Dalton discusses T2026-1424 landlord portal bill

Pre-considered introduction file T-2026-1424, sponsored by Councilmember Marano, requires the agency to create a portal for landlords who participate in rental subsidies programs.

Administered by the Department of Social Services.

We agree with the aim of providing landlords a user-friendly portal to perform important administrative functions, receive updates, and register to receive payments electronically.

That's why the agency launched the ServiceNow system back in 2016 and the current New York City Landlord Portal and the Apartment Offers Portal, both launched in 2023.

Since then, we have continued to take strides in making these systems more capable of meeting landlord needs.

As written, the bill proposed the bill proposes the landlord portal and act the provisions outlined in the legislation by January of 2027.

We hope to discuss with the sponsor the significant additional lead time we would need to accomplish the elements this legislation proposes.

While we have substantial IT work underway to pursue many of the functionalities this bill seeks to establish, we do not believe it would be feasible to have all of these functions up and running by January 2027.

For instance, today our portal allows landlords to upload some of the documents, but not all the documents they are required to submit.

At present, some documents are presented as part of the application submitted by a provider.

Over time, we plan to transition to a new system.

transition to a system where a portal can collect all of the required documents.

Altogether, this work represents part of a larger IT build-out process that requires time set aside for testing, quality assurance, and the ultimate release that we do not see accounted for in the proposed legislation.