Gov. Kathy Hochul talks about criminal court a lot. I have never heard her talk about housing court.
To fend off interference by President Donald Trump, Hochul is complaining that criminal court judges are not using her bail reform law to keep certain suspects in jail pending trial.
This is getting a lot of ink, even though no one has been able to show that bail reform enacted during the Cuomo administration, or Hochul’s reform of that reform, has had any impact on crime.
Meanwhile, injustice in New York’s housing courts is a regular occurrence.
Even tenants’ advocates dislike it. They say when landlords win an eviction order, it translates into action, but when tenants win an order requiring repairs, it’s just a piece of paper.
It’s true that judges cannot ensure that repairs are made, even when they send notorious landlords like Aron Stark and Daniel Ohebshalom to jail.
But judges can ensure that nonpaying or abusive tenants are promptly evicted. Unfortunately, they don’t.
Bronx-based landlord Les Lerner has a long list of horror stories.
In one, a nonpaying tenant had his eviction case adjourned by claiming repairs were needed. Two months later, Lerner’s lawyer showed the judge photos of the completed repairs, but the tenant insisted they were not made. The judge adjourned the case for another two months.
“At the next court appearance, the tenant once again claimed that the repairs were not done,” Lerner recalled. “The judge once again adjourned for two months to make arrangements for an HPD inspector to review the repairs.”
If you’ve lost track, that’s six months of rent-free living. But wait, there’s more.
“At the next court appearance, the judge stated that he had a report from the HPD inspector stating that all the repairs were completed,” Lerner continued. “The tenant once again stated that they were not. The judge once again adjourned for two months for us to ‘double check.’ What can possibly be more official than an HPD inspector’s report?”
That’s eight months of adjournments, using just one of the many techniques that nonpaying tenants have to stave off eviction. It’s no mystery why the eviction rate in New York City is among the lowest in the nation.
“HPD has designed a system that allows tenants to weaponize violations, and housing court has designed a system whereby violations and repairs prevent non-payment cases from advancing,” Lerner said. “This is all an orchestrated scheme to prevent evictions.”
What we’re thinking about: Some 257,000 more Long Island homes will be needed by 2040 to accommodate population growth and replace 50,000 dwellings lost to rising sea levels and other effects of climate change, according to the Regional Plan Association. But RPA estimates that only 102,000 houses can be built under current zoning. Huntington, for example, needs 18,000 but allows just 3,000. Which Nassau or Suffolk county towns will upzone, if any? Send your thoughts to eengquist@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: This note appeared beneath an Atlantic story about the race for mayor: “This article has been updated to include the fact that, today, Curtis Sliwa has only six cats.” At one time, Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor, had 16.
Elsewhere…
— More than a third of at-home kits tested positive for lead in the last decade, according to The City. The investigation, which analyzed water tests by the Department of Environmental Protection, also found that more than 119,000 of the city’s privately owned pipes are made of lead, which can cause health problems if present at high levels in the bloodstream.
— Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani pledged to push ahead with traffic redesigns shelved by the Adams administration, including the Greenpoint plan at the center of Ingrid Lewis-Martin’s alleged bribery scandal, Gothamist reported. It would have eliminated a traffic lane on the northern portion of McGuiness Boulevard. Lewis-Martin is accused of accepting kickbacks from Broadway Stages, a Greenpoint-based production company, in exchange for reducing the redesign so that traffic near the business would not be affected.
— Quinn Waller
Closing time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Tuesday was $8.6 million for a co-op unit at 43 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $92 million for the Nine Orchard Hotel on the Lower East Side. DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners sold it to Austin-based MML Hospitality.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $5.5 million for a 2,575-square-foot condominium unit at 44 East 67th Street in Lenox Hill. Reba Miller of Compass has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building project filed was for a proposed 187,325-square-foot, 21-story, mixed-use property at 1920 Turnbull Avenue in Castle Hill. Christopher Jones at Magnusson Architecture & Planning filed the permit on behalf of Dimitrios Katehis of Gilbane Development Company.
— Matthew Elo
