HOW OLD IS YOUR HOME OR BUILDING? AND WHO OWNS IT?
(And Who Owns That Boarded-Up Rat Trap Down The Street?)
(And Who Owns That Boarded-Up Rat Trap Down The Street?)
For your building's age & owner, go to this NYC map, input your address, and a box will pop up with that information. (Also, take note of your block and lot numbers, underlined below. With your block & lot numbers, you can look up a pic of your home from the 80s.)
If instead of an actual name next to "owner," you see the title of a business, or something along those lines (note that the owner of my building is "215-219 West 145th St"), that name is the name of the "limited liability company" (LLC) that owns your building. To (try to) see who is in fact in charge of that LLC, go here.
If you're looking up some boarded-up rat trap or vacant lot, that rat trap or lot may in fact be owned by NYC's Housing Authority (NYCHA). If so, the owner will be listed as "Housing Authority" or "New York City Housing" (although I have seen city-owned properties come up completely blank, with no owner listed, or any other kind of information). As for why NYCHA owns blighted buildings across the boroughs, according to this article from June 2014, "the city obtained the homes in the late 1970s from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. After tenants moved or passed away, NYCHA kept the buildings empty... a NYCHA spokeswoman admitted the homes have been unoccupied and deteriorating for years but said the agency doesn’t have the funds to rehab them...Instead, housing officials are seeking HUD approval to transfer the buildings to nonprofits that can renovate and sell them as affordable housing — a process that could take years."** The city also owns numerous vacant lots: in January 2015, NYC's Department of Housing & Preservation (HPD) released this list of some of them; through the end of February, HPD was "inviting developers to submit qualifications" for the construction and design of "affordable" housing projects on those lots, almost all of which are/were in the South Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York, Bed-Stuy and South Jamaica. A few lots are pictured below; pics via googlemaps, Oct 2014. Interestingly: according to the city's "311 Service Request Map," exactly zero calls were made in 2014 about "abandoned buildings" (a specific complaint type listed in the"construction" category) or "lot conditions" (a complaint type listed under "sanitation") -- which I find very, very hard to believe.
If you're looking up some boarded-up rat trap or vacant lot, that rat trap or lot may in fact be owned by NYC's Housing Authority (NYCHA). If so, the owner will be listed as "Housing Authority" or "New York City Housing" (although I have seen city-owned properties come up completely blank, with no owner listed, or any other kind of information). As for why NYCHA owns blighted buildings across the boroughs, according to this article from June 2014, "the city obtained the homes in the late 1970s from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. After tenants moved or passed away, NYCHA kept the buildings empty... a NYCHA spokeswoman admitted the homes have been unoccupied and deteriorating for years but said the agency doesn’t have the funds to rehab them...Instead, housing officials are seeking HUD approval to transfer the buildings to nonprofits that can renovate and sell them as affordable housing — a process that could take years."** The city also owns numerous vacant lots: in January 2015, NYC's Department of Housing & Preservation (HPD) released this list of some of them; through the end of February, HPD was "inviting developers to submit qualifications" for the construction and design of "affordable" housing projects on those lots, almost all of which are/were in the South Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York, Bed-Stuy and South Jamaica. A few lots are pictured below; pics via googlemaps, Oct 2014. Interestingly: according to the city's "311 Service Request Map," exactly zero calls were made in 2014 about "abandoned buildings" (a specific complaint type listed in the"construction" category) or "lot conditions" (a complaint type listed under "sanitation") -- which I find very, very hard to believe.
867 & 861 Glenmore Ave, East New York, Brooklyn
191 Chauncey St, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
1900 Marmion, East Tremont, Bronx
104-51 164th St., South Jamaica
**As to NYCHA's presumed claim of lack of funds, I refer you to the city's comptroller's 2014 audit of NYCHA, which alleges, among other things, that NYCHA failed to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding due to "unconscionable management and neglect"; and to this article in The Daily News, about how NYCHA, back in 2000, moved all tenants out of Brownsville's Prospect Plaza Houses in order to complete a massive renovation, and how a decade later Prospect Plaza remained vacant -- and unrenovated -- with most of the $21 million NYCHA had received from HUD, specifically for that renovation, remaining unspent. Prospect Plaza has since been town down.)