and they have no reporting obligation back to us. >> So how do we know that those units remain affordable? How do we know as a city? That's why we have the deed recording for the set aside specifically, but for the market rate units, we don't have any oversight. >> And is HPD monitoring those in any way? Is there any kind of auditing that we're doing to make sure that >> we do track all the set aside units? And at turnover, they have to go through the same process that the original. So right in the first generation, second generation, third generation rentals, they all have to go through the same process which will soon as you just heard be vastly improved by getting off uh paper and into a 21st century system. >> It's magical sometimes the way that government works. We're talking about all of you know AI takeover, but >> not not within our agencies yet until now. Okay. Um the the last set of questions I I just wanted to ask was to get a sense of vacancies by department. So what are uh vacancies in inspectoral um in uh the code enforcement among inspectors? What is vacancy looking like in the office of development? Um it's been a long-standing conversation and I just want to continue to be an advocate that if we are able to completely more and more just increase our our staffing at HPD that will have dividends for the rest of the city. So um do you want me to do it or do you want to do it? Okay. >> Okay. Guard is going to share with you the >> So think about the question council member. So starting just with the specific uh title you were asking about uh as it relates to our project managers um in our development uh programs we have uh we budget have about 114 we allocate our headcount about 114 headcount toward project managers in the project manager series. as of January end of January we had about 89 staff active about 25 uh vacant so that's roughly about 22% vacancy rate uh for uh that area uh and then for our inspectors so both for the uh for the SPE inspectors and the supervisors uh combined uh we have about 459 uh total lines that we allocate uh to those titles uh we have about 372 active uh totals another 87 7 vacant. So that's about a 19% uh vacancy rate uh for those particular uh titles. But as the as the commissioner mentioned before just overall uh for the agency, we're looking at about roughly 15% uh vacancy rate. Uh we are however uh definitely excited about um being close to lifting the four hiring free so that we can uh move full speed to fill the remaining positions that we have. >> Thank you. What is the vacancy rate in code enforcement? So, uh, for court in for code enforcement uh sorry uh overall just one minute, let me grab that. So, for code enforcement overall, uh, we're looking at roughly about 15% vacancy rate uh, in that Yeah, roughly about 15% uh, for that office. That's for every uh, all the titles uh, not just the inspectors. >> Okay. What about inspectors? >> Oh, that's >> and AMS is on deck. She's she's got the body. >> Yeah, that's right. So, I I'll go back. So for the inspectors so for both the field inspectors and the supervisors that's why I mentioned earlier the total lines we allocate to those titles about 459 uh total we have active roughly about 372 vacant 87 roughly 19% vacancy that's for the inspector uh series >> what are we doing what are we doing to to address these uh question one question two is who has HPD assigned to be the chief savings officer and are these positions on the chopping block >> got Um so we've named our chief compliance officer as the chief savings officer and we have been working frankly as a team in the executive. So myself included have been pretty embedded in this exercise. Um we believe we have um identified the savings that we're being asked to find in both 2026 and in the out years one and a half% and two and a half% respectively. Um, this will not come from any of our essential services or a reduction in staff in any of our critical programs. >> Okay. Definitely not the inspectors. They can bring in a lot to the city. Okay. >> Yeah. No. Yeah. Just just uh uh echoing uh the commissioner. Yes. And just to say in terms of your question about hiring, yes, we do uh bring in hiring classes and even doing a hiring freeze uh that we're going through. We uh did have an exemption for inspectors because we recognize how important uh those positions are. Uh so we have a modified uh one for one as opposed to the across the board two for one hiring uh and we'll just continue to uh make sure we fill positions as soon as we have the hiring freeze uh the two for one and the one for one lifted. >> Got it. Thank you. Um, so I I have a couple of more followup. I don't have them written out right now, but I had some questions about uh term sheets. Actually, maybe I do have them. Let me see. >> Um, term sheet investments. So, so just a quick general question while I find my actual question. Sure. >> Um, term sheets have been updated. Are we seeing more interest from the development community? Are we seeing more applications to HB? >> So, we have no shortage of interest from the development community, council member. Um, I'm very happy to say, uh, you know, having worked outside of New York City and frankly outside of New York State, we have a massive and robust both nonprofit and forprofit affordable housing community here. The term sheets have been updated and it was obviously overdue, right? It had been about five years and I think it is more reflective of the cost environment that we're now in, which is good. I do think we will continue to monitor that and work with OM should we see any need for changes whether that's because of like local laws that have passed or just because again the climate that we're in costs do continue to to change and unfortunately right now they're going up hopefully we can get to a point where we're actually bringing them down the cost of construction in which case we would reflect that in our term sheets. >> Thank you. And then uh for you highlighted partners and preservation um we also talk a lot about pillars. Any notable changes there in terms of uh what is allocated in the capital plan? >> Uh not at the moment. Right. I think the program for partners and preservation is about 5 million annually and I think that is is holding. Is that right Gardy? >> Yeah. And that's for expense dollars. So it's not capital dollars that's expense dollars. Uh yes and five about five million a year um across fiscal years. uh and I would just say that they are uh I think a hugely important partnership to us and will be as we think about more strategic ways to utilize code enforcement at a sort of portfolio level. They'll also be working really closely with the mayor's office to protect tenants and executive director Weaver. >> Yeah. Great. Excellent. Well, with that, I want to thank you for your time, your testimony, all the water. That was good luck for this hearing. Um, it's just it's just I'm really excited to to know that you commissioner are focused on the worst of the worst even as we're trying to build more, even as we're trying to, you know, be very ambitious across the HPD portfolio. So, thank you for your time and I look forward to pushing so that you can have even more resources. >> Thank you. All right, we have how many? >> Now on to 30 people who are really excited to to also testify on affordable housing and buildings in New York City. >> I shake or something. Okay. I now open the hearing for public testimony. I remind members of the public that this is a formal government proceeding and that decorum shall be observed at all times. As such, members of the public shall remain silent at all times. The witness table is reserved for people who wish to testify. No video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further, members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the Sergeant-at-Arms for inclusion in the hearing record. If you wish to speak at today's hearing, please fill out an appearance card with the Sergeant-at-Arms and wait to be recognized. When recognized, you will have two minutes to speak on today's hearing topic of the fiscal 2027 preliminary budget for the Department of Buildings and Housing Preservation and Development. If you have a written statement or additional written testimony you wish to submit for the record, please provide a copy of that testimony to the Sergeant-at-Arms. You may also email written testimony to testimony at councsil.nyc.gov within 72 hours of this hearing. Audio and video recordings shall not be accepted. I'm going to take a one minute recess. Okay. Uh I actually uh forgot one question for the commissioner. So she will be returning for that. But I just want the first panel to prepare. Um it is Tanya Oris Johnson Gladstone, Angela Cummings, Richard Troth, sorry if I'm saying your name wrong, and Yoselene Hanau. So you will be right up. Uh just the commissioner is going to answer one question. false false ending. Uh, Commissioner, thank you. Thank you for coming back. I I did uh forget to ask one question on the record uh that is really important to the council. Uh and we've talked about in previous hearings. Um, in January and February of this year, we had two major snowstorms with several inches of snow uh that the likes of which we had not experienced in a very long time in our city's history. And during that time, we had devastating losses in in New York City. It is my understanding that a total of 20 New Yorkers passed away this winter because of the extreme cold weather um within their homes. So, uh 20 cases of hypothermia within residential spaces. First and foremost, I extend my condolences to the families of the of these individuals um and their loved ones. And I I just wanted to ask on the record if uh HPD's neg uh in HPD's investigations, have there been any correlations between the unfortunate deaths uh in relation to the in heat complaints in multif family buildings or otherwise? >> Yes. Um, so Councilman, let me start by saying it's a terrible tragedy and we mourn the loss of all of those who who passed during that very unusual weather front. Um, there's really not much more to say about that other than it was a terrible tragedy. We did do a deep dive into where these uh where these deaths occurred. Um, and we did not see a pattern across any particular housing type. So, we do know that it happened in single family homes, in co-ops, and in multif family buildings. We also know that none of the buildings were part of our special enforcement programs. Uh, and that uh only one of the of the units or I'm sorry, one of the buildings where the unit was located where somebody did uh pass away had a recent code violation complaint specifically related to heat. Uh, but that we also have record that that violation had been closed. So again, we mourn the tragedy. I I don't think it was a housing maintenance code driven issue. Um but that doesn't make the loss any easier. >> Thank you. Thank you for for coming back to answer that on the record. It's really important to to share that with the public because it's been a recurring question. >> Thank you, Commissioner. For real this time. See you later. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you. And so now that the first panel I called, you are welcome to come to the deis. TA or O or sorry, Johnson Gladstone, Angela Cummings, Richard Truth or Trout and Joseline Hau. And whoever is ready can begin right away. Yes. Oh, good afternoon, Chair Sanchez and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Tanya Oris. I am the chief executive officer for Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City. I am joined today by several longtime partners in community-based housing services. Angela Cummings, executive director for NHS Brooklyn, Richard Trout, executive director for Brooklyn neighborhood services, Gladstone Johnson, executive director for Bronx NHS, and Yelen Janeo Australia from executive director for NHS Queens. Together, our organizations have served New York City homeowners and neighborhoods for more than 40 years. While we now operate as independent nonprofit organizations, we continue to work closely together to preserve home ownership and neighborhood stability across the city. Today, we are united and requesting $1 million from the city council to launch a citywide pilot property management program to support small homeowners who are struggling to maintain their properties. Across New York City, many owners of one to four family homes find it difficult to manage routine exterior maintenance. For seniors, homeowners with disabilities or lower income homeowners, tasks like snow removal, landscaping, trash, and recycle management, and basic site upkeep can become physically and financially overwhelming. When these responsibilities go unmet, homeowners may face violations, mounting cost, and added pressure that can threaten housing stability. For many homeowners, older homeowners who want to age in place, and more, many others who struggle with the responsibilities, property management support can make a difference between staying in their home and having to leave it. This pilot program will provide free property management services to eligible homeowners, helping them safeguard their homes and uh that can be wellmaintained. This first year, the program is expected to assist at least 95 units and we're very excited about the program and hopefully will be funded. I I wanted to um say about two more paragraphs, but it's >> you you can go ahead. I just have to say that >> Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City would administer the property management program and provide coordination, training, and ongoing technical assistance to our neighborhood partner organizations. Through this collaboration model, our partners will be equipped to deliver services directly within their communities, ensuring that homeowners have access to trusted locally based support by strengthening the capacity of both homeowners and community- based organizations. This program will help prevent housing instability, protect small homeowners assets, and promote responsible property management. We respectfully request that New York City Council support this initiatives as a practical and impactful step towards helping vulnerable homeowners remain in their home, preserve generational wealth, and maintain the strength of stability of neighborhoods. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. >> That's all. >> Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez and members of the committee. My name is Gladstone Johnson and I serve as executive director of Bronx Neighborhood Housing Services. