Environment Senator Zellnor Myrie on the Democratic mayoral Discussion board at the Dim Time table held at Medgar Evers School on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.
Photograph by means of Kevin Williams
On Monday, the Environment Senate handed law subsidized by means of Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Central Brooklyn) requiring banks or alternative lienholders of an alone house to proper unhealthy statuses that threaten native condition and protection.
If the statuses don’t seem to be repaired inside a suite time frame, the invoice authorizes Housing Preservation Building (HPD) or alternative housing sections to clutch the component.
“New York City faces a housing crisis, and we need to ensure that neglected, abandoned properties are repaired and ultimately come back on line in a timely and safe manner,” stated Myrie, who represents the twentieth Senate District in Brooklyn. “This invoice would improve our present equipment for correcting unhealthy statuses at alone, vacant houses and require lienholders to in reality produce wanted maintenance, or possibility having the component seized by means of HPD.
“I’m grateful to my Senate colleagues for passing this bill to preserve housing stock across New York,” added Myrie, a candidate for Mayor of the Town of Unutilized York, whose grandmother hailed from Jamaica.
He stated stream regulation permits native government to clutch alone, vacant dwellings whose statuses pose a condition and protection possibility.
Then again, Myrie stated banks and lienholders would possibly restrain the seizure by means of coming into into an pledge with the federal government to produce the maintenance, even if honoring this pledge isn’t required.
Myrie stated his measure would authorize fits to acquire the component identify if the statuses don’t seem to be corrected inside 90 days.
As of 2022, it used to be estimated there have been as many as 2,000 such “zombie properties” in Unutilized York Town, with Brooklyn accounting for 40 % of this general, Myrie stated.