Bleak House: Recommendations
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. DHCR and the Administration should focus less on how DHCR
looks and pay more attention to how it operates.
The findings of this report demonstrate that DHCR officials
have done a poor job of managing the agency. Their primary
concern appears to have been to keep a lid on any public
perception that DHCR is in chaos.
In 1986, DHCR responded to charges of massive disarray with
falsified statistics and a rush to dispose of its caseload.
Pressures from tenants, landlords and legislators delayed
DHCR's promulgation of the Rent Stabilization Code for
almost two years while DHCR struggled through draft after
draft to clean up its work product. And the continued
political volatility of the rent regulation issue has
apparently convinced DHCR and the Administration to sit on
the sidelines entirely when it comes to landlord/tenant
legislation. The end result of these actions may have been
less political cost over the short term but a failing rent
regulatory system in the long run.
DHCR needs professional, experienced management and a
commitment from the Administration that the substantive
running of the agency over the long run is more important
than the day-to-day perceptions of the media and the public.
Without such a change in attitude, any reforms DHCR
undertakes will not be successful.
2. DHCR should commission a full scale audit and analysis of
its management and communications systems and develop a
comprehensive plan to correct the disorganization which
presently plagues them.
The one bright spot in the otherwise dismal picture of
DHCR's case processing system is the fact that the agency
finally has completed an evaluation of its automation needs
(two years after it should have) and is now in the process
of installing the automation system recommended in its
analysis. If the installation of this new system is
successfully completed and can be effectively utilized by
DHCR, the overall efficiency of the case processing system
could be greatly improved. Other systems at DHCR, however,
remain in chaos with no apparent plans to correct them.
The management structure of the agency, the way the staff is
structurally and functionally organized and the way it
interacts, is in need of analysis and reorganization. Much
of the telephone system, more than a year after the
completion of DHCR's last major relocation, continues to be
substantially unworkable. The mail system is in disarray and
the agency continues to lose mail and case files at an
alarming rate.
The Administration should immediately commission a full
scale audit and analysis, preferably by an outside
management consulting organization, of the entire scope of
DHCR's operations and develop a comprehensive plan to
improve them. DHCR must be able to communicate effectively
within the agency and with its constituents before other
improvements can be successful.
3. DHCR should institute a comprehensive training program for
its employees and managers and develop standard written
procedures for processing cases.
As was noted earlier, DHCR rent examiners responsible for
processing cases and their supervisors and managers
presently receive no formal training prior to assuming their
duties. The Assembly survey noted in Finding One, in which
DHCR offices were called and asked basic factual questions
about tenants' rights, found that DHCR public information
specialists gave out incorrect information much of the time.
And there are no uniform written procedures which direct
rent examiners on how to deal with most of the issues they
confront in their daily work. The result is the chaos and
widely disparate case processing results described in this
report. A comprehensive training program, the development of
detailed work manuals describing how examiners should
process cases and the standardization of processing
procedures among examiners would help eliminate these
problems. Such steps should be instituted as soon as
possible.
4. DHCR should conduct a legal audit of its processing
procedures.
As was noted in Finding Three, DHCR has been systematically
violating the provisions of the Rent Stabilization Law and
Code in its case processing. DHCR should immediately
commission a legal audit of its processing procedures to
insure that these violations of law do not persist. A legal
audit should also be conducted of any work training manuals
or standardized processing procedures which DHCR develops
pursuant to recommendation #3 above, to insure that such
documents or procedures do not result in additional
violations of law.
5. DHCR should set priorities for its workload.
When owners have installed legitimate major capital
improvements or tenants live in a building whose landlord
has ceased to provide essential services DHCR must be able
to act swiftly and forcefully to enforce the law. At the
same time, when complaints or applications on their face
have no validity, there should be a procedure for handling
them without their being put into the full case-processing
system. Based on the testimony received at the hearings, the
establishment of such priorities apparently has not been
done at DHCR. Generally all complaints and applications,
whether frivolous on their face or life threatening, get
equal treatment -- slow and error-prone. DHCR should examine
the case-processing system to see if priorities could be
established that would devote different degrees of attention
to different types of cases. Many priorities could be
established administratively. Others may require legislative
changes.
6. DHCR and the Administration should pursue statutory reforms
in the rent regulation system along two tracks: first, the
Administration should consider the need for comprehensive
changes in the basic structure of the rent regulatory laws;
second, DHCR and the Administration should seek less
sweeping statutory and administrative changes to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of the laws DHCR is presently
charged with administering.