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Today we stand together in requesting $1 million from the city council to launch a citywide pilot program for property management services. This investment will support small homeowners who are struggling to maintain their properties and keep them in their homes. Across New York City and especially in the Bronx, many owners of one to four family homes are facing multiffac multifaceted challenges for seniors, homeowners with disabilities and lowincome homeowners. These challenges can show up as leaky roofs left unrepaired and lower income homeowners. These challenges can show up as leaky roofs, sorry, crumbling steps and walls that are crumbling also causing safety hazards. Some of the homes that we go in, they're cluttered and unsafe and have unsafe common areas, unsecure basements, water in their basement, failing boilers, and broken exterior light that leaves property vulnerable. When these seemingly minor areas are not addressed, they can quickly escalate into housing code violations, pest infestations, unsafe living conditions, and increased insurance costs. All of which put additional strain on families already on the brink. At the same time, we're seeing older homeowners fall behind on their property taxes and water bills. major crisis in the northeast Bronx where we have a large housing stock making them vulnerable to taxlean sales, predatory rescue schemes and deed theft. For many, the burden of coordinating repairs, vetting contractors, and staying on top of city requirements is simply too much to manage alone. This pilot program would provide free property management services to eligible homeowners, helping them keep their homes safe, compliant, and well-maintained. In its first year, the program is expected to assist at least 30 homeowners with an estimated total of 95 units. By offering organized maintenance, monitoring building conditions, and helping owners navigate city rules, we can prevent emergencies like fires, building system failures, and hazardous conditions before they occur. And so we urge you uh council to invest in this pilot program empowering trusted community-based organization like us here from the NHS's of New York City because we believe together we can protect vulnerable residents, preserve affordable housing, and stabilize our neighborhoods. Thank you for allowing me to speak. >> Thank you. Where are we going? We're going to Queens or Brooklyn? >> Brooklyn then the House. >> Good afternoon everyone. Uh, excuse me, Chair Sanchez and the committee. My name is Richard Trout. I'm the executive director for Brooklyn Neighborhood Services. I'm here to support the pilot program that would provide free property management services to eligible senior homeowners to help them keep their home safe, compliant, and well-maintained. thus assisting them to age in place in their own home. Bedford Styverson has been designated the first uh horizontal norc which is naturally occurring retirement community in district 36. As a result of that we have a very significant number of seniors and a lot of them are homeowners sending assistance. This work is very costly and these homeowners are now retired and living on very fixed incomes and unable to uh afford these expenses. Aging pre-war buildings require specific and often delicate repair processes and property maintenance not only preserves the structural integrity but also ensure safe and comfortable living conditions. Historically, these types of properties have given homeowners the ability to rent units to generate additional income to help offset their expenses. Unfortunately, too many of these property owners are no longer able to manage the upkeep, and the units remain in deplorable and very often hazardous conditions, sometimes including the owner's primary unit. Navigating New York's very complex housing laws and regulatory systems can be especially challenging for a senior homeowner who most often is unfamiliar with the requirements and understandingly intimidated by the process. Many seniors face mobility issues and other age related challenges that make it very difficult for them to manage routine property responsibilities such as collecting rent, tenant screening, maintenance condition, coordination, responding to tenant inquiries, complaints, preparing lease agreements, and advertising vacancies. By strengthening the capacity of both homeowners and community based organizations, this pilot property management program will help to prevent housing stability, protect small homeowners assets, and promote responsible property management. Thank you. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez and others. My name is Angela Cummings. I am the executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Brooklyn. In the landscape of New York City's housing crisis, small residential units are frequently overlooked, yet they are indispensable. In Brooklyn, these properties from form the architectural and social fabric of neighborhoods, providing a significant port of the bar's unsubsidized affordable housing. These buildings are not owned by corporations. They're owned by families. Many of these families have held their properties for generations. Many are low to moderate income individuals who rely on rental income not to build empires, but to maintain stability, pay taxes, and preserve their homes that anchor their communities. And yet, these small property owners are often left to navigate a complex and unforgiving housing landscape alone. NHS Brooklyn saw the need to assist this population by creating an affordable property management program. This program was built on the foundational understanding that stabilizing these small landlords is the most effective community center strategy for preventing displacement, preserving affordable housing, and closing the racial wealth gap. It was created to move beyond crisis responses to offer proactive holistic mode for sustainable ownership. This property management program helped a single mother and landlord in Brooklyn how to manage her properties financed. She was enrolled in a program where she learned how to make small repairs around the house which helped to save her money. Through this program, she became eligible to receive a grant to hire a contractor to completely repair her bathroom that have been an ongoing problem for her family. Our generations would like to affirm that small homes matter, that small landlords matter, that families who have kept Brookley's neighborhood violent vibrant for generations deserve support, not neglect. Programs like NHS's Brooklyn Affordable Property Management Initiative program, sorry, and NHS's NYC affordable property management initiative are essential tools in the fight for housing stability, racial equity, and community preservation. >> You may conclude. >> You concluded. All right. Extra points. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez and members of the community. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Joseline Heno Estrea and I'm the director, the executive director of neighborhood housing services of Queens. For the past 30 years, we have been on the front line working with both lowincome homeowners and tenants to keep residents stable stably housed. But I want to be clear, supporting tenants and supporting homeowners are not mutually exclusive. They are deeply connected. When we stabilize homeowners, we preserve affordable housing. When we support tenants, we prevent displacement. This is one ecosystem. Today, we are asking for a 1 million investment in a citywide pro uh pilot property management program for small uh homeowners. As it was stated, every day we meet older uh adults, working families, and homeowners with disability who are doing everything right, but are overwhelmed with the basic demands of maintaining their homes. Something as simple as a snow removal or minor unckempt can lead to a violations, fines, and mounting pressure that can ultimately result in foreclosure of a loss of a home. This pilot program will provide practical on the ground support for uh to help homeowners stay compliance safe and stable. But this program alone um this cannot be an standalone program. We we urge the council as well to fully uh commit to continuum housing stability including uh providing funds for foreclosure prevention to keep families in their home. estate planning for protecting generational wealth and resolve title issues as well as uh provide continue to provide support for project help and emergency repair programs to address urgent conditions before they become a crisis. At NHS we see every day how the unsolved issues as a such as repair illegal barriers can lead to a spiral displacement but with the right support with the right time and the outcome is preventable. The reality is simple. When we lose homeowners we lose affordable housing. When we fail tenants we accelerate displacement. invest in property management pilot for closure prevention, state planning and emergency repairs because keeping New Yorkers in their home is not just good policy. It is our responsibility. >> Thank you. You have all testified. Yes. >> Thank you. Okay. Um what what are the eligibility criteria you propose for this pilot? >> So this is a free service. I'm kidding. Okay. >> So, um the eligibility is simple. Um it's one to four units and um we we do provide a full home assessment and a commitment from the homeowner um to work with um NHS. Those uh it it could range from simply maintenance services or a full-blown property management program where we um help safeguard the home. And uh especially for seniors um dealing with tenants, collecting rent, maintaining their um their expenses uh as it pertains to to taxes and insurance and just uh monitoring it on a on a regular basis. >> Got it. I mean there's just hundreds of thousands of people or potential, right, um of owners who might fall into this category. So how do you propose to unlimited or is it just first serve? first come, first served. >> Uh it's low to moderate income. >> Low to moderate. Okay. >> Yes. >> Got it. >> Um >> yeah, I I'm wondering um how this program >> with extra emphasis on seniors. I just want to >> seniors. Okay. Low to moderate income seniors. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Not not just not both. >> Low to moderate income and seniors. >> And seniors. Okay. Um what was I going to ask? It's been a great couple of hours, right? Um well, with respect to the the population you serve, right? Um one, is this an existing program in in any of the uh NHS centers? >> Yes. Uh I had the privilege um I've been with NHS for about two years and I'm coming from NHS Brooklyn. So NHS Brooklyn is here. Um but we started the program. Property management is not new. Um, but we have noticed uh being on the ground that many uh smaller homeowners are are in trouble and they need more assistance in in dealing with the regular um regulations and and um collection of rent and not really knowing landlord obligations. So, it's it's a it's a a program that's educational and it's uh someone who would actually um we could actually teach someone how to look at their home as a business. >> Um and in Brooklyn, uh it has been successful. >> Great. Yeah. If you can share with the committee just how the program as it exists has worked and who how many you have served and what kind of projects you've helped them with. The case study from Queens was was very helpful. Um, I'm wondering I mean I uh I'm a client of NHS Bronx. I don't know if you know that's that's where I got my first homeowner education and then you know went and applied for my mortgage and everything with my husband uh when we were newlyweds. Um so I have a special place in my heart for NHS. Um, and one of the programs that NHS Bronx runs. A question is if you all run it, is the the green green energy hub program. And just wondering, um, if you have information, you don't have to, you know, you're here talking about this new initiative. Um, but I'd love information about how that's working. Uh, just because as a now home, you were successful. I got home. Um, but there's also related to this problem of management is just finding a contractor is so difficult. finding responsible contractors, find finding licensed contractors um is just a nightmare. Uh and so as you work on green energy hub projects, just wondering your experience um lessons that you have because that's one of the areas that I certainly want to grow in this committee is conversations about how do we help all one to four family homeowners? What resource banks can we create? How much more do we need to, you know, be asking HBD to to pump into home fix and everything else because it just it feels impossible. and even as the chair of housing and buildings in the council, I feel like it's impossible. Um, so thank you for for coming to testify about this program and just welcome your ideas uh for for all of us uh for all of us who who need help as one to four family homeowners. >> Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. >> Thank you. Uh the next panel is going to be Trisha Landor, Yanv Kat, an Elise Brown, Rosalyn Black, and Sophia Fen. Uh so whoever is ready can begin when ready. >> Um thank you chair Sanchez and the committee for the opportunity to speak. My name is Sophia Fen and I'm a housing attorney for the New York Legal Assistance Group. um specifically within our public housing justice project and I'm one of the only attorneys in this city funded to represent NICHA tenants in standalone HP actions. I want to focus my testimony today on small changes that would make a large difference for NICHA's tenants. To start, HPD inspections need to be reformed to be as accessible as possible to NICHA tenants. Currently, NICHA tenants cannot call 311 to request an HPD inspection. If they do call 311, they are often rerouted to NICHA's customer care center. This is like if a private tenant called 311 to report that their landlord was not making repairs and instead of receiving help or information was rerouted to their landlord. Once NICA tenants do get an HPD inspection scheduled by bringing in HP action, tenants wait all day for an inspector to show up. HPD will call tenants a few minutes before they arrive. And if the tenants do not pick up the phone, HPD will not knock on their door and will simply skip their inspection. This policy is not routinely communicated to tenants when they request an HPD inspection. So, tenants aren't aware that they need to answer this call to receive their inspection. This is a huge access issue that leads to tenants missing their inspections either because they don't have access to a phone or simply didn't pick up a call from an unknown number. This policy needs to be clearly communicated to tenants on the inspection request form. And there must be a way for tenants to opt out and have HBD knock on their door. There is a universe of rampant repair and repairs and conditions that are not reflected in HPD in HPD data because of the barriers to inspections that only NICHA's tenants face. Mismanagement plagues NICHA's repair departments. Repair tickets are ignored or closed without any action being taken to address them. Nicha's maintenance schedules access dates only to skip them or shows up with no notice when tenants are unlikely to be home. There is seemingly no centralized project management or oversight for repair work. I want to stress that much more could be done with the resources that NICHA does have. >> Include um I also want to stress how little accountability there seems to be when NICHA fails at its legal and moral obligations to its tenants. