CM Santosuosso questions open HPD violations and remediation efforts
Santosuosso cites 2 Class A, 61 Class B, and 65 Class C open HPD violations including pest, water damage, and mold issues. Morajanis explains dismissal requests have been filed but HPD merged violations from multiple buildings into one MDR number, creating record-keeping complications. He states the physical conditions don't exist and notes 320 Section 8 apartments pass annual inspections without subsidy discontinuance.
Speaking of violations, I just want to give an opportunity for you all to address and discuss some of the open HPD violations, because there are some.
There are, I believe, from the HPD website, two open Class A violations.
61 open class B violations and 65 open class C violations.
It looks like a mix of pest issues or water damage issues with some complaints of mold.
I just want to give you the opportunity to talk about where that stands and your plans for rectifying them moving forward and making sure they don't exist at the new building.
There are dismissal requests that have been made, and there's been a little bit of a glitch with the HPD system is how they've categorized the violations.
There were violations on all three buildings, and we went down there.
Jimmy Guzman, my manager of 35 years that's been at Ocean Towers since 2007 that we bought it,
has went there looking to resolve this issue.
And what they've done is they merged everything into one building from 2950 and 2970.
They had between those two buildings around.
30 or 40, they put them all in 2960.
The violations as physical conditions don't exist.
They exist of record.
We have a dismissal request to have them looked at and removed of record, and that's been an ongoing issue, a little bit complicated by the fact that HPD has taken various multiple dwelling registration numbers.
And put them into one MDR number.
And we're trying to resolve that with them.
And we're still working on it.
They're suggesting we go see the DOB.
I don't know what the Department of Buildings would do when this is in their court.
We're trying to resolve it.
But I can assure you that those violations do not exist.
And another thing that would attest to that is that we have about 320 Section 8 apartments that are constantly being inspected.
Every year they get inspected for quality.
housing standards to make sure that the quality in those apartments are being kept up and the landlord is still entitled to get the subsidy payment from the various agencies that are providing it.
Well, we haven't failed.
We haven't had any discontinuance in the subsidy of a single apartment.
In years.
That means whatever they find, we take care of within the time that's allocated to do so.
So that building is constantly being looked at by the agencies, and we're constantly doing work all the time.
Any conditions that come up, and there's things that would always happen.
Nothing stands still.
Nothing is in a vacuum.
Things happen.
The thing is, we take care of those things.
We remediate them.
We take care of our problems.
So we don't have any suspended vouchers.
The building's in good shape.
And so, Mr.