City Limits Bid to Change City’s Scaffolding Law Stirs Old Debate by Gerard Flynn
Kallos says he sees the impact of the law’s flaws. Across the street from his Council office, shedding has been in place for eight years despite a lack of work.
“Every day I see scaffolds where work is not happening at existing buildings,” he says.
Industry professionals tell City Limits privately that such delays could occur for legitimate and unavoidable reasons, such as a dysfunctional co-op board, delays in receiving city permits, new owners, a broke landlord who inherited an old walk-up, a building exchanging hands. Imposing a six-month limit, one architect warned, was “arbitrary” and could create a risk to public safety. And some wonder why a landlord would needlessly allow a shed to stay up if it was hurting their commercial tenants, who pay him rent.
The Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) says Kallos’ proposed law will inconvenience the developer and the public and bring further delays. “The bill is well-intentioned but there are too many unintended consequences, insists REBNY’s Carl Hum, senior vice president of the organization, which represents more than 13,000 building owners and professionals.
Kallos’s office tells City Limits that the bill was reintroduced in 2017 and that negotiations are continuing with the DOB, REBNY and the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA), a trade group for residential building owners, which did not comment. “We have to negotiate with other people in the room,” Kallos says.
Kevin Dougan, director of the New York State Restaurant Group, supports the bill, as does the New York Hospitality Alliance. Dougan says that more than 600 of his members (mostly in Manhattan) report seeing a 40-percent slump in earnings because of the sheds, in an industry where profits are low as is.
In a 2016 sweep, the DOB says, it found that 98 percent of the sheds are necessary to protect the public, ordering the remainder to be removed. But that’s a number whose accuracy Dougan doubts, given the lack of inspectors. Kallos says the sweep did not determine whether work was active at each site.