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon everyone. Hello. Um hello Chair Sanchez and all the members of the committee. Good afternoon. Um, and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. Uh, my name is Trisha Lendor and I am the director of the preserving affordable housing program, uh, Brooklyn at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation, A Doing Business as Buildup Justice NYC. Uh, we have two preserving affordable housing programs, one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens. um using legal representation, brief advice and services, and legal education as well as advocacy to prevent evictions, combat tenant harassment and discrimination, and help organize tenants in buildings uh in Brooklyn and Queens. So last city fiscal year, BUJNYC handled more than approximately 3,600 cases across Brooklyn and Queens while also supporting 20 tenant associations fighting for habitable living conditions. BUJNYC joins our fellow civil legal service providers uh in calling for timely delivery of city contracts. We are also eager to see expanded enforcement of building code violations. Our affirmative legal work is supported by the anti-harassment tenant protection program, also known as AHTP, and our team regularly sees clients whose uh landlords leave them in uninhabitable and unacceptable living conditions. One notable example of our work is with a group of tenants in Brooklyn uh who we will keep anonymous but advised they are from the uh Red Hook uh area. Um now these group of residents were told years ago by their landlord that their units would be demolished and rebuilt. Meanwhile, our clients and many of their neighbors across the multilocation complex have had to repeatedly demand um that their landlord address issues like mold, leaks, uh broken front doors, um roaches, rats, holes in the floor and ceiling, uh no usable mailbox, and more. Now, some re residents have even unfortunately lost their sectioning housing vouchers as a result of their units being deemed unfit. Um however um there are uh substantive updates on the rebuilding project um despite slow response time for repair issues. But we have fought for our clients to find themselves in acceptable um housing and habitable conditions um to ameliorate the issues that they've been uh going through prior to our representation. Now, the kinds of injustices that I previously spoke of are all too common, unfortunately, among our clients and across the city. BUJNYC would like to see the city as a partner uh with civil legal service providers in working to ensure all New Yorkers have a safe, stable, habitable housing that they deserve. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez. Um, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Yaniv Kot. I'm a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Housing Justice Group Advocacy Unit. Um, I first want to just echo everything Miss Lindor just said. I work under the same contract and um agree with with all of that. Um, we work frequently with HPD and DOB towards shared goals of preserving affordable housing and preventing displacement and harassment. I want to acknowledge the new leadership there and say that we're very excited about renewed partnership on a lot of the issues that we're going to put in our written testimony and I just want to highlight a few of the most pressing issues for our clients. Um the first issue is uh around vacate orders. We were really happy to see uh the mayor's announcement of the establishment of the back home unit because it's so important that um tenants have a centralized place where they can go to access social services and legal services to get their belongings quickly from units that they've been vacated from uh without having to go through their landlords. Uh in addition to that, we want to urge DO to coordinate uh more closely with DHCR to make sure that landlords aren't illegally modifying or even demolishing stabilized units that are under vacate orders. That's an issue that we've seen a couple of times. Um second, I want to touch on code enforcement. Um there's a troubling pattern of tenant complaints being closed without inspection. uh particularly when it comes to heat and hot water complaints. Just as a quick example, a building that I represent in Flatbush um made 65 plus heat and hot water complaints during the most recent cold snap. Only one violation was placed on the building. Um and it was multiple tenants without heat and hot water, the whole building. Um we also want tenants to be able to use 311 to schedule and reschedu inspections. Um, and can I finish? >> You may conclude. >> Thank you. Um, and be able to respond to landlord certification of repairs online and not just by mail. Um, and now when people can only respond by mail, HPD isn't hearing from tenants in the way that they should be. Um, third, we want to see HPD um give more support to HDFC co-ops and Mitchell Lama buildings that are financially stressed and need support. Um, and lastly, we want to partner more with HPD and do uh push for housing court reforms. Um, specifically applying pressure to judges to prioritize decisions in urgent repair cases. Another quick example, in one of my cases, my clients have been waiting for over a 100 days on a decision for an unopposed contempt and civil penalties motion in a building with over 150 open violations. So, we would love to partner with HPD and DO to see if we can push the housing court to prioritize those emergency cases. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon. Afternoon. I'm Rosalyn Black, the citywide director of housing at Legal Services NYC. Thank you for allowing me to testify today. I'm going to speak on behalf of a number of the right to council providers about the program, the payment issues that are hobbling our program, and the need to substantially increase funding so that all eligible tenants receive representation in their eviction proceedings. The right to council program created by this council and funded by New York City is in its ninth year, successfully keeping at least 84% of those New York City tenants sued for evictions in their homes, saving the city millions in shelter costs, improving health outcomes for families, and reducing eviction filings. While the work we do is highly successful, the contracting implementation and payment process is putting providers on the brink of financial collapse. Our agency is owed at least $26 million by the city and we have already spent $700,000 in interest to cover expenses while we await reimbursement. Um that is $700,000 unavailable to provide crucial services to low-income New Yorkers. In addition, our current right to council contracts carry harsh financial penalties where providers who do not meet certain performance thresholds won't get reimbursed 10% of the expenses we incur in performing. As nonpro nonprofits, we don't have financial cushioning or profits to set aside to bear this risk, which only further destabilizes our agencies. These ineffective penalties must be removed. Providers, the independent budget office, the controller, and many of you has observed have observed that the funding level has left tens of thousands of tenants each year without lawyers. The gap has only widened over time. In 2025, while 50,000 households were eligible for full RAP in eviction cases, only 23,000 households received RAP. This leaves the majority, 27,000 tenant households with no hope of attaining a lawyer. The impact of this gap in se is seen in housing court every day. Tenants without lawyers agree to pay money they don't owe or charge illegal rents and get evicted. I conclude by saying that while we we understand the city is in a difficult financial and fiscal situation this year with the city is severely underfunding a successful and money-saving program. We ask that you continue to support the program to increase funding over the next three to five years until every eligible tenant receives representation. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Elise Brown. I'm the director of housing litigation at Mobilization for Justice. You'll be happy to know that Ro said a lot of what I was going to address, so I may get done early. Um, I would just want to to reiterate that that eviction, I believe, is the largest cause of homelessness and our success in keeping our clients in their homes, their families in their neighborhoods, their children in their schools um is a resounding success. It's also financially become extremely difficult um because of the way the contracts are structured. Um and for instance, we have cases sometime we have a lot of tools legal tools from from y'all from the state um to to defend defend our clients vigorously. We're lawyers. We like we litigate. We we provide vigorous defenses for our clients. And sometimes our cases last longer than a year, but we're paid for one year for a client. We have cases from 2018, 2019 that we are still actively litigating because it's our ethical responsibility to provide a defense and get the best result for our clients, but it's at a huge financial cost for our organizations. Um, so there are a lot of things that could be fixed in the contracts. That is one that particularly irks me. Um, and so because previously we were allowed to a percentage of our cases roll them from one year to the next. Now we're not allowed to do that and it's just killing us. So anyway, I will I will end it with that. But thank you for for being here and listening and and we are certainly part and parcel of the whole city effort on all sides to to try to enhance the uh conditions and and circumstances of tenants and low-income homeowners as well. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Um just a couple of follow-ups on on the contracting issues. Your contract is with HR, correct? The Office of Civil Justice, right? Yes. Um, and these these delays uh are I imagine are multi-year. >> We're owed $40 million from fiscal year 25 still and the rest of the money is for this fiscal year. >> Collectively, all of the right to council. >> No, just legal services NYC alone. I know UJC is I mean I don't know if MJ Yeah, >> we we are behind a few months but it but we it was for a year or so we were carrying a few million dollars of >> Sorry. How How do we get to $40 million? >> It's astounding. Yeah. >> Right. Mayor, >> we're four, just be clear, four from last year and 20. So, I'm odd for this year. So, >> Okay. Got it. So, I I haven't been on the general welfare committee, so not as read in. Although, >> yeah, there was a hearing this morning about contracting issues and delays. I've focused particular on this. >> Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay. Well, uh I I am certainly a a champion for right to council, I will continue to be and these are, you know, u for as bad as eviction rates are. They had had been and and will be would be uh exponentially worse without your work. So, thank you uh to your commitment to low-income tenants. It really matters and it really helps our communities. Um the general question for all of you uh all of you all of your organizations um well first a comment on the 311 recommendation uh for for NIH tenants. Um you're you're speaking to the section 9 and the section 8 universe or specifically section 9. >> I'm speaking specifically to section 9. I I'm not I can't speak as well to section 8. >> Okay. Um, okay. And and what happens when the city when an HP action is brought against NICHA? >> When an HP action is brought, there's uh the court orders an HPD inspection. So you when you file an HP action, you fill out a tenant inspection request form. >> So that's essentially the only way that Nitro tenants can get an HPD inspection >> to my knowledge. Yes. And then the court orders repairs based on set inspection >> based on the violations within the inspection report that's created. So the inspections are hugely important to the success of an HP action. Um so when they're missed, it causes massive delays. Sometimes you don't get a new date for weeks and this calling policy is is having a an effect on people being able to get their inspections. And I just don't understand why it's not written on the form if that's what they're going to do. And then obviously it's a clear access issue and people need to be able to opt out and and get a knock on their door. >> Got it. Okay. Happy to work with you on that on on addressing that issue. Um it seems like a pretty simple fix just on the on the access issue on the tenant notification issue. Um yeah, I'm sorry I can't get over this $40 million. What? Okay. Um what in in your in everybody's view, what is the aside from fully funding right to council? Um what is a top intervention the city can make to stabilize the clients that you all work with? >> Code enforcement. >> Roll call. Go ahead down the line >> or everybody agrees on code enforcement. >> I'd say there's a host of interventions. repairs and safe conditions are a very important priority, but also helping people access the income benefits that they're entitled to, like more resources from HR to help people access one shots and more subsidies for rent that I know this council has been working hard on. Those are crucial pieces for me. >> I hear there was this really great bill, set of bills passed to get give more people vouchers. >> Yeah. Do you all support that? >> Absolutely. >> Uh okay. I would say also um appropriate staffing at the agencies because a lot of our a lot of reasons it it takes us longer to resolve cases particularly nonpays is we're just waiting and waiting and waiting and pushing and and sometimes having to bring in um um DSS or HR to the proceeding to explain to the court why it's taking so long. Um, another thing that is, I think, difficult is that litigating repairs takes a long time. We we do right to council in the Bronx. Every client has apartments that have have things that need to be fixed, but for us as right to counsel providers to litigate the repairs in that context is just not it's already not economically sensible. But we often, you know, provide advice to tenants about how to get repairs, what they need to do, um, the various steps in it, and counsel them through it. We're also not paid by right to counsel to do any kind of a brief advice. So, unless it's full rep, it's nothing. So, we give a lot of free advice on the side, but it is not my my attorneys hate it that they have to focus on the on the preventing the eviction as opposed to to leaving the clients in much better position if we'd been able to to have the bandwidth to to litigate the repairs issues. >> Got it. Thank you. Well, thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for your work