Chair Hudson questions DHS on high violation rates in flexible shelters

The most recent shelter repair scorecard showed an average of 3.82 building violations per standard shelter and 37.56 violations per flexible capacity shelter.

And you mentioned, I think, earlier that the flexible shelter conditions are challenging.

Why is the number of violations in flexible shelters so high?

And is DSS taking action to correct the issue?

Yes, thank you.

And as I read my testimony aloud, I was reflecting on what I've learned since preparing the testimony.

And so it is a good opportunity to correct the record a little bit on that.

And I'm going to let the deputy commissioner go into more detail.

But it isn't–

Clearly, there's a differentiation between the mostly commercial hotels and the level of violation and our purpose-built and other shelters that have very low.

But it is also a function of the way hotels were built and applying a residential code onto those non-residential buildings.

And so I don't want to give anyone here the impression that it is actually that much worse.

There's a technicality to that, nor that we can't fix it.

So I think the data.

in this case, require some nuance, and I'd love to pass it to the Deputy Commissioner to provide that.

Thank you, Commissioner.

And I think distinguishing between flexible capacity or standard capacity, regardless of the type of capacity, it's DHS's responsibility to work with the provider to make sure that those locations are safe for all the clients we serve.

To the Commissioner's point about the hotels having different types of code versus the HPD inspection, that is done for our shelters that follow a residential.

Code, the same does not apply at hotels.

So we're applying a residential code to a hotel that doesn't follow the same code.

However, we are still responsible for making sure that those issues are resolved and that the locations are safe.

Also on violations, as we dig in, not every violation is an active safety hazard.

The hazard could have been remediated, but there may still be an administrative function that the building owner has not submitted the required paperwork to HPD to close that out off the website.

That is something else that we track as well.