Big news: The Mamdani administration will soon process HPD violations at a single location rather than at a bunch of borough offices.
Efficiency, people! Reform!
What’s that? You’re not excited?
HPD’s move is not the improvement that property managers have been waiting for, especially after seeing other agencies embrace the digital era.
“Why wouldn’t it just be online?” asked a The Real Deal reader at a third-party management company that regularly applies to dismiss housing violations. “DOB NOW is light years ahead.”
DOB NOW is the Department of Buildings’ online system. It took years for the agency to migrate its processes to the new website, but today it stands as an unusually successful example of municipal technology.
Maybe the mayor should have transferred the buildings commissioner to HPD to replicate that achievement. Instead he did the opposite, moving Ahmed Tigani from HPD to Buildings.
But I digress. Back to the violations issue.
The reader who commented said his office is a few blocks from 94 Old Broadway, one of the borough service centers where HPD will stop accepting dismissal requests next week. “We walk them in,” he said.
They hand-deliver applications not because they like to get outside and stretch their legs. Rather, they fear that if they were to put applications in the mail or a drop box, it would be “a few months” before they heard back.
Unfortunately, these are the only options. Applications cannot be filed online. HPD does hope to make that happen one day, but has no plan in the works.
These days, just about everything can be done digitally. I recently ordered ice cream online from a local store and scheduled my pickup. My wife renewed her passport in about two minutes, and a new one was shipped by Priority Mail two days later.
Yes, the federal government issues sensitive documents much more efficiently than the City of New York handles requests to dismiss violations for peeling paint and chipped plaster.
Both the city and federal governments accept credit cards. Yay! But HPD requires the name on the card to match the name on the application. If it doesn’t, the applicant must submit a notarized letter.
“As if there is a Dismissal Request Fairy going around requesting and paying for dismissals on behalf of owners in some nefarious manner,” the TRD reader said.
Alternatively, HPD accepts certified checks, which require a trip to the bank. Sometimes I wonder if, years ago, city staffers sat down and brainstormed ways to make things harder.
Paper documents. Notaries. Certified checks. Expiration dates. Affidavits. Matching names.
One of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goals is to streamline bureaucratic processes, including to make it easier to cure building violations. All mayors have such goals, yet this antiquated process and others persist.
Reforming HPD violations will obviously take more than relocating dismissal requests to a single office in Brooklyn, which is bad news for firms that prefer hand-delivery over snail mail.
One target of Mamdani’s reform efforts should be the city’s obsession with notaries. I once asked the Department of Finance why every year I must mail a notarized affidavit declaring that a four-unit condo has no employees. The answer: “To make sure it’s you sending the letter.”
I replied, “Why would someone steal my identity to send you a prevailing wage affidavit?”
And who uses stolen credit cards to apply for HPD violation dismissals?
According to economic theory, adding taxes or fees to something will result in less of that thing. If Mamdani wants more housing violations cured, he could do more than put the process online. He could make it free.
But first, the internet. I hear that more and more people are using it.
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