Each year, fires, floods and other emergencies force thousands of New Yorkers from their homes, separating them from their communities and often in the dark about the status of repairs or whether they’ll even be able to return to their apartments.
Four years ago, a fire broke out in Estella Singleton’s apartment, uprooting her life and forcing her and her then 18-year-old son into the city’s shelter system.
After losing all of her possessions and her home, shelter staff informed her she would be relocated to the Bronx, miles away from the life and community she had built in Brooklyn.
“I didn’t want to come to the Bronx. My son was in school in Brooklyn. He didn’t get to graduate—he’s 22 now and was a straight A student,” Singleton said.
Every year, thousands of New Yorkers displaced by fires, floods, or other catastrophic events wrestle with similar challenges. People forced out of their homes, oftentimes with just the clothes they have on their backs, are separated from their communities and left in the dark about the status of repairs or whether they’ll even be able to return to their apartments.
The City Council’s recently-passed Back Home Act, introduced by Councilmembers Shekar Krishnan and Jennifer Gutiérrez, aims to change that by better supporting tenants who are displaced by emergencies.
It will put stiffer penalties on building owners who drag out repairs by strengthening enforcement of the 7A program, which allows the city to take over managing buildings when landlords fail to address serious issues.
The Back Home Act also mandates that the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD), which helps displaced tenants with temporary housing after an emergency, relocate them within their own neighborhoods.
It requires the state to establish limits on landlords’ ability to indefinitely collect insurance payments, and directs the Department of Buildings to report the estimated time needed to repair each unit. Building owners must also prove they attempted renovations before proceeding with demolition.
According to Krishnan, HPD’s failure to hold landlords accountable for structural damage can prolong tenants’ displacement. Landlords rarely face punitive consequences for ignoring necessary repairs, he explained, and HPD appears to exert little pressure to ensure the work gets done so residents can safely return.
As a former tenants’ rights lawyer, Krishnan has seen how that dynamic affects families across the five boroughs. “One of my first cases out of law school 16 years ago was about a building in Williamsburg where the landlord took a sledgehammer to the building to destroy its foundation and force the tenants out overnight,” he explained.
The bills aim to prevent owners from pushing out low-income or rent-stabilized tenants, a modern echo of the disinvestment and destruction that led to the Bronx burning in the 1970s.
“A lot of these tactics—the fires, the flooding, the neglect and disrepair—are the same tactics that landlords used in the 1970s to burn down their buildings to collect fire insurance, but the motivation is different,” Krishnan said. “Why do fires or flooding start? Because oftentimes the buildings are in disrepair and landlords neglect them so they are susceptible to damage.”
The legislation also tackles critical gaps in communication that leave tenants uninformed about repair progress. Councilmember Gutiérrez’s bill creates the Office of Remediation, which will work directly with the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations to serve as a navigation center so tenants stay in the loop about the status of their cases and the services available to them.
“Time and time again, we’ve seen New Yorkers displaced from their homes left to navigate a chaotic, unsupported system during the most traumatic moments of their lives,” said Councilmember Gutiérrez in a memo released earlier this month. “The Back Home Act was written with and for those neighbors—and with its passage, we are finally giving tenants the clear guidance, accountability, and resources they deserve.”
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