Almost every objective observer agrees that the basic
structure of New York's rent regulatory laws is in need of
reform. DHCR has submitted a plan to the Governor to revamp
the system. It is now up to the Administration to make a
decision on what its vision of the future of the system will
be and then propose and push for legislation to enact those
goals.
While pursuing a broad-based reform agenda, however, DHCR
and the Administration should simultaneously conduct an
analysis of the existing statutes DHCR administers and
develop a package of less sweeping proposals to improve the
operation of the system presently in place. While it is
conceivable that a complete revamping of the rent regulation
system could take place in the near future, it is also
possible that the present system could remain largely intact
for years to come. While broad reforms are pursued,
therefore, DHCR should simultaneously push for less
comprehensive changes in its existing statutes. The
committees are convinced that there are numerous
opportunities for improving DHCR's statutory framework today
and are committed to working with DHCR to achieve such
improvements.
To accomplish both goals, DHCR and the Administration must
get involved in the legislative process in a much more
deliberate and intensive way than they have done thus far.
DHCR and the Administration should submit Program or
Departmental bills early in the legislative session. And
then the Administration and DHCR officials should vigorously
push to have those proposals enacted into law.
Many DHCR personnel are aware of provisions of the current
rent regulation laws that impede their ability to
effectively accomplish the general mandates they are working
to carry out. It is time for DHCR and the Administration to
crystallize this institutional wisdom and present it to the
Legislature. Sitting on the sidelines must end.
7. DHCR should make services available at local District Rent
Administration Offices.
As was noted in Finding One, local district rent
administration offices, which were originally intended by
the Legislature as the places where tenants and landlords
received most of the services they needed from DHCR, today
provide only copies of forms and limited public information
services to the public. Tenants and owners must travel to
Jamaica, Queens in order to obtain most of the other
services they need from the agency. DHCR should make as many
services as possible available at local district rent
offices, convenient to the homes and businesses of its
constituents. The Division's new automation system should be
structured to help DHCR in decentralizing its operations and
the opportunities for decentralization presented by the
system should be fully utilized by DHCR.
8. DHCR should publish. distribute and regularly update the
following materials:
A. An organizational chart, listing department heads and
functional units of the agency together with their job
responsibilities, addresses and telephone numbers;
B. A tenants and owners guide which describes in plain
language:
1. The statutory and regulatory provisions of the
rent regulation system;
2. The specific procedures tenants and owners must
follow when filing complaints or applications with
DHCR together with the names and numbers of all
sets of relevant forms;
3. Alternatives to filing complaints with the agency;
4. Procedures for determining case or application
status; and
5. Community and advocacy organizations which provide
assistance to tenants and owners in dealing with
housing problems and the rent regulatory system.
The publication and distribution of the materials listed above
would greatly assist DHCR's user community and could also cut
down on the information requests which are presently made to the
agency.
9. DHCR staff should be trained to take actions which reduce
the number of complaints and applications filed with the
agency.
Several tenants and owners testified that DHCR staff have a
tendency to address apparently simple questions and requests
with the direction to file one of a myriad of DHCR forms.
This is a natural and human reaction. If a question or
problem is difficult to resolve, a staff person can
eliminate his or her immediate workload by having the tenant
or owner file a form. Thus, a tenant who is not sure what
his rent is can be directed to file an overcharge complaint,
an owner who wishes to know the status of her case must file
a Freedom of Information Law request and a person whose
evidence has been lost in initial processing must file a
Petition for Administrative Review. In the long run,
however, each such form must be processed by the agency, and
what saves work for one staff person initially, creates much
more work for the agency in the long run.
Much of the form-filing philosophy prevalent at DHCR now
comes about because of the disarray of the system. DHCR
staff often cannot deal with questions and problems short of
opening up an entire new case file. If the agency's
automation system is successfully completed, however, and
DHCR improves its operations in other areas, it should be
possible to deal with many common requests and questions
which presently require new forms to be filed without taking
such actions.
DHCR staff should be trained to take full advantage of such
new opportunities. This does not mean staff should seek to
dissuade people from taking actions to enforce their legal
rights. It does mean, however, that where questions or
problems can be successfully resolved without recourse to
opening new cases, staff should take the time to do so when
initial contact with the public is made rather than avoiding
such efforts and creating a new workload later on.
10. DHCR should meet regularly with its Tenants' and Owners'
Advisory Councils.
