HPD: Understaffed, Incompetent or Both?
When you want to convert a house that has been used and classified by the city as a Single Room Occupance (SRO) dwelling, you have to go through a cumbersome process with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) designed to protect the rights of SRO residents. Unfortunately, as we found out first hand…

When you want to convert a house that has been used and classified by the city as a Single Room Occupance (SRO) dwelling, you have to go through a cumbersome process with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) designed to protect the rights of SRO residents. Unfortunately, as we found out first hand when we converted our house, despite its presumably good intentions, the process is marred by incompetent people and ridiculous bureaucratic hurdles.
HPD’s basic goal is to make sure that a tenant who’s been paying a couple of hundred bucks a month for a room for the last ten or twenty years isn’t booted out in the street. As the owner, you have to fill out a lengthy questionnaire with all the current and former residents’ names and known addresses (even if the house is empty, as ours was when we bought it). Then HPD is supposed to make an effort to contact all these people to make sure they weren’t forced out against their will. In our case, after this mail campaign came up clean, we were told over the phone that everything was fine and we should be getting our Certificate of No Harassment (CNH) within the week. When we called back three weeks later, we found out that HPD had decided to send someone out on foot to try to talk to all the former tenants, thus adding another month to the timeline. At some point in the process, an HPD inspector has to come inspect your house to make sure there are no signs of tenants still living there; at the time (back in late 2004), there was only one inspector for the five boroughs!
The entire process took about four months in our case, but we had the benefit of a friend in city government periodically lobbing in calls to HPD on our behalf. A neighbor of ours in Clinton Hill has not been so lucky. An existing homeowner, he and a partner purchased an SRO in the area in late 2005 and applied to HPD’s SRO unit for a Certificate of No Harassment early in 2006. It was received as of February 15th and they were told by the office it normally takes five to seven months. There was, at the time, one tenant in the building, who has since vacated. After about eight months, he called and was told it was in the “final stages” of the process, was with the attorneys, and should be finished in 30 to 60 days.
After about 75 days, he called again and was told it was in the “final stages” of the process, was with the attorneys, and should be finished in 30 to 60 days. A supervisor told him that it was under investigation and there was nothing further she could say. It’s now been exactly a year, and they are unable to get construction permits due to the delay. Instead, they pay about $8,000 per month in carrying costs and bear the risk of the market going down.
We understand that city wants to make sure that poor people aren’t just kicked to the curb by greedy landlords, but it is not doing an adequate job of balancing the interests of the property owners, who in most cases are not deep-pocketed developers but mom-and-pops trying either to create a home for themselves or to fix up a small rental property. In our case, the people HPD were supposedly watching out for were mostly drug dealers and thugs, which perhaps explains why they ultimately weren’t able to track any of them down. To throw up such impediments to upgrading the housing stock (in most cases, these buildings are some of the most run-down on the block) seems crazy. As we suggested when we first wrote about this on our reno blog, HPD should drastically increase the CNH application fee and staff up so that it can do a responsible job of processing the applications in a timely manner.
Certificate on No Harassment, Finally! [Brownstoner Reno Blog]
Brownstone Dreamin,
“Buyer Beware’ may be a reason for you to be unsympathetic to this particular owner, but not a reason to shrug off the need to improve the system.
of course i see the inefficiencies in the entire process but the price these properties trade for should reflect the inherent risks associated with such SRO purchases…these are known risks at the time of purchase…or at least they are now thanks to this kind of information…buyer beware, plain and simple.
the reason the can seem/sell at a bargain is because it is known the hoops you have to jump through with the city.
I think the regs/laws were passed during 1st wave of coop/condo conversions where many of SRO tenant were easy target for harrassment… to clear bldg. And too many ended up homeless and on streets. Probably UWS was biggest problem.
That’s why it’s a “bargain” – anyone who’s familiar with the process will factor the time and aggravation into the purchase price, so the value is lower than it otherwise would be. There are generally no “bargains” in NY real estate…
Are you kidding me? Because I have the ability to find a bargain, you’re saying that I must then endure incompetence and archaic laws as a result? That’s bologna! There are plenty of laws, rules, and guidelines that are totally outdated and do not benifit today’s environment.
These should be corrected, not left to equate the cost of buying real estate in New York!
This problem is no different then our Mayor failing to fund necessary staffing levels at the Dept. of Buildings despite the enormous surplus. Good laws without the requisite funding for enforcement feed the growing public perception that all regulations should be done away with – and that just what our current and former mayor want.
they shouldn’t prevent the issuance of construction permits while this is going on. I can understand if they will not issue a final CofO or will not sign off on the jobs but to delay someone from even starting work it too much.
If I had $8k/month is carrying cost I think I would just start the renovations, even if you get a fine for work without a permit you will come out ahead if you can save even one month.
wake up! work with the city takes a long time period. you should think of this before you buy. don’t give me this “oh I support poor people and the homeless, but…” nonsense. 6-9 months is not that long in the scope of thing. It takes a long time to allow for due diligence. Home buyers looking for a bargain need to allow for these costs and delays.
I think it’s time the city updates some of their laws to bring it to modern times! I am totally for the rights of the homeless and the indigent population but some of our laws protect no one except those getting a salary from the city!