and yeah I want to I want to follow up and continue working on this these issues Brendan Cheney Ariel Hirs Pete Sakora James sorry Kohar Koser >> Kog all right what's up uh and Darren Cely you're the next panel and whoever is ready can begin Good afternoon. My name is Brendan Cheney. I'm director of policy and operations at the New York Housing Conference. I've submitted written testimony, so I'll just summarize it in the interest of time. Um, so first, while we look forward to the AOM Donnie administration's new housing plan, we want to highlight that currently HPD's capital budget is facing a fiscal cliff. Uh HP's capital budget in 2026 is 5.9 billion. In 2027 this drops to less than three billion and in the following years it's less than two billion. We estimate HPD needs about $4 billion per year to maintain historical production adhere to the construction justice act while also adding capital to fully utilize the LITC expansion. Um this does not include $1 billion needed annually to support NICHA's PACE program. Uh so we urge the council to work with the administration to ensure the gap is addressed in the next plan. Uh second, there is a growing crisis of financial distress in affordable housing. A recent study by Enterprise and Lisk found that more than half of the projects in their portfolios have negative cash flow. Uh the city must meet this urgent need by investing resources and making reforms. As such, we are introducing the crisis agenda. uh CR ISIS uh create $1 billion loan workout and reserve fund for affordable housing buildings. Raise revenue by allowing vacancies to comply with current AMI rent limits uh in buildings under regulatory agreement. Increase capacity for loan restructuring. Staff DSS adequately to prevent non-payment evictions. Uh support homeless set aside referrals and process city FEPS. invest in a multif familybacked affordable housing insurance program and save money on water bills by expanding the multif family water assistance program to $100 million. Uh with this agenda, we can help address the crisis facing affordable housing. Uh and then finally, bureaucratic issues are limiting affordable housing development and operations. The MD administration rightly created the speed task force. Our recent reports track delays in housing connect lease ups estimated the cost of housing uh and the excessive role of OM. We look forward to working with the city to approve and implement the suggestions that will remove unnecessary delays in housing production. Thank you. >> Thank you, Brennan. Um for the fiscal cliff you identify, um how does this comport with the mayor's stated goal of uh tripling housing production during his tenure? What would we need to see in on the capital side to to know that the mayor is going to accomplish a tripling of housing production preservation? >> I mean, you know, they're they're working on their housing plan. On the campaign, he talked about uh $10 billion per year in housing capital to to meet that plan. Um I don't, you know, I don't know if they're going to revise that or not, but that's what they said on the campaign trail. and um I you know I think we're looking forward to seeing what they what they come out with. >> Thank you. Um the crisis agenda, thank you. So I'm just going to ask questions as you speak because you're going to speak on different things. Um but for the the crisis agenda, thank you. I'd love myself a good acronym for the $1 billion loan workout and reserve replenishment fund. Um is that uh do you all envision city funding, state funding, private funding? Have you talked to infrastructure funds folks folks that have funds available to us? >> I think for for this we're uh calling for city capital funding for the $1 billion. I believe there's also um asks at the at the state level for for state support as well. >> Okay. Um thank you. And those are my those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you Ariel. Hi, Chair Sens. Um, and members, no members of the committee. Um, it's good to see you online. They may be watching online. That's so true. Um, my name is Ariel Hersh. I'm the director of policy and new projects at UHAB. Um, and we're really heartened to hear um, this new perspective um, from Commissioner Levy and the Mamani administration. Um, it's great to see so many dedicated civil servants in the administration taking a different approach here. I wish I was here to talk about uh many really exciting sort of like follow-ups to many of the issues presented in today's testimony and in the budget. We are unfortunately here um around contracts um like a number of other folks. Uh and we heard HPD confirm on the record today that there is only $1.3 million allocated for HDFC co-op technical assistance. Um this is a $1 million cut from the original contract funding amount for each fiscal year um for the life cycle of that contract. Um it was cut through an administrative error in December. So just a an accounting mistake. Um and to HPD's credit, they identified the issue and have immediately worked to restore that contract amount. But we are now hearing differently. We are also um seeing that OM has blocked the correction and for the last six months um has continued to fight HPD on restoring that contract amount um for HP for FY26 HPD supplemented the contract with another source of funding to plug that gap but um the remaining six years of the contract renewals are still at risk and OM has thus forth um refused to allow HPD to correct the error. that means for our organization, which you know pales in comparison to some of the other shortfalls I'm hearing folks mention. Um, but it means that starting this July, this will potentially result in the layoffs of eight or more UHAB staff and the termination of services to approximately 400 HDFC co-ops, uh, affecting roughly 8,000 low and moderate income homeowners. Um, we are really happy to see UEF's work uplifted in the current administration. May I continue? Um, we're excited to be in the fight together. Um but that fight does not get us paid and we need that to pres provide these essential services too. >> Thank you Ariel. And what was what is your total reach with $2.3 million? >> Um it is the full scope of the TTA HMMT contract which is all about 1,200 HDFC co-ops in the city. >> And what is the depth of your relationship with these 1200 co-ops? Um we have worked extensively uh with just about every single HDFC co-op in the city since their founding often going back to the 70s and 80s and their incorporation. Um we helped many of those buildings go through the original till process to convert to co-ops and have been trusted council and advisers um assisting with board transition and governance for many decades in their buildings. >> Thank you. specifically just want to get a sense of what does $2.3 million per year allow you to do with 1,200 co-ops? Yeah, it allows us um to go above and beyond in our work um as our uh you know really dedicated staff of um project associates do in these buildings providing not just basic trainings and technical assistance overseeing elections the sort of bread and butter of our technical assistance work but doing deep and intensive um workouts for HDFC cooperatives facing severe issues of um financial and physical distress which I know chair you are intimately aware of all of our conversations around safer act um and where those buildings would be headed. Um without that additional really high intensive assistance um those buildings face you know the third party transfer um program and and worse in the meantime while conditions deteriorate or board governance issues prevent uh those buildings from getting back on track and getting the support folks need. Um that also translates downstream into uh code enforcement and living conditions in those buildings. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Ariel. Thanks. >> Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez and esteemed members of the housing of the Committee on Housing and Buildings. My name is James Koger and I serve as the manager for Community Justice Connect Bronx, an initiative of the Center for Justice Innovation. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Across New York City, housing challenges often emerge long before cases reach housing court. Whether through unresolved repair cases, confusion around tenants rights and responsibilities, or financial shocks that make it difficult to keep up with the rent. Too often these issues escalate because tenants and small property owners lack accessibility, timely support to help navigate them and comp navigate complex systems and resolve problems early. The Center for Justice Innovation's work is grounded in the belief that housing stability is strengthened when people can access support early within their communities and at key moments before challenges escalate. Today, I will be highlighting several initiatives that reflect that approach, and demonstrate how targeted investments can strengthen housing stability, improve access to justice, and support more effective problem solving across New York City's housing landscape. I'll start with the the housing just the housing resource centers within Red Hook, Harlem, and Queens Community Justice Center, Far Rockit. Then I'mma go on to my particular baby, the center for the community justice connect where we have um we're training community volunteers within community to help give access to civil legal issues. We also predominantly the work that we do is surrounded around housing connect. I was very interested in hearing what HPD had to say about housing connect and um as a frontline advocate is very interesting and um just very interesting I'll say to that. Um, also we have the eviction diversion program which which addresses housing needs um for folks that's within the housing. We really trying to transform what housing court looks like and court in general looks like. The pro in conclusion the programs outlined today. >> You may conclude. >> Thank you. The programs outlined today reflect a comprehensive approach to strengthening New York City's housing ecosystem. Thank you for the opportunity and opportunity to testify and for your continued leadership in advancing policies and investments and strengthening housing stability and access justice for all New Yorkers. Thank you. >> Thank you. And just taking a look at what you've submitted here to to the sergeants. Um so these are requests for council support of individual of the individual programs that you outlined in your testimony. >> Yes. >> Copy. Okay. Um, I'll I'll take a closer look and and circle back with anything. >> It's just not limited to the ones I mentioned. I just highlighted those three. We also have um of our neighborhood safety initiative. Yes, there's a lot of papers. Um, you know, they told me to print out 20 for everybody. So, um, but you know, yes, a lot of stuff. Also, I didn't color code it. The map is color coded, but um, I wasn't able to get color prints. So, but >> good. All good. Thank you. This is this is excellent. We'll we'll take a closer look and, you know, hope to support. Thank you. >> Thank you. The next panel is Edmundo, Alex Gomez, Graham Gale, Anthony Araafi. I love the assist. Thank you. Uh Ustasia Smith, and Marabel Rodriguez. And whoever is ready can begin when ready. Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Alberatti. From 2019 to 2021, I lived in New York City shelter system. Thank you, Chair Shant Sanchez and members of the housing and buildings committee for holding this hearing and giving me the chance to speak. I'm here because the city is failing the people that who need it most, and I was one of them. I'm calling on this council and this administration to commit to creating 12,000 units of truly affordable housing every year for the next five years. 60,000 units total reserved exclusively for homeless New Yorkers and extremely low-income households on the brink of homelessness. That means capital investment directed specifically at deeply affordable housing, not moderate income housing, not market rate subsidies, housing for the people who have nowhere else to go. I shouldn't have had to enter shelter to get a city FEPS's apartment. I wanted to find one on my own. The facility I was placed in was a harm reduction program. The idea is to keep people alive. But what I saw was staff that was confrontational and disrespectful where I had to watch my own back every single day. When I documented and reported problems, I faced retaliation. Despite all of that, I kept going. And in 2021, I was connected to a city fs voucher. While in shelter, I applied through housing connect. I was told I won the lottery and was matched with the unit I liked. And then I was told someone else took the apartment. After everything I had survived, I still couldn't win. Here's why. There's there's simply not enough deeply affordable units for people like me. When supply is this scarce, brokers and building managers can choose, and they do. Someone who never spent a night in shelter, but who is also extremely low income looks like a safer bet. That discrimination exists because there isn't enough housing for extremely low-income families. And that is really psychologically devastating. It discourages people from even trying. The root cause of mass homelessness in New York City is a lack of effort from people like me. Is not a not a lack of effort from people like me. It is a shortage of rental housing for the lowest income New Yorkers. This crisis will keep growing unless the city challen changes its priorities. We need more affordable housing for homeless people. Thank you. >> Extra points. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Alex Gomez, campaign coordinator at Coalition for the Homeless. Thank you, Chair Sanchez and members of the committee for this opportunity to testify. I'm also testifying and asking for this council to commit to uh funding or including capital investments for 12,000 units of affordable housing specifically for ELI and homeless set aside units. Here's a scale of the housing and homelessness crisis. Over a 100,000 people sleep in shelter on average each night uh this January. That was just this January. So 100,000 people per night just in January 2026 on average. An estimated 200,000 more doubled or tripled up in apartments one crisis away from being homeless. And across the metro area for every 100 Eli households there are only 35 available apartments that are affordable to them. These people would qualify for an affordable unit if one existed. But our analysis of city production data from 2014 to 2024, that's over a decade, found that only 21% of city financed affordable units were created for ELI households. That's just 22,565 extremely low-income units over an entire decade. While at the same time, nearly 70,000 units went to households earning between 51 and 165% of AMI. This mismatch between the households with the biggest needs and the units of affordable housing being created needs to be corrected. City council recently took a step by introducing and passing intro 1443, which mandates more apartments for ELI and low-income households. But a mandate without money is not is just an empty promise. We are urging the council to dedicate capital funding in the budget for 12,000 units of homeless and extremely lowincome uh households for extremely low-income New Yorkers each year for the next 5 years. So that's 60,000 units over 5 years. This is a capital investment. Every major has made every mayor has failed to address the needs of the lowest income New Yorker in the housing and plans in their housing and plans uh production. So much so that in 2024, the largest share of affordable apartments financed by the city required a minimum income of over $118,000 a year. The majority of affordable housing last year was restricted to people only making $118,000 and above, excluding people like my friend Anthony right here. I'll conclude by saying that we can fix this by we can fix this by setting and funding an affordable housing production goal for homeless and extremely lowincome households only and building from the bottom up. