Empower DHCR
A significant issue with the Division of Housing & Community Renewal is that they don’t have the power to investigate patterns of abuse. If 10 renters make a complaint to DHCR, DHCR can’t investigate the landlord.
I will direct my staff to work with tenants to investigate abuses. I will work to add a DHCR comment line to the worse tenant list so tenants can notify my office of possible patterns. This will allow us to notify tenants in those buildings of possible abuse and invite them to open simple DHCR cases.
This would be a stop measure until the DHCR powers can be expanded to investigate patterns.