No Quick Fix For Illegal Housing Conversions

While the illegal housing problem festers, greedy landlords are raking in three times the rent for their homes. An illegally converted home can fetch up to $8,000 a month. The same legally occupied house would get only $1,200 a month. These landlords are earning enough to meet their mortgage, pay their taxes and pocket money as well. "They play the game, they find the suckers," says Malcolm Press, President of the Jackson Heights Community Development Board.

Often these landlords own more than one illegally converted home. Some do not declare their total rent and additional taxable income. And Press says many of them are absentee landlords, with luxurious homes in Long Island or South America.

In 1997, State Senator Frank Padavan of Queens increased the maximum fine for repeated violations of safety and fire codes to $2,500 from $1,000. These fines are levied by the Environmental Control Board, the city’s legal forum for building violations.

New York Governor George Pataki also reacted to the problem. He signed a law that came to be known as the "nail and mail" power. It allowed the city’s Department of Buildings and Fire to serve notice of violations by simply posting a summons on the door of a building and then mailing it to the building owner's at his last known address. In the past, agencies were required to serve the owner in person. In addition, the new law says vacate orders now require immediate evacuation of the premises. Pataki’s bill was expected to give the city a swifter way to attack lawbreaking landlords.

Three years ago Claire Shulman, Queens Borough president, set up the Illegal Conversion Task Force. Despite all these moves, illegal conversion is still a rampant problem in Queens.

The requests to increase the number of inspectors for the Department of Buildings and for Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) were the third and fourth priorities on Community Board's Expense Budget Priorities 2002 at CB 3. That’s pretty high up on the list, unlike increasing landlord-tenant counseling services which was listed seventeenth on the Community Board's Fiscal Year 2002 Capital Expense Plan. Because it was a newly introduced item, the affordable housing problem came at the bottom of the Community Board's Fiscal Year 2002 Capital Budget Plan.

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Giovanna Reid PHOTO: Roshni Abayasekara

"The whole neighborhood of Queens suffers from a lack of affordable housing," said Giovanna Reid, district manager of Community Board 3. "It’s a deadlocked situation."

The Illegal Conversion Task Force was revived in 1997, when the affordable housing crisis became more obvious in Queens, said Reid. As long as the housing shortage continues, nothing can be done to alleviate the problem because the people who are thrown out of illegally converted apartments have nowhere else to go, she said.

The cycle of rectifying an illegal housing conversion is not very effective due to the lack of appropriate reinforcement measures and follow up, said Reid.

When someone files a complaint against an illegally converted house, the Department of Buildings sends an inspector to check out the site. But the owner can refuse to allow the inspector enter the property.

Even if the inspector manages to get in, establish the fault of the landlord and give out a summons, the defendant may decide not to show up in court. Assuming that everything goes well, the owner pays the per diem fees - established for each day that the apartment continues to be illegally converted - and also remedies the situation, the problem is still not solved because the people who are sent out don’t find a place to live, said Reid.

Currently there’s no follow up to check upon the condition of the houses that were declared as illegally converted, said Reid.