Council Member Morano questions DHS on hotel violations and community impact
Morano asks if 42 open violations per hotel would be acceptable for a private landlord. Dalton says residential code applied to hotels inflates violations but DHS must improve. She says she is integrating data to measure surrounding community impact.
For the record, I strongly prefer the five-minute clock to two minutes.
And that's why it's my hearing, and I've got two minutes.
Duly noted, Jim.
I know your preference, council member.
Duly noted.
Commissioner, you testified earlier.
You acknowledged that flexible capacity shelters, which are mostly commercial hotels,
Average, approximately five.
42 open violations per facility, 42.
If a private landlord had 42 outstanding building violations, would the city consider that an acceptable place to house vulnerable New Yorkers?
Yes, thank you.
It's a good opportunity to provide clarification.
I'm not 100% sure if you were in the room just a few minutes ago when we went through this a little bit.
As I indicated, as I read my testimony aloud, I learned some things in this process of preparing the testimony about how hotels are different and
applying a kind of residential standard to that hotel necessarily increases the number of violations.
So it's not an indication necessarily of, it's a data point that actually does require a bit more nuance.
Regardless, it is our responsibility and we have the tools to make improvements in those systems.
Also, that data does not, it indicates an issue.
It doesn't indicate which of those have been resolved.
So on its face, I would say that, you know, like looking at it the way you did, I would say, yes, this is a huge problem.
We must do something about it.
And I think we're going to go back with this understanding and kind of understand a little bit more about what's going on there and certainly take additional action if needed to remedy those facilities.