Chair Sanchez questions cross-agency code enforcement and portfolio approach

Okay, next question.

The city has committed to a cross-agency approach to code enforcement for problematic portfolios with the mayor's office to protect tenants, providing initial referrals.

HPD, DOB, and DOHMH will conduct coordinated inspections.

So in the context of this, why take a portfolio-wide approach?

How will portfolios be defined by the agencies and how will they be identified?

I think, I believe you're referring to what we were calling enforcement days in the plan, which is really, I think, twofold.

One is when we start to see early signs of distress at a portfolio level, we think it's important that we pay more attention to those buildings early on.

And I think we are very focused on coordinating both from an interagency perspective, but also with organized tenant associations.

They obviously are key to getting access to the apartments and to see what's going on inside apartments.

So the goal here is really to identify portfolios where we see early signs of distress, get our code enforcement teams out in coordinated effort with each other and also with tenants so that we can sort of

get to these portfolios before things deteriorate further.

Does the administration have a vision?

Is it anywhere in the plans to move from enforcement days to more of a holistic approach where this is the way code enforcement takes place versus being reactive?

I think it's an addition.

It's not instead of, right?

So our current system is any tenant anywhere in the city can call 311 and have a code inspector come out and inspect their apartment.

So I think this is just an additional tool into the system.

on top of the way we currently approach code enforcement, but again with an eye towards getting to certain portfolios early when we're first seeing signs of distress.

Great.

Thank you.

I do also just add that the existing platforms like the 10 Harassment Task Force, where DOB, HPD, MOPT, the Attorney General's Office, we continue that

as a previous system that complements the new things that we're adding now.

How will you be defining portfolio?

By portfolio, we just mean owned by a single corporate entity or individual, so multiple buildings affiliated with one ownership.

And how will you know?

Who that owner or single corporate entity is.

I'm very good at that.

We do, we spend a lot of time piercing corporate veils.

I mean, in some cases it's very obvious because of the registration data that we do get, even though it's still on paper.

We generally know, and when there's work to do to sort of pierce that, we have a data science team within the agency who's able to do it.

There is work involved, so it is not as easy as it should be, but we are generally invariably able to determine who the sort of principal owner is across a portfolio.

And with respect to the changes that we're contemplating in today's legislation, Councilmember Banks' property registration, online property registration,

and I know that in the legislative task force we will be talking about additional changes to help the public have this transparency.

Is there anything that you have, that you are considering today to define what a portfolio is legislatively?

I'm not sure it needs the definition legislatively because generally we just mean an owner who owns multiple buildings.

So whether that's five or 15 or 20 buildings, I would call that a portfolio.

As it relates to the Councilmember Banks bill for electronic registration, this is something we think is definitely overdue and want to go forward with.

I would guess good news, we have already started working to identify a vendor to help us adjust the technology systems that will enable us to do that electronically.

Thank you.