Skip to content
Council Discourse

NYC Council meetings, chaptered and linked by time.

Created by Uzair Qadir

Inspired by Vikram Oberoi's City Meetings

Q&A

Narcisse asks about reasons for default and incorrect addresses

New York City Council · Aug 11, 2026 · starts 0:17:11 · 1 min 17 sec

Narcisse asks why respondents default and how many defaults are due to notices going to incorrect or outdated addresses. Lee explains defaults occur for various reasons including inability to pay, inability to identify respondents, and businesses going bankrupt.

Mercedes Narcisse

Good morning, Commissioner, and thank you, Chair.

Mercedes Narcisse

I have a question for you.

Mercedes Narcisse

Sometimes I want to know why people did not pay their bill.

Mercedes Narcisse

So from the data you have right now,

Mercedes Narcisse

I want to know, the bill gives the most generous treatment to the false judgments, right?

Mercedes Narcisse

Why did those response defaults in the first place?

Mercedes Narcisse

And how many of those defaults do you attribute to a notice going to incorrect or outdated address?

Richard Lee

So as indicated earlier, our current uncollectible docket is about $744 million.

Richard Lee

And there's a number of different reasons why.

Richard Lee

It could have been respondents were unable to pay.

Richard Lee

We also could not have, it might be instances where we couldn't identify respondents.

Richard Lee

And it could also be because businesses went bankrupt and they no longer exist.

Richard Lee

And so there are a number of different reasons why people might default, but the uncollectible category includes those type of instances where businesses simply do not exist anymore, and we can't collect on an entity that no longer exists because they went bankrupt.