A trio of City Council members is pushing a bill that would force landlords to fix recurring problems like mold — instead of simply covering them with layers of paint.
Two years ago the city passed a law to make landlords repair the “underlying conditions” that cause mold to linger and ceilings to collapse. New York has 3.5 million apartments, but the city says it only has the resources to target 50 buildings a year for “underlying conditions orders.”
Since the law was passed, the city has targeted only 69 buildings, including eight in Manhattan, four in Queens and one in Staten Island, records show. There were 36 in Brooklyn and 20 in the Bronx.
Tenant advocates say that’s not nearly enough, so on Wednesday three Council members will try to fix the law, allowing tenants to go to court directly to compel landlords to make the repairs. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), and Rafael Espinal and Antonio Reynoso (both D-Brooklyn), will introduce the bill.
“The (underlying conditions) law is a strong start, but in my view it’s insufficient,” Torres said.
Targeting only 50 buildings a year “strikes me as a modest number. I suspect there are far more than 50 cases of untreated, underlying conditions in a city with 3.5 million units.”
The biggest problem is water leaks which cause plaster to collapse and mold to grow. Just ask Lisa Ortega in the Bronx, where creeping black mold has returned with a vengeance.
In February 2013 — a month after the city passed the “underlying conditions” law — a swirling mass of mold covered her daughter’s bedroom wall.
Yet the Housing Preservation & Development Department didn’t pursue an “underlying conditions” order there. Instead HPD put it in an “alternative enforcement” program that merely required the landlord to eliminate code violations.
Landlord Miriam Shasho claimed she’d fixed everything, but Ortega says the woman did what many landlords do — painted over the problem. The mold is back, appearing as two ominous saucer-sized circles on her bedroom ceiling.
“It’s just really amazing how they do these coverup projects and the city is really OK with that,” she said on Monday. “What we want is for them to find out the underlying cause and fix it.”
Down the hall, tenant Sherly Gabriel, 33, pointed to fresh paint slapped over mold in her kitchen. Above was a hole in the ceiling where the plaster had collapsed — again.
“It rains in the apartment and the ceiling just fell in,” she said.
Landlord Shasho, who lives in 2,540-square-foot waterfront home with a dock in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, did not respond to a request for comment. Her home is worth about $1.2 million.
Kerri White of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a tenants rights group, said the city’s efforts to address underlying conditions are well-intentioned.
“Sometimes even HPD can be frustrated at repeat violations and seeing landlords making only cosmetic changes,” she said. “Because HPD has the ability to make only so many cases, tenants need to be able to go to court.”
The new law will allow a judge to order landlords to fix underlying problems, not just address the symptoms, Council member Torres said.
“Tenants will have the ability to end the cycle of cosmetic repairs,” he said.
An HPD spokesman said agency officials “look forward to sitting down with the Council to discuss this initiative.”
With Rich Schapiro
gsmith@nydailynews.com