DHCR has established tenants' and owners' advisory councils
to give the agency input on its policies and procedures and
keep the leaders of its constituent groups up to date on
actions taken by DHCR. From 1985-87, the Division let more
than a year lapse between its meetings with both groups. In
the future, DHCR should schedule meetings with both councils
on a regular basis.
11. DHCR should establish a Small Building Owners' Assistance
Unit.
As was noted in Finding One, DHCR has not fulfilled the
law's requirement to establish a separate unit to deal
exclusively with the problems of small building owners. Such
a unit should be established and fully staffed by personnel
trained to deal with issues arising in this subject area.
12. DHCR should be forthright when dealing with individuals
filing complaints and applications.
A tenant who is told at the outset of filing a complaint
that it may take more than a year to resolve will probably
be somewhat angry. A tenant who files a complaint and then
waits for a year with no resolution or communication
whatsoever about what is going on has every right to be
furious. Therein lies a lesson for DHCR. The agency should
be upfront and honest with its constituents about how the
case-processing system works. In the long run, tenants,
owners and DHCR will be better for the knowledge.
DHCR should be able to let people filing complaints or
applications know at the time of filing the average
resolution time for the type of case they are filing, as
well as provide them with written materials on how the
processing system works. If no work is done on a case for
three months, DHCR should notify the parties of the current
status and explain the reason for the processing delay. Such
steps would both allow parties to more accurately predict
how the case resolution process works and know they have not
been forgotten by the agency.
13. DHCR should consolidate cases involving the same building, a
apartment or landlord.
Based on testimony received at the hearing, it appears that
under current DHCR procedures cases involving the same
issue, for example, two tenants in the same building filing
separate complaints about building wide services, are often
handled completely independently. Cases involving the same
building or issue may be handled by separate rent examiners
neither of whom has knowledge of the work done by the other.
Such a system both cuts down on examiner efficiency and
creates the potential for similar cases to be resolved in
different ways.
Courts of law, when confronted with similar situations, seek
to consolidate all cases relating to an issue into a single
proceeding. DHCR should, when possible, do likewise.
14. DHCR should encourage direct contact between its
constituents and the rent examiners who process their cases.
Based on testimony received at the hearing, the vast
majority of communications between DHCR and its constituents
during case-processing occurs by mail. Much of this
communication is anonymous with requests for information
sent without the signatures or names of any DHCR personnel
or contact person. In cases where letters are signed, they
are often signed by DHCR officials in charge of processing
units rather than the examiners responsible for handling the
case. Providing the names of examiners to tenants or
landlords might be appropriate in some instances as a means
of facilitating case-processing.
In addition to personalized correspondence, DHCR should
allow examiners greater access to telephones in processing
cases in certain instances. While there are obvious reasons
for depending primarily on formal communications by mail,
there are instances where telephone communications to
clarify, reiterate the need for or seek additional
information may produce good results and these opportunities
should be encouraged by DHCR.
15. DHCR should review its forms and paperwork requirements and
where possible simplify and consolidate them.
Many owners testified that they believe DHCR imposes
excessive paperwork requirements on persons involved in the
case-processing system. DHCR should conduct an analysis of
the forms and paperwork it presently requires owners and
tenants to file, and where possible, simplify and
consolidate those requirements.
16. DHCR should take steps to improve employee morale.
As was noted in Finding Four, rent examiners who appeared at
the hearing testified that morale in their offices was
extremely low. Staff felt that preferential treatment was
given to some examiners and that working conditions and the
treatment they received from supervisors was poor. Staff at
the Columbus Circle office also felt insecure about their
job tenure, since most are apparently classified as
"provisional" employees with no job tenure or security. Some
provisionals had worked for DHCR for over a year and still
had not achieved more permanent status. Poor working
conditions decrease the effectiveness of the services
provided by an organization. A secure, motivated, well-led
staff, it goes without saying, produces a better work
product. Employee morale should have a high priority.
17. DHCR should assign PAR docket numbers with logical
connections to the docket numbers of the original underlying
complaints.
Presently if a case is appealed, it is assigned a new docket
number which bears no relationship to the docket number of
the original complaint. In cases where a tenant files
several complaints therefore, and a decision in one of them
is appealed by either party, it is difficult and sometimes
impossible for the owner or tenant to know which of the
several complaints filed by the tenant the appeal refers to.
This problem could be remedied easily by assigning docket
numbers to PARs which directly related to the original case.
For example the PAR docket for case 3561, on appeal could
become docket 3561-P.