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you both. uh from Coalition for the Homeless. I'm going to say something something um something controversial maybe, but I I don't see why as a city we couldn't have a vision of having a right to shelter that means a right to a home and not the right to to a bed in a shelter, right? Um I I think yeah, we it would probably cost a lot less for the city of New York to operate this way. Um shelter is not anybody's first choice, right? You want your home, you want you want your privacy. And so I just encourage us as a city to have a different conversation about what it means to have a right to shelter, especially as we talk about interventions like expanding city FEPS, which this council legislated and have has not been able to come to a conclusion with the previous mayor or the current mayor. >> You're exactly correct, Chair Sanchez. And if I may just say that it is an expensive program and what we are asking for is a lot of money, but it's a lot of money that has a major impact on the city that we can likely see have years and years and years of positive impact. Um, just, you know, just by simply putting people into stable and permanent housing. This isn't to say that our right to shelter and the shelter system is inappropriate. We absolutely need shelters, but we need housing also. >> Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both. Hi there, my name is Graham Gail. Um, I'm an organizer with Food and Water Watch, which is a national environmental group. Um, and we are in coalition with New York Communities for Change, We Act, Triage, the Central Labor Council, and the Steamfitters 638 local. Um, to talk to you about this program that we're putting forth called heat pumps for all. Um, we've already met with your office and shared some language, so I'll just keep it short. Um, but it's a program to fund heat pumps for one and two family homeowners while lowering energy bills, reducing air pollution, and creating good union jobs in the green energy market. Um, we are asking for $10 million in the city budget um, as a starter program. We want to build the program year by year. Um, so this small amount of money makes a huge difference. Um, just to highlight the difference that this program could make. Um, I want to share a quick story. Um, I've been out petitioning every week in my neighborhood and and local um local neighborhoods. Um, when I met Luis, who is a homeowner in Ridgewood, he shared with me that his gas bill, uh oh he shared with me that his gas bill last month was $767 and that his um, his bill this month is over 500. When I told him about our plan, I could see him light up. Um, I could see him picture um a future where he could actually afford his energy bills and see a pathway towards a cleaner New York City. Um, so heating our homes should not cost us so significantly, not only from our pockets, but also our health, our city, and our planet. Thanks. >> Thank you. What would the $10 million be used for? Are you covering the cost for certain households? >> Yes. So the way that we're considering the program would work is to target in a geographical area. Um so it would essentially be a universal program in that neighborhood. Um and it would fund most of the replacement um from oil and gas boilers to heat pumps. Heat pumps cost around between 15 to $20,000. Um, so we would try to allocate $10,000 to 1,000 homeowners um to make that switch. And as was mentioned um earlier today, there are a lot of great city and state programs that help to bridge that remaining um $10,000. But yeah, so getting folks most of the way there. We're also attaching this to labor standards so that you are connected with a good contractor to do the work. Um, so yeah, that's that's the basic idea of the program. >> And I thank you. Thank you for sharing the proposal here today. I just want to push my friends in advocacy to um in addition to creating programs that would help specific households. Even just the question of the you just mentioned at the end of it the labor standards portion of it. It is extreme as a as may have heard me complaining about earlier as a homeowner of a two family home. it is like impossible to find contractors who think it's worthwhile to work with me, right? Absolutely. With us, right? Um and so even just creating a pool of reputable or trustworthy or whatever, uh willing contractors would go a long way. And of course it's it's a high price tag and all that um for the machines, but then you know um just helping folks navigate through issues that come up like the house can't uh can't sustain that electrical load and so now the there is a lot of electrical work and the house needs a new service line and whatever. So, I I'm really interested in in seeing from from advocates suggestions about how we can um you know, just just like we're talking about local law 97 compliance, how we can have a local law version for the small homes, right? It's a substantial number of New York City buildings um to really help them provide them technical assistance and knowhow and resources and everything else uh so that they can also electrify and um you know become sustainable. >> Yeah. Our our idea with this program is to make it easy like we want it to be smooth. We want it to be easy. So, you know, it's not only that you get a contractor, but or not only that you get the money, but you also get a contractor who who knows what they're doing, who is going to do a correct install, and who is also there to do the assessment and sort of assist every step of the way. So, thank you. >> Thank you so much. I look forward to talking more about this, too. Thank you. My name is Ustaceious Smith. I'm from Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing. Thank you, Chair Sanchez, and the entire committee for the opportunity to testify. We currently house 200 low-income older adults, many who are formerly homeless across across a portfolio of supportive housing and affordable senior housing. Older adults make up 20% of New York City's population. They're the fastest growing age group of people becoming homeless, rising 10% every year for the past 10 years. There were 520,000 seniors on weight list for affordable senior housing at last count, most of whom were extremely low income. These facts together make it critical that New York City dramatically scale up development of new housing for older adults. Instead, we are facing the fiscal cliff in the coming years that New York Housing Conference talked about. We call on the city to support the 5-year agrong New York City platform and create at least a thousand Sarah units for extremely low income per year, even if there's a section 8 shortfall. Preserving the units of housing we currently have is also vital. Take for example our 120 unit SRO that opened in 1987 where seven residents on the hall share one toilet and bathtub and one small kitchen. The average tenant is in their late 70s and our experience is that an SRO environment does not work well for older adults as they age in place. The only services funding is the state's 1980s era program NICHIP which by today's standards is grossly underfunded. Many of the units have no dedicated rental subsidy. This combined with skyrocketing operating costs means that we can't afford minor upgrades like converting the bathtubs, which are difficult for seniors to use, into showers. We need preservation funding that would allow us to rehabilitate the entire building, converting it into studio apartments. We asked the city to support the supportive housing network's ask for 65.3 million to be included in FY27 for preservation of supportive housing. The operational costs in affordable senior housing are growing rapidly and revenue is shrinking, putting these buildings at risk. Just this year, we got a 35% increase on our insurance costs. We ask that the city fully fund uh and support the crisis agenda that New York Housing Conference talked about um that would uh that would help reduce operating costs and aid preservation efforts such as expanding the multif family water assistance program. We've applied to that every single year and we've never received the credit because it runs out of money too soon. Got it. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you to this panel. My staff told me I have to ask less questions. I'm blaming you. Sorry. Uh, okay. Uh, Brianna Stury, Malikica Kalsa, Sarah Newman, Frank Shentaro McMullen. Katie Muy from Shinny and Kevin Wolf. Whoever is ready can begin. Good afternoon. My name is Brianna Stury. I'm a proono scholar at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. This testimony is on behalf of Nilpy's disability justice and environmental justice programs. Thank you to the chair and members of the committee for allowing me to testify today. Nilpy's disability justice program assists New Yorkers with disabilities in matters involving housing discrimination, including requests for reasonable accommodations such as apartment and common area retrofitting, transfers to accessible apartments, and protection for use of service animals. It is imperative that all New York City agencies ensure that housing is accessible and free of discrimination. Although the Federal Fair Housing Act was passed nearly 60 years ago in New York City and New York State's human rights laws have likewise long been effect, countless people in New York City continue to face discrimination when it comes to their housing needs. Consistent and aggressive enforcement of anti-discrimination laws allows more people with disabilities to remain in their homes. Enforcement of accessibility requirements of New York City's building code should therefore also be a priority for the city. We urge city council to fund aggressive enforcement of the code by the department of buildings and the department of housing preservation and development. Such enforcement will ensure accessible spaces for New York City's disabled residents and senior citizens and allow them to continue to be part of the communities and live independently. We also urge New York City and the public advocate to investigate and track evictions of tenants with disabilities to enforce New York City's anti-discrimination laws in a systemic way and create new causes of actions and penalties to aid in enforcement. Tracking evictions will enable New York City to identify and monitor housing providers who routinely evict tenants with disabilities. Treating this as a systemic issue will also help address the root causes of dis disability discrimination in housing. Because one of the most impactful ways anti-discrimination laws are enforced is through private action. We also advise adding a mechanism for enabling easy public access to records of discrimination patterns in addition to public oversight hearings and reports of general findings. May I continue? >> You may conclude. Building complaints violations filed with the department buildings are already available on the department's website through the building information search. Discrimination records must similarly be publicly available. Nilpy's environmental justice team strives to ensure timely and proper oversight and implementation of the city's landmark building decarbonization law, local law 97. We urge this committee to ensure that local law 97 is fully implemented with the expert assistance from New York City agencies like the mayor's office of climate and environmental justice which offers an accelerator program to all owners for free. The department of housing preservation and development and the department of buildings. A more detailed written testimony has already been submitted on NLP's behalf. Thank you uh for your time and consideration. Thank you. >> This one. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Sarin Newman. I'm the deputy executive director for the Open Hearts Initiative, an organization that builds solidarity between homeless and housed neighbors and communities throughout the city. Um I'm here alongside colleagues from Coalition from the Homeless. Um and appreciate the opportunity to testify today. And I'm here because we need more affordable housing for people who are homeless or extremely low income. And I'm here to say that's something that many housed New Yorkers support as well. Um New York City must prioritize investing capital in deeply affordable housing specifically for folks who are extremely low income or currently experiencing homelessness. Um and I'm asking the city to commit to creating 12,000 units of truly affordable housing each year for the next 5 years for a total of 60,000 units. Um, our members work closely with neighbors experiencing homelessness and see how easily folks can become homeless and how hard it is for folks to get out of shelter and find housing. We know that homelessness is a housing problem. There aren't enough available affordable units for extremely lowincome folks. Um, we saw that in the housing and vacancy survey a couple years ago where less than 1% of the units renting for under $1,100 a month were available. Um, and the affordable housing that our city is creating isn't meeting that need despite record levels of affordable housing production in recent years. Most of that housing created by the city excludes households who are homeless and extremely low income. Um, the homelessness crisis will continue to grow unless the city corrects that misalignment between the greatest need for affordable housing and the priorities for affordable housing production. Um, I urge the administration and this council to write this wrong and to give homeless and extremely low-income New Yorkers more opportunities to get permanent affordable housing. