Eric Adams wants city to monitor bad landlords in same manner as criminals

Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams wants to start monitoring landlords in the same manner that the city tracks criminals.

Adams proposed creating a database modeled after the New York City Police Department’s crime-mapping Compstat system to monitor landlords of below-market housing. Adams told Crain’s that the system would include a dashboard overlaid on a map of the five boroughs, tracking data from the city Departments of Buildings, Finance and Housing Preservation and Development and the state Department of Homes and Community Renewal and housing courts. Such a system would aim to alert investigators of disruptive construction and tenants fighting eviction.

“We fought crime in this city by having real-time mechanisms. We need to use the same methods that we used to stop grand larceny of property — we need to use those methods to stop the larceny of a person’s home,” Adams said. “We did it for crime, we did it in real time; we have to do it to save the most precious commodity we have, and that’s our housing stock.”

Adams, a former NYPD captain and a mayoral hopeful, called for the new system on Monday while announcing a tenant harassment lawsuit against Kushner Companies. New York’s Tenant Protection Unit on Monday also launched an investigation into allegations of tenant harassment against Kushner at its Williamsburg condo conversion at 184 Kent Avenue. [Crain’s] — Kathryn Brenzel