Safety has to wait
City HPD too short-staffed to enforce new fire regs
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has lost more than a third of its inspection force — and its leaders say they hope to staff up in anticipation of new safety rules sparked by a deadly Bronx apartment building blaze that killed 17 people.
The agency is scrambling to fill 131 vacancies, officials said. Its efforts include interviews with potential candidates and plans to begin an inspector training class by June, a HPD spokesman said. A new civil service exam for inspectors is also set for July.
HPD is budgeted to have 367 inspectors, officials said.
The agency’s staffing shortage emerged during a City Council hearing on bills that stem from January’s fatal Twin Parks North West fire in the Bronx. A space heater sparked the blaze, which was able to spread partly because two self-closing safety doors in the building’s hallways were broken.
A bill sponsored by Councilman Oswald Feliz (D-Bronx) would require buildings to fix broken safety doors within 14 days after an inspector discovers the problem. Under current rules, the doors must be fixed within 21 days.
To enforce that rule, Housing Preservation and Development inspectors would be required to recheck the doors within 21 days after the end of a 14-day correction period.
Another bill, sponsored by Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-Queens) would require self-closing doors to be inspected every two years.
The bills are still under consideration by the Council.
At a Council hearing April 6, Housing Preservation and Development Deputy Commissioner AnnMarie Santiago said the agency might not have the staff to carry out the bills’ requirements.
“New resources will be needed” to inspect doors every two years, she said.
During the hearing, Santiago said her agency was operating with about 236 inspectors, or just about two-thirds of its full force.
As a result, the wait time for an inspection of heat and hot water complaints as well as other building issues in the 170,000 multiunit buildings in the city they’re responsible for is about two and a half days, Santiago said.
The agency lost more than 100 inspectors over the past few years through retirements and general attrition, Santiago said. Many inspectors also changed jobs and moved away during the pandemic.
The dwindling number of inspectors did not sit well with committee members, who were stunned that it could take up to two days for HPD to respond to a heat complaint in the dead of winter.
With the current reduced head count, one inspector would have a caseload of more than 600 buildings a year, Councilwoman Joann Ariola (D-Queens) noted. “That’s a big caseload for an inspector,” Ariola said.
HPD conducted 627,958 inspections in the city’s 2021 fiscal year, which ended last June 30. In the city’s 2020 fiscal year, inspectors carried out 571,622 inspections, HPD spokesman William Fowler said.
“We are actively working to fill positions as quickly as possible as we continue to meet the city’s needs,” Fowler said.
Anyone interested in applying for an HPD inspector job can do so through the city’s website. The agency says it has candidate interviews scheduled in the coming days, and that it expects to start training new inspectors in June.