BY DENNIS LYNCH | Following a year mired by illegal demolitions, Community Board 4 (CB4) is pushing the Department of Buildings (DOB) to heighten their vigilance in the neighborhoods’ Special Districts, whose designation is supposed to afford special protection to its buildings — and, by extension, the housing therein.
At least 96 units in 10 buildings were illegally demolished last year in Special Districts parts of Community District 4, according to the board’s Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen Land Use Committee (CHKLU). That’s significantly higher than in previous years.
Buildings in the Special Districts can only be demolished if the city determines they are unsafe, or if the Department of Housing Preservation and Development certifies the landlord did not harass tenants into leaving, signs off on the demo, and provides a 60-day community board notice and comment period, among other provisions.
But “bad actor” landowners have filed false paperwork to secure demo permits from the DOB anyway — they’ll claim a building isn’t residential or file for alteration permits allowed by that law, but tear the building down anyway. The false paperwork has gotten past the DOB mostly because the department’s primary concern is of safety, not housing preservation, according to CB4 Chair Delores Rubin.
“When their staff receives a request, they’re looking toward safety issues mostly, but its almost as if the blinders are on — they’re not looking at the address, the history of the property, the zoning,” Rubin said. “What they’re doing is looking at whether all the safety issues indicated warrant a demo or not. That’s why we’ve seen buildings be granted demolitions — because the staff is not aware.”
A department spokesperson said that the department had done additional training with plan examiners, who approve permits, to “ensure they are identifying when a demolition is filed in a Special District to ensure the applicant meets all required items prior to the issuance of a work permit.”
The spokesperson added they would work to implement a system to flag any demolition filed in a Special District, which the community board requested in 2016.
As reported in a Dec. 7, 2016 Chelsea Now article that referred to a then-recent CB4 Hell’s Kitchen Land Use Committee meeting (“DOB Now Evolving, Not Yet a Network to Find Permit Fraud”), John Waldman, DOB’s Community Affairs Liaison, was asked about whether a forthcoming online system would help to prevent the loss of neighborhood buildings, and acknowledged that there have been “real gaps in the [training] system.” He explained that plan examiners are now being trained to identify special districts in the community where demolition is not allowed.
Also quoted in that Dec. 7 article was DOB Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Planning and Policy Archana Jayaram, who described the development of “tools for the operational units to use to identify and protect the Special Districts. We’ve invested heavily in our analytics team and that group is creating maps that will be used by the staff that do the approval of these permits. That is the sort of interim solution to address this issue.”
The pure volume of applications and the DOB’s antiquated information systems don’t help either, so the board wants to see the DOB roll out improvements to its Building Information System (BIS) as soon as possible. The DOB created the BIS so the public could easily look up permits filed or safety violations filed on any property in the city — but behind it, much of the DOB’s record keeping and permitting work is done on paper. It is currently rolling out its $120 million replacement called DOB Now, for which all work will be done electronically — easier for both building owners filing information and for the public looking for it.
When DOB Now reaches completion, however, the department’s BIS site will become an archival resource. Members of the community who have come to rely on BIS for checking falsified permits and other issues related to construction and demolition will have new paths to access current information through those DOB Now public portals.
While a public-facing system, the BIS is relatively hard to navigate without some training in DOB terminology, and information on it can be easily misconstrued by the layman.
For example, the BIS displays a demolition permit application as “approved” once the application itself is complete, has been received, and ready for review. That can be mistaken for “permit approved,” which means the DOB has given them the permission to swing the wrecking ball.
CB4 District Manager Jesse Bodine said that this terminology would only be acceptable if it were an internal DOB system. It could have real consequences for tenants living in those buildings, Bodine said.
“If someone sticks a permit on your building that says ‘demo application approved’ on it, most of the residents there are going to panic and think the place is coming down, that’s a real concern for us,” Bodine said. “Most people living in these buildings don’t know they have these protections that we fought tooth and nail for.”
The department’s Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Planning and Policy did not say if a public flagging system would be part of DOB Now when Rubin asked at a board meeting last month. She instead answered that there would be more transparency regarding permits and building data.
“So for example, if you were to see that there was a piece of information about a building on its property profile that’s incorrect, you could call in and complain and disagree; this is a landmark building or it isn’t a landmark building,” she said. “That kind of transparency and that feedback loop will allow us to ensure the right actions are being taken at a site.”
Three of DOB Now’s four main components — Build, Inspections, and Licensing — are live, although a recent search showed limited information in its “Safety” component, and found the old BIS system to be far more informative. The system’s last component will roll out as 2017 progresses. Visit the site at https://a810-dobnow.nyc.gov/publish/#/.