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Uh, good afternoon, uh, Chair Sanchez. Uh, my name is Kevin Wolf and I'm here on behalf of the Center for New York City Neighborhoods. Uh, the center is one of the largest homeowner service organizations in New York City. And just to help explain the importance of our work protecting homeowners, I did want to share a story of a homeowner that we've served. Uh her name is Miss V. And uh she was a first-time home buyer who purchased an affordable home in East New York, Brooklyn. Uh she's a black woman and an immigrant. And although she was a high earnner uh income earner, she was denied access to a traditional mortgage and steered uh towards purchasing a home in East New York with a predatory loan. What was supposed to be a dream quickly became a nightmare. Her home was entangled in violations, lawsuits, and bureaucracy and a prior illegal uh construction uh which put her at risk of losing the home. Uh Miss V told us that the property had two deeds with technical issues and it rendered one of the deeds invalid valid and due to an illegal conversion, she was unable to live in the home. Despite this, she had to continue paying legal fees, covering property violations, paying rent to live elsewhere, and financing repairs, which led to her financial ruin. She was on the brink of homelessness when she came to the center for help. Miss V's story highlights the challenges that many New Yorkers face in achieving sustainable home ownership. Since 2008, the center has worked to promote and protect affordable home ownership across the city so that uh working and middle-class New Yorkers can remain in stable communities. Our network has assisted 200,000 homeowners and invested $60 million across New York City. I want to emphasize a simple and important truth. Foreclosure remains a serious and growing threat, especially uh for our communities of color. through the foreclosure prevention uh program which the city council funds uh we support a network of nearly two dozen housing counseling and legal service organizations and this year uh the network helped if I could could just conclude uh 2,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure and stabilize their finances. Uh the I did also want to note that we commend uh the new administration, Mayor Mandani, uh for addressing affordability with home ownership, including suspending the tax lean sale this year uh which we our research shows disproportionately affects black and brown uh homeowners. Uh at the same time, homeowners are facing increasing challenges. rising foreclosures. We saw foreclosures rise 8% increased scams targeting vulnerable residents uh and homeowners who are unable to meet uh home repair needs. Programs that the city council funds like uh home fix are critical to ensuring homeowners can safely remain in their homes. This is why we are requesting $9.7 million from the city council to continue supporting foreclosure prevention, home repair, outreach, and estate planning services. These investments uh will strengthen uh the existing programs uh that homeowners have and bring support to the communities that need it most. With the council's support, we can protect homeowners, preserve generational wealth, and ensure that New York City remains a place working families can stay and thrive. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Kevin. Um your uh thank you for your testimony, your reaction to the number of people we've been able to reach uh through down payment assistance and home fix. I think the numbers were 142 and 50 something. >> Yeah, with both both home fix and um you know uh home first. We we definitely need to do more um and making sure that the the pro programs uh are built at scale to the need. Uh there is a a huge need uh for both Home Fix and uh uh Home First. We see with HomeFix, 4,000 homeowners apply uh every year and we're only able to uh help around two around a 100 homeowners, excuse me, every year. And so uh we need to to increase the scale uh you know, without the council's resources. We would not have been able to do as much as we've done with home repair thus far. And so it's it's the council has stepped up to the plate. We also want to make sure that uh we have the partnership with the new administration which we're excited about uh in order to provide those services and we do want to scale our down payment assistance as well uh so that so more New Yorkers can access home ownership. >> Thank you. The down payment assistance is a grant correct? >> Yes, that's right. >> And you said 4,000 applied for which program? >> This is for home fix. >> For home fix and that is income restricted, right? It is um it it's it's sort of a sliding scale and so it's a zero interest uh um to there's it's a low interest to zero interest forgivable loan. >> Who gets forgiven? >> Um I'd have to get back to you on the exact uh statistic, but it is for you know those homeowners who are low income, very low income, they would be they would have their loan forgiven after and and they would have to live remain in their home for a certain period of time. Uh, and it would it would be forgiven incrementally year by year. >> Excellent. Thank you so much for your testimony. >> Thank you. >> Um, good afternoon, evening, chair, council members. >> We live here now. >> Sorry. >> Of course. Uh, my name is Frank Mullen and I'm the communications manager at Live On New York. Our membership includes more than 110 community-based nonprofits that provide core services under the NYC aging portfolio and many many other home and community based services in our city. I have submitted our housing needs report alongside this testimony for your review. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. The affordability crisis is crushing older New Yorkers. Homelessness among older New Yorkers is growing at three times the rate of any other demographic. and senior housing weight lists stretch over six years long. At the current rate, our most conservative estimate is that it will take 250 years to clear the current weight list, which is a while. Um, there are two problems obviously. One, the senior homelessness crisis demands new housing. Two, older adults who are already in affordable units are watching their rents rapidly out outpace their income, which is often only a social security stipen, or they're watching the buildings they live in fall into greater disrepair. The funding we need to confront this crisis is minuscule. It is nothing in comparison to the billions in homelessness prevention mitigation that we will have to pay if we fail to provide adequate senior housing. Study after study has found that senior housing programs like Sarah and Scre do more than just providing older New Yorkers with the life they want. It is also fiscally responsible and a smart decision. Our recommendations are trifold. One is to develop at minimum a thousand Sarah units per year as we're calling for in the age strong New York campaign with priority given to one-bedroom units without sacrificing unit counts. Two is to commit $250 million to fully fund the senior citizen rent increase exemption or SCRE. Currently, it's funded to 47% utilization. A rent freeze may provide temporary relief, but once that rent freeze inevitably ends, older New Yorkers will be unable to meet their rents and risk homelessness again unless Scurry is fully funded. And I'm sorry if I can just finish my last piece. Uh third, we want to ask the city to commit $200 million to HUD 202 residence repairs across New York City. There is not currently funding to repair HUD 202 buildings and they are falling into disrepair and are at risk of condemnation and it's essential that we make sure those buildings get repaired. Um, thank you for the opportunity to testify. >> Thank you. Um, for the for the SCRE advocacy 250 million um can you help me understand how this works? Where where would this funding flow through? The funding comes through the city. This is the there's a state bill to expand SCREE but currently it is it's funded by the city and right now at it funding levels it's funded to 47%. Utilization >> 47% >> 47%. Yes, that's correct. >> So does that mean that elig not all eligible households who are submitting an application are being approved? >> Yes, that's correct. >> Know that. Okay. Thank you. >> Of course. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair and members of the committee. I'm Katie Muy, the policy and programs manager at the network, a membership organization representing over 200 nonprofits that develop and operate supportive housing across the state. As you know, supportive housing is one of the most effective tools to end homelessness and strengthen communities. However, the model faces mounting challenges as ongoing federal uncertainty, rising costs, and workforce challenges place increasing pressure on our providers. We are here today to discuss the need for targeted investments to preserve the city's existing supportive housing stock, advancing the goal of 1300 units preserved by 2030 in alignment with the New York City 1515 reallocation plan. Now, it's time to put that plan into action. We are asking the city to invest 44 million in capital funding and 21.3 million in the expense expense budget to preserve 325 supporting housing units this fiscal year. Our data shows that at least 7600 units are prime for preservation but are at serious risk of closure. Federal cuts to continue of care are imminent, meaning nonprofits will lose their operating subsidies for thousands of units, which will destabilize programs and displaced tenants. By investing in preservation right now, the city can mitigate this loss. On the services side, the units that we've identified are currently operating service contracts through NYHIP HR SRO support services, which is the lowest funded service contract rate in existence. While the network was successful in securing a 17.8 million increase in last year's state budget, the pass through uh rate is still five times lower than the New York City 1515 service contract rate. Allowing nonprofits to claim New York City 1515 rates will address the significant gap in funding and provide the level of care that is needed. The 44 million in capital funding will support the preservation needs of at least 325 units that are 15 years or older um to complete necessary renovations, meet energy efficiency standards, and offset rising maintenance and operating costs. This will also support the conversion of outdated SRO's without private bathrooms or kitchenetses into modernized studios that are more functional and desirable for formerly homeless tenants, many of whom are older adults. Ustaceia on our previous panel from Wishfish highlighted a program uh facing such challenges. If the state does not address the significant preservation needs, we will have to contend with the reality of programs closing, residences shutting down, and tenants losing their home. Proactive investment in preservation is crucial to the stability of nonprofits and formerly homeless New Yorkers. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Thank you to this panel. Uh we are now moving to our last in-person panel. Uh, if you have inadvertently been left off the list after this, please see a sergeant, one of our sergeants, Melanie Reyes and Emily Klein, Vanessa Leang, Pamela Herrera, and Greg Roberts. and whoever is ready can begin. Hi, good evening. Um, thank you, Chair Sanchez and members of the council for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Emily Klene and I'm the assistant vice president and deputy director of public affairs at the Community Preservation Corporation. As the city works to determine its budget for the next year, we urge prioritizing the increasingly tenuous and tenuous financial and physical conditions of the city's rent stabilized housing stock. For the 1 million rentstabilized apartments across New York City, rent levels have been kept stable for the past many years. However, the cost of operating and maintaining these buildings have not. Across CPC's New York City rent stabilized portfolio, per unit operating expenses rose 22% between 2020 and 2023 with insurance and admin costs rise climbing more than 50% each during that period. Despite these costs increased, pathways to revenue growth remain tightly constrained, creating a fundamental mismatch. When expenses grow faster than revenue, building finances develop a shortfall. And as shown by the only expense line with flat or negative growth in the past three years, some owners are choosing to defer repairs and maintenance to stay afloat, which can quickly lead to decreasing housing quality. We urgently need to address runaway operating costs that are eroding the financial viability of the city's affordable housing stock. We suggest exploring the following pathways. First, a modernized J51 can once again become a powerful tool for supporting regulated housing stock. and we encourage the mayor and council to work with Albany to ensure that J51 is reenacted this session. Second, we need innovative solutions to slow and ultimately stop runaway insurance costs. The recent successes of new affordable uh housing insurance captives demonstrate market appetite and economic feasibility of these alternative approaches. Third, a long-term 100% property tax exemption for distressed rent stabilized buildings could effectively slow financial decline and free up vital capital to support muchneeded building improvements. And notably, uh it's important to say that any increase in property taxes would be devastating for rent stabilized properties that are already operating on thin margins, especially paired with a proposed rent freeze. And lastly, we encourage the city to work with public agencies and service providers to establish reasonable and reliable cost increases for water, sewer, and utility costs, and when needed, to step in to offer relief for these most severely distressed buildings. Um, in addition, our written testimony goes through a number of reforms for existing government systems and administrative programs, uh, including capital subsidy subsidy allocations, housing voucher administration, and marketing and lease up. Um, but thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Happy to answer any questions. >> There's a lot of text. I'm reading it. >> Good afternoon, committee chair Sanchez and members of the housing and building committee and thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Pamela Herrera and I am the land justice coordinator at Western Queens Community Land Trust. Since 2022, our organization has received city council discretionary funding through the citywide CLT initiative. With the support of this funding, our team has grown to include a full-time staffer and a new part-time project manager. We have been engaging with tenants across Queens regarding the need for deep affordability and the role of community land trusts in addressing the housing crisis. Our organization is currently applying for this funding for the first time without a fiscal sponsor. Without these resources, our capacity to serve the Queen's community will be limited. To date, we have hosted general meetings to welcome the community into a CLT model and have maintained strong relationships with local organizations. We are also actively working on two mixeduse housing projects that include opportunities for lowcost community space. We are working closely with creatives, Queens residents, and small business owners to collect collectively address the need for space for a publicly owned site on Animal Basin's waterfront. We have reached over a thousand community members this year alone and spoken to several buildings that want to work with our community land trust to combat the neglect they face from their landlords. We have collaborated with CHIA CDC to work closely with the community to address the uses of vacant property scattered in Elmerst. We have hosted community potlucks, town halls, and a block party that generated a wave of support for the CLT work. We urged the city council to fund the CLT initiatives at 3 million for 23 organizations in the FY27 expense budget, up for 1.5 million for 15 groups and FY26. This urgently needed funding will provide essential support not only to CLTs, but we will be able to address the affordability crisis in New York. A recent report by the London School of Economics and Political Science stated that low-wage workers have seen their income stagnant. May I continue? >> You may conclude. >> Thank you. Um, lowwage workers have seen their income stagnant in addition to an overall increase in work procarity. While the city is addressing this supposed housing shortage, the shortcomings is addressing the affordability. By giving CLTs an opportunity to be on the same playing field as big real estate, we can create housing that not only supports New Yorkers, but we can preserve land and communities for generations to come. