🏚️ Breaking Down the Vacant Building Challenge in NYC

🌟 Author’s Note

Good morning to the 125 members of the Better Block Project 👋. I hope everyone is surviving the cold weather and snow ❄️ . Here is the TLDR for this week’s update:

• We didn’t hear anything following the 1/29 meeting with the MTA, but made contact with Anthony Drummond at the MTA to push forward our requests

• In order to push forward our policy to improve vacant buildings, we analyzed how many properties in New York fall into the different types we’ve experienced, such as under construction or held as vacant

• Most vacant properties are similar to 26 Jefferson, with more than 41,000 units in New York awaiting or undergoing renovation according to the Housing and Vacancy Survey

• New York also has an opportunity to improve how it manages properties where the owner has passed away. An NYC Comptroller audit found significant deficiencies in a 2025 audit

📣 Latest News on the Fulton and Franklin Bus Stop

As expected, we didn’t hear anything from City Council regarding their meeting with the MTA this past Thursday. I plan to follow up next week to understand how it went and what next steps are. However, in good news, I did hear back from Anthony Drummond at the MTA. Anthony has assisted with improving the bus stop in the past, so I am hopeful he can be a solid contact at the MTA to help push forward our requests. I am aiming to meet with Anthony this coming week for an introductory conversation.

🏚️ Breaking Down the Vacant Building Challenge in NYC

Our Vacant Building Tiger Team 🐯 met last week to discuss next steps with building out our policy, following our conversation with the Department of Finance. We discussed interesting ideas, such as transitioning homes where the owners have passed away to affordable housing as a way to keep lower and middle income families in the neighborhood.

Throughout our conversation what became evident was not all vacant properties are created equal. There are properties like 1105 Fulton, where the building is held as vacant but the owners are around and (somewhat) maintaining the property. There are properties like 26 Jefferson, where the property is vacant but under-construction, with the goal to transform it into new apartments. And, there are buildings like 75 Macon, where the owner has passed away, and now the property sits empty while the city is evaluating next steps.

It presents a challenging policy solution. For a property like 1105 Fulton, the best solution is likely to ensure the owner pays any fines on their property, to provide a real incentive to stay compliant. For 26 Jefferson, the Department of Finance can work with the Department of Buildings to place stop work orders on the property, ensuring they pay fines before they can continue to build (note, DOF does work with DOB to pause permits today, though it’s not on every violation). Finally, with properties like 75 Macon, the best solution might be finding a way to get a new owner as quickly as possible, instead of stuck in New York City bureaucracy.

So, how many properties fall into these categories?

New York does a Housing and Vacancy Survey approximately every three years, which provides some of the best data on New York’s housing stock and the state of vacant properties. In that report, they go fairly deep on vacant units and you can start to get a picture of how many units fit into the categories we experience day to day on our blocks. The chart below outlines vacant unit by type, which isn’t buildings directly, but it can give you a proxy for what we’re talking about.

The largest category that mirrors our experience is the 41,270 units that are Awaiting or Undergoing Renovation. A building like 26 Jefferson would fall into this category, and as we know these units can cause significant issues for neighbors. The construction at 26 Jefferson has damaged neighbors’ homes, brought rodent infestation and safety issues. The implication of this is pushing for a policy solution, such as ensuring Stop Work Orders are placed on any in-renovation properties once they reach a certain level of fines, can have a very large impact.

The second category that we experience often on our blocks is units Held As Vacant. There are 13,680 units that fall into this category, which mostly resembles 1105 Fulton. For properties like this, the city has less leverage to compel the owner to improve their property since there is no active work. As a result, the best policy solution in this case might be improving the fine collection process to ensure these violations become a real deterrent.

What happens to properties when someone passes away?

When someone passes away and doesn’t have a will, New York City public administrators step in to manage the estate. The City Comptroller’s office published a detailed audit of the King’s County (Brooklyn) public administrator office, which helps shed light on how often this happens and challenges with the system today. According to the report, in 2022 to 2023, there were 14,258 estate cases that were active, and 797 that were closed during that period. 217 of those cases are classified as large estates (valued at $50,000 or more), which gives you a sense of how many estates the city is managing that potentially have property involved.

The audit from the Comptroller’s office is quite damning. They found the King’s County public administrator’s office didn’t adequately identify, collect or safeguard the descendent’s assets, and they also found they weren’t always acting in their best interests. More than 70% of the estate cases had been active more than 5 years, and over half had not even been assigned a case manager. Some other compelling anecdotes from the report specific to properties:

• The public administrator doesn’t maintain a centralized list of all properties belonging to estates

• The public administrator didn’t acquire all the assets associated with the estates, meaning the estates didn’t receive appropriate credit for their assets

• The public administrator didn’t conduct full due diligence of properties they sold, in some cases selling properties for less than they were worth

The most frustrating part of the report is none of these challenges are new. The Comptroller cites that many of the findings in the audit are similar to multiple audits dating all the way back to 2005. You could imagine policy that was focused on improving this whole entire estate management process, which would result in assets that could go to heirs more quickly and properties that can become occupied again, sooner. The report adds on to the mountain of evidence that so much in New York City could be improved by just ensuring the system was operated more effectively.

That’s all for this week’s update! As usual, if you like what we’re doing at the Better Block Project, forward this to someone you know that is looking to get more engaged in the neighborhood.

See you next week,

David