Local Law 58
Many apartment buildings in New York City are in violation of the Fair Housing Act, and now the federal government is taking notice. After inspection of certain properties around the city, the federal prosecutor’s office found that many doors were not wide enough, there was issues with size in also both kitchen and bathrooms, and that mandatory bars that were needed in bathtubs could not be installed because of poor wall construction. Many in the real estate sector of the city thought the issue would go away, but roughly twelve landlords and architects received letters from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan to inform them that their buildings were not compliant with disability laws.
Last week, the United States attorney’s office filed a lawsuit against one of the recipients, AvalonBay Communities, and its architects, charging them with discrimination against disabled people by failing to provide sufficient access at Avalon Chrystie Place, a building on the Lower East Side with 361 apartments.
Now other landlords and developers — virtually everyone who has built an apartment house in New York City since 1991 — fear they may be next. Along with city officials, they assert that compliance with what is known as Local Law 58 satisfies the standards set by the Fair Housing Act.
“This is not limited to these 12 or 13 buildings,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s powerful lobbying arm. “If there’s a decision that Local Law 58 does not meet the criteria for apartments’ being accessible, you could easily argue that every building built since 1991 wasn’t built in accordance with the federal guidelines.”
Estimates would put the number of apartments built since 1991 at roughly 100,000 meaning that they would all have to be renovated to comply with federal regulations. But do these buildings really not comply with federal standards? Some landlords and architects believe that New York City Local Law 58 actually does meet federal standards when it comes to disability issues.
Edward M. Schulman, general counsel for AvalonBay, said the company’s housing was “fully accessible to persons with disabilities.”
“Our buildings have been constructed in compliance with New York City’s Local Law 58,” he said. “We are at a loss to understand why the federal government is suddenly viewing New York City’s Local Law 58 as deficient and unsatisfactory.”
When a few buildings were recently inspected to see if they met Fair Housing laws, it was found that actually non of them did comply.
The federal investigation in New York began with a 2006 survey by the Fair Housing Justice Center, a nonprofit New York group, covering 14 recently built apartment buildings in Manhattan, including AvalonBay’s Chrystie Place.
Diane Houk, executive director of the fair housing center, said that her group found that all 14 buildings had interior apartment doors that were too narrow, 28 and 30 inches, thermostats as high as 63 inches from the floor and a lack of clear floor space in the bathrooms.
“We found that none were in compliance with the Federal Housing Act and referred all the information to the U.S. attorney and briefed HUD,” she said. “I do not understand why New York City developers and architects thought they were exempt.”