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. >> All right. Good afternoon, chair and committee. My name is Vanessa Leong. I am a homeowner in Long Island City, Queens, and a steering committee member of the Western Queens Community Land Trust. I'm here with two requests. Please fund the community land trust initiative at $3 million in the fisc year 27 budget, which is an increase from last year. And two, create a $50 million community land trust capital fund. This is a gamecher that the mayor committed to during his campaign. If New York City wants neighborhoods that still feel like New York, we need tools like CLTs that keep land in community hands. Walking through the industrial blocks of Long Island City today, you'll see the Bangladeshi halal cart uh operator preparing food. You'll see the Ukrainian cabinet maker in a woodworking shop and the Chinese produce wholesaler that's supplying restaurants across all five burrows. You see, the economy that makes New York unmistakably New York. Nearly half of all small businesses here are immigrantowned, and LIC alone is home to more than 6,000 small businesses, employing over a 100,000 people, and they are in danger of being displaced. That's why the Western Queen CLT wants to transform a large city-owned building on Vernon Boulevard into the Queensboro People's Space. Not just for more luxury condos and national coffee chains, but half a million square feet of permanently affordable space for small businesses manufacturers arts food justice, community space. Yes, affordable housing matters deeply, but housing alone does not make a neighborhood. A neighborhood needs the mechanic, the maker, the rehearsal studio. This these are the places where culture is created. CLTs give communities the tools to hold on to the people and places that make them flourish. So, please fund the CLT initiative um and address delays in our funding. our CLT has gone three years um of not receiving the 300K in allocated funds. Um and so we need your help to invest in the neighborhoods that make New York New York. Thank you. >> Thank you. And bonus points for time. >> I tried. >> Good evening committee chair Sanchez and committee. My name is Melanie Reyes and I'm the housing organizer at Wenos Kamos in the Bronx and we are also members of the NYC community land initiative. Our organization has received city council discretionary funding through the citywide community land trust initiative which has helped catalyze the growth of more than 20 CLTs across the five bureaus in lowincome and black and brown communities. We urged the city council to also fund the CLT initiative at 3 million for 23 organizations in the fiscal year 27 expense budget up from 1.5 million for 15 groups last year. Noskamos has an innovative model of community ownership rooted in decades of South Bronx organizing, planning, and co-development. Through the South Bronx land and community resource trust launched in 2017, we are institutionalizing permanent affordability and resident power. And we do this through an emerging resident committee to improve quality life and help raise awareness about issues that affect our community. And we additionally urged the city council to support the creation of a $50 million CLT funds in the fiscal year 27 capital budget. NQ has secured 450 affordable units across four buildings and aims to expand its permanently stewarded portfolio to approximately 610 units by 2027. A goal that requires more CLT initiative funding and technical support. investments would especially help with tenant organizing to prepare our residents for structured governance roles. Affordable housing preservation is a major priority in Oscaramos. Enhanced CLT funding and the city's expense and capital budgets will strengthen these essential grassroot institutions. For decades, the South Bronx has demonstrated that community-led planning can reverse the investment and restore stability. and our CLT model can ensure that the next era of development in South Bronx is rooted in affordable housing preservation, equity, and community control. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. >> Thank you. Bronx in the House. >> Hi, good afternoon. My name is Greg Roberts on behalf of all of us at SKF Development. We're fully integrated residential owner and property manager. We currently own and operate 20 2,300 units across 32 properties in the Bronx. All of our projects include affordable units and we are proud to work extensively with HR and other city agencies uh to accept tenants with vouchers who are exiting the city's homeless system. We regularly work with HPD through its inclusionary housing programs and are now seeking to redevelop our first 100% affordable housing project with the department. We are here testifying to urge that the final budget to include new funds to allow HPD to carry out its mission of affordable housing preservation and would like to bring to your attention an outrageous delay that is currently destroying our business and will ultimately impact low-income renters of two of our properties. 66 East Fremont in Chairwoman Sanchez's district and 2097 Daily Avenue in Councilwoman's Feliz's district are two of our properties that we've we developed in 2018. Both buildings are fully rent stabilized and with very few if any violations. In the coming years, the building's 421A tax exemption will start burning off. In anticipation of this exemption ending in August 2024, we applied for an article 11 tax exemption from HPD. After being told that the department was over subscribed, we enlisted the help of a consultant and began to meet regularly with HPD to let them know how urgent our situation was becoming. As our loan was approaching maturity, HPD still couldn't take us into their program by the end of 2025 and we are now falling into default and are facing possible foreclosure by our bank. Despite every plea we made to the department, they continue to say that they are understaffed and are only prioritizing buildings that are in poor fiscal condition. Should we let our buildings fall in despair so that we don't lose them to foreclosure? Should we hand the keys over to the bank? We pride ourselves on being diligent developers and property managers, and it breaks our hearts to be treated this way. To conclude, as this committee works with the administration to set HPD's budget, we urge its attention to building owners who are trying to do the right thing but are locked out of the city's tools due to capacity constraints. >> Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you all for your testimony and for staying with me until 5:30. Appreciate you. >> Oh, there's more in person. Jackie, where you are? Uh Jackie Dev and Jesus. Um, and again, if you are here in person and you wanted to testify, please uh see one of the sergeants and then we're going to be moving to online testimony. >> This bringing them here is cheaper childare, so don't temp me. >> It's okay. Save the best for last. >> Sorry. No thanks. Uh good afternoon, good evening. I guess I should say um thank you for having us. My name is Pil Jesus. I am a senior advocacy coordinator at Troo justice. I'm here with my colleague Jackie. So I'm going to let her do a lot of the technical and I'm going to submit a lot of my specifics and technical on online. Um I mostly just want to like just share a lot. Um one to confirm a lot of what folks from legal aid said we we need to be paid. A lot of these contracts need to be paid. You know, organizations have rents rents to pay, employees to pay. It doesn't feel good, you know, having the conversation that, you know, we possibly may not be able to make payroll. Um, we work very, very, very hard, as you've heard and as I'm sure you know, um, really trying to keep our tenants in h in their housing and also fight against landlords who are targeting them. So again, just want to really con encourage more of the funding and also consider um being a little um open to um you know the deliverables or giving us more money so that we can also do some get a little creative in our work. Personally, I love to do investigations on landlords and go really down rabbit holes, but unfortunately I don't get paid to do that and have that time. I would like to do more investigation on landlords and I mean be able to have more experts come in like right now I have a building where it's unstable and it would really benefit if we had an engineer. So funding for our organization to also do a lot of the things that are already not in our scope. Um that would be helpful. Um, I'd like to talk really quickly about I I appreciate the new administration and look forward to the many things to come, but there is a problem with the AE program in my experience. Um, their contractors are kind of, for lack of a better term, interesting and how they show up to do work is interesting. If I may conclude, and I will try to be fast. Um, you know, it's it yeah, contractors are interesting when the inspectors come out. I have personally been there when the AE program inspectors come out and I have to show him, "Oh, well, there's mold." And he's like, "Well, that's not on my list. You're going to have to call that in." And I I don't understand that process. It was really frustrating. 311 operators, I am noticing more and more. I'm not sure what's happening with training. Some of them know how to take repair, like repair calls, some of them don't. Some of them know how to take calls around vacant units. Some of them do not. We have this issue where 311 closes tickets and the issues still exist as you've you've heard. We h we would love to see more rooftoeller inspections. Um because again we we know that there were a lot of issues. Do I have a building East Harlem? They were the tenants if you remember that testified last year when my mom translated. If you remember, 245 East 110 Street. During that same time, we went to court. The landlord brought my clients to court for non-pay. We made an agreement, an amazing agreement that would benefit the tenants. Landlord still has not complied. HPD knows of all the violations. Do after that hearing last year actually went and did an inspection, found out that the building is unsafe. Here we are a year later, still nothing. I can't get a court order to move this this landlord. HPD is not enforcing. Do is not enforcing. So, I would like to see really some real enforcement. And then really quickly on the jobs, and I only know this because a friend of mine, he unfortunately is not working. He receives benefits and he goes through the HRA back to work program. He's very wellqualified to get a position at HPD. He has attempted and I guess his developer at HRA does not make that connection. I don't know. I'm just saying it seems like there are people at HRA back to work program who have the qualifications and want to work for these agencies but somehow there's not a connection being made. And I did have one more point, but I can't remember. So, I'll just leave it off to Jackie. But, you know, thank you. And I really, you know, I've been doing this work for over 10 years. And yes, there's been some amazing wins, but it's just feels like a Groundhog's Day. And I really would also like to see the district attorney's office and all the burrows start working closely with these agencies because I think what the landlords are doing are criminal. And I do think, you know, if we can arrest people for jumping the turn style for $3, I don't see why we're allowing landlords to have millions of dollars in fines that is owed to the city. And maybe we should consider that money that they owe that they give that back to the tenants. