Council Member Dinowitz on $36M Tracy Towers capital plan and permit delays

for the betterment of the residents of our Michelama developments, we should be all beginning those documents.

And if it's happening at Tracy, it's happening at all of the Michelamas and many of the Michelamas around our city where work is done and there's no oversight as to the quality of work.

Now, there is a $36 million capital plan.

I believe the work was, when you came to visit, the work was supposed to start in June.

Is that correct?

The loan closing was in June.

Loan closing.

And when does the work begin?

So probably in the next couple months, I would say.

For any construction project, Mitchell Lama or not, after construction loan closing, there's a period where the construction crew and the contractor will continue to pull permits, continue to get all their paperwork in order, and then mobilize to be able to start.

Construction work.

And that's typical across every project.

Given that this is under the city-run Michelama, what can HPD do to expedite those permits to make sure that work is done in a more timely fashion than we typically see in our offices?

So sometimes, and I'm not 100% familiar with this project, but in some circumstances, and a lot of circumstances, we require permits to be pulled prior to closing.

I don't know exactly which permits need to be pulled for this project, but we make every effort with all of our affordable housing projects to ensure we're communicating with DOB and that our projects are getting permits pulled quickly.

We see, and I'm glad Amalgamated is here, we see a lot of costs.

because of delays of things like permits or in their cases, DOB inspectors coming in.

And again, I understand it's not your agency, but you work in the same administration, you work in the same government.

And so you should be doing everything for our affordable housing to expedite those processes.

Otherwise,

My office tries to do it, but we're a different branch of government.

You are in the same branch of government as these other agencies.

And that is a way to make sure the residents of our Mitchell Llamas and our limited equity co-ops can get the housing they deserve and save money, in their case, by not having those sheds up for...

Months and months on end.

And that was the case at Tracy Towers, by the way, in the late 2010s, when they had their sheds up for years.

It was years, and it wasn't until the controller called, made a call in, and it was gone.

These are just bureaucratic hurdles that cost residents money.

Part of the speed report that was released tries to get to the root of some of those problems, is to kind of get out of our own way to make sure we can do development much more quickly and much more transparently.

So speed was a big attempt at moving that forward.