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. What was the address your your mom? >> Oh, yes. 245 East 110 Street. And yes, the building it and because of the MTA doing the work, the shake, it's constantly shaking the like the the tenants are living in anxiety. And the the landlord was ordered in our court agreement to file the permits and do the work and here we are as of March 2026 and nothing yet. >> Thank you. Thank you, Bel. >> Thank you so much for waiting. Um, my name is Jackie Davay and I'm the coordinator of stabilizing NYC at Take Root Justice and we're requesting on behalf of the coalitions that we're a part of 5.3 million for stabilizing NYC which funds take root to do legal work and 19 other organizations to do the kind of organizing that the new leadership in HPD is really supportive of. uh $3 million for community land trust and 4.9 million for community housing preservation strategies initiative. But the increases don't matter if we can't get paid on time. 9,250,000. That is how much the 20 groups that make up stabilizing NYC are owed through this fiscal year. And NYC stabilizing NYC unawwarded funds represent close to about half of that. And even with all the progress that has been made on improving contract delays in this current situation, we'll be lucky if we reduce that number by 10% by the end of June. This is unacceptable and immediate action needs to be taken. What we recommend is that groups receive an advance of at least 50% of their contracts. The new legislation on advances does not apply to discretionary funds. HPD must be properly funded to hire more contract managers to process contract registrations and invoicing. The backlog of contract registrations must be cleared and money for past fiscal years needs to be made immediately available. Many of the group's contracts have recently registered but there's no money in them. I learned at the contracts hearing this is called budget readiness and both Mox and Mons identified this as a huge bottleneck and ultimately OM who releases the money for the budget needs to come under fire for these delays and we need to start having them at these hearings and asking why we're not getting paid and further to conclude I'd like to highlight one more number thanks to the make them pay campaign which we're part of and it's determined that New York City is owed at least 1.5 billion and unpaid penalties from large corporation and bad actor landlords. And much of it's tied to housing and building violations that impact tenants safety and the quality of life. So, thank you, Council Member Sanchez, for your leadership and all the members that gave and to our great financial analysts and committee councils for your time. It's been a really long day. >> Thank you. So, um yeah, I cannot understand these these payment delays, but thank you for highlighting them again and again and uh yeah, let us know how and when and whatever you know about how we should push further and I'll task us with the same. Thank you. >> Can I make one more thing just really fast? HPD to do grants for people who need money for a careers because right now it's only one shot deal and that's a that's a loan. If you're like a middle class person, there's not really and you make a little bit too much. There's not really many options for you to get large amounts of money for a rears and right now oneshot deal is really the main thing for most but that isn't always that doesn't always help everybody especially if you're undocumented. So like maybe if there's ways for even HPD to give out housing grants. Thank you. >> We're going to print more money in the bank. Okay. Thank you so much for for your testimony. We're going to move to online. We will now turn to remote testimony. Once your name is called, a member of our staff will unmute you and the sergeant-at-arms will give you the go-ahehead to begin. Please wait for the sergeant to announce that you may begin before delivering your testimony. Uh Jonathan Gaffne, >> you may begin. Tama map. >> You may begin. >> Oh, hi everybody. Thank you so much. >> Hello. >> Hi. >> Wait. Hello. Did you guys >> It's everybody. Hold on. Hold on one second. Okay, guys. One second. Council member, who was the first person that you called? >> Jonathan Gaffne. >> Okay, Jonathan Gaffne is here. I'm gonna I'm just going to unmute him. Tena, you can go next because he he just responded late. Sometimes the Zoom is a little delayed. Okay. >> You may begin. >> Thank you so much. Sorry about the technical difficulties. Uh my name is Jonathan Gaffne. I am the um supervisor of the tenant organizing program at Catholic Migration Services. CMS provides free legal services and community education to lowincome New Yorkers in immigration, workers rights, and housing. And it's our mission to welcome the stranger in our midst by advancing dignity, stability, and justice for immigrant and working-class communities. and I'm here today to speak in strong support of increased funding for stabilized NYC and community housing preservation strategies. These programs fund a model that works. Deep collaboration between legal services and tenant organizing at CMS. Our attorneys work side by side defending tenants in housing court while also providing and building tenant associations, developing leadership and organizing collective action to preserve affordable housing. Um through the um SNYC and CHPS funding, our team has been able to carry out sustained on the ground organizing across Queens and neighborhoods like Corona, Jackson Heights, Elmherst, Jamaica, and Flushing. Um, and we're seeing lack of hot water, persistent mold, water damage, rodent cockroach infestations, dangerous conditions. And you know, in one of our buildings that I organize in, um, tenants have organized uh, a beautiful tenant association while raising serious conditions of harassment. And through consistent organizing, tenants formed this association, developed collective demands, and secured and for their first meeting with management that they've had in like over 10 years. And as a result, um management has given this tenant association serious concessions. This work is labor intensive. It requires repeated door knocking, follow-up conversations translation meeting facilitation, coalition coordination, time expired, and >> can I can I just uh have just two seconds to finish? >> Yep, you may conclude. >> Thank you. Um it stabilizing um and uh helps us do this amazing work. Um, something that happened at our tenant association meeting last week was that somebody was hungry in their home and because of the organizing that I was able to do, um, that person was able to get fed through the collective action. So, we strongly support allocating 5.7 million to stabilizing um, and allocating 5.37 million to community housing preservation initiative. Uh these increases are necessary to sustain and expand the work that is already proving effective in stabilizing tenants and preserving affordable housing. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for allowing me to go over. >> Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for joining us and for your advocacy. Tamika Map, >> you may begin. >> All right. So, hi. Thank you so much. Um, chair, my name is Tama Mapp and I'm a proud co-op owner of East Harlem and a district leader for the 68th Assembly District. I'm here today in support of resolution 009-206 because our co-ops and affordable homeowners are in crisis and we cannot ignore it any longer. Let me be clear, these buildings are not being neglected by residents. They are being strained by a system that has not provided the resources to keep them stable. And one of the biggest drivers of this crisis is expiring tax abatements. For years, these abatements have kept maintenance costs stable for working-class homeowners. But now, as they expire, we're seeing sharp increases of monthly maintenance, building unable to fund critical repairs, seniors having to decide on their health or a place to stay and families being pushed closer to displacement. In East Harlem, these are not investors. There are families, seniors on a fixed income and first generation homeowners who finally given a pathway to stability. And now that stability is being taken away. I support this resolution, but it must go farther. We must recognize that the co res to homeowners, not developers. We need fair property tax abatements, extended and reformed um taxes, real funding for repairs, and consistent support from HPD. Because without interventions, we'll just keep on losing buildings. We're losing one of the pathways to affordable home ownerships in the communities like mine. So, I ask you today, stand with our residents, protect our homes, and act with urgency because East Toronto families cannot wait any longer. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you so much. Uh just highlighting that the council has no control over Damp and so I just encourage you to also advocate at the state level. Thank you. Um I'd now like to call James Dill. You may begin. >> Hi, I'm Jim Dill, executive director of Housing and Services, Inc. We provide permanent supportive housing, the most cost-effective and humane way to end chronic homelessness to 725 households in Manhattan and the Bronx in both congregate and scattered settings. Like our peer organization that testified before WishFish, we are members of the supportive housing network in New York and uh echo uh their testimony about urging the city to allocate 65 billion of uh New York 1515 funding for the preservation of SRO supportive housing. We are proud to have been one of the organizations to pioneer housing first and the first generation of supportive housing where in shared bathrooms and kitchens were the standards. With the success of this first generation, it paved the way for increased expectations for supportive housing wherein the HBD standard is now studio apartments with full baths and kitchens kitchenets. However, we now have SRO units that have been online for over 40 years in buildings that are over a hundred years old. Uh SRO rents are low and as you heard before, uh uh the state night shift funding for social social services contracts has been stagnant for decades. Accordingly, operating revenues are insufficient to fund major repairs and longtime maintenance. Given the low revenues, cash debt service on government or private loans is not an option. The proposed 65 billion allocation would greatly significantly increase crucial SRO uh preservation opportunities. During this period of record high homelessness, the city can't afford to lose any supportive housing units. It's an imperative that the first generation SRO's be preserved with S with NY 1515 funding. We will sub submit uh written testimony and on behalf of our our tenants and staff I uh very much am grateful this opportunity to uh be able to uh speak. >> I'm inspired. >> Thank you so much for for your testimony, James, and for paying attention enough to still be with us at 554. Appreciate you. Emily Goldstein, >> you may begin. Uh, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I apologize that I wasn't able to be there in person today. My name is Emily Goldstein and I'm the director of organizing and advocacy at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development or A&HD. I'll use my time to highlight just a few priorities from our longer written testimony. First, A&HD is very concerned about the lack of resources dedicated to the preservation of existing affordable housing, which we believe must be a top priority in the city's housing capital budget. The administration's preliminary budget allocates approximately 304.9 million for its primary preservation loan programs. We believe the need for preservation capital is likely closer to 1 billion. And so we strongly urged the mayor and the council to increase capital funds specifically for preservation of our existing subsidized affordable and deeply affordable housing. On the operating side, we also urge the mayor to fully implement the changes to city feeps that passed into law several years ago. Now, these vouchers are a critical resource for homeless New Yorkers to access permanent housing, for preventing eviction, and to enable deeper affordability across our affordable housing stock. Second, we're grateful for the council's long-standing commitment to the community housing preservation strategies initiative or CHIPS, which enables community-based organizations to provide essential preservation anti-displacement services in at risk neighborhoods across the city. However, funding for this program has remained flat since 2016, despite skyrocketing demand and increasing costs. We call on the city council to increase CHIP's funding to 5.37 million in FY27. And we also urge the city council to continue funding A&HD's displacement alert project and our capacity building training and technical assistance uh for the CHIPS program. Finally, we encourage increased staffing allocations of HPD for various key age areas including development, asset management, and code enforcement. I'll note that our written testimony includes further information about how improved collection of fees and penalties for code violations could help offset some of these staffing costs. in addition to being good policy to protect tenants. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you so much for for joining us, Emily, and for your testimony. Um, Memo Salazar, >> you may begin. >> Hi. Uh, I hope you can hear me. My name is Memo Salazar. I am the co-chair of the Western Queens Community Land Trust. We've only been around a few years, but already we've managed to do great headway here in New York City in Queens specifically. Um, we just secured $2.2 million from then assembly member Zoron Mandami, who is now our mayor, of course, uh, to purchase a building in Histori that's going to house some families upstairs and downstairs house the Historic Food Pantry, which is a mutual aid organization that is incredibly useful and loved here in the community. um that will now give them a home that they don't have to worry about getting booted or losing their home. You know, they have a permanent affordable space to work. We're pursuing a couple other building projects as well this year. So, it's a very exciting time for us. However, um this is only possible because of our deep roots in the Queens community. We're a very trusted group. Uh we're all volunteers um except for one full-time staffer and one part-time project manager that we just hired now. So, funding is really really crucial for us. we're, you know, mostly just people like myself donating their time um while in between jobs and, you know, every day and family and all the other things that we have to deal with. Um many of the issues that we're discussing today's in the first part of today's meeting could be addressed by the many CLTs that are in the city um but only with a substantial increase in funding. So, we're asking city council to fund the CLT initiative that you've heard today at 3 million for 23 orgs. Um that's incredibly we need the money. we need so much money in policy changes and so many things. Um uh hand inhand with that we're asking also and if you you already heard this from others but please address that chronic the the chronic delays in um registering the discretionary funding contracts. Um RCLT has already gone three years of not receiving the funds that were allocated to us and it's making it making us cash strapped as an organization. We've lost your fiscal sponsor because they can no longer um cover the overhead. we're now on our own. Um, this is an >> time expired. >> Um, so anyway, uh, I guess I'll stop, but thank you. Both of those points are incredibly important for us. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. Memo, um, heard and appreciate you participating today. Uh, Todd Baker, >> you may begin. Alexis Foot, >> you may begin. Dean Rio. >> You may begin. Paul Draw. You may begin. Zara Nazir, >> you may begin. >> And a representative from the Flatbush Tenant Coalition. >> You may begin. If we have inadvertently missed anyone that has registered to testify today and has yet to be called, please use the Zoom raise hand function. If you are testifying remotely and you will be called in the order that your hand has been raised. If you are testifying in person, please come to the deis. Seeing none, I will now close today's hearing. Thank you to the members of the administration and the members of the public who have joined us today. This hearing is adjourned.