How to Use the NYC Buildings Information System

The Gotham Gazette consistently publishes in-depth stories that no one else is writing about. Here’s a story about illegal hotels:

The “Candy Hostel” (316 West 95th Street) on Manhattan’s Upper West boasts of being New York City’s “newest,
sexiest, hippest and hottest boutique hostel.” It offers amazingly
cheap rates — as low as $17 a night in a city where the average hotel
charges $312 — and only accepts payment in cash.

As alluring as that may be to tourists on a budget, the building,
formally known as the Mount Royal, along with the nearby The Continental
and Pennington are not as hospitable for long-time residents who call
the single room occupancy buildings home.

“The city doesn’t protect us. What’s happening here is illegal,” one
man said. When asked to elaborate, he took a puff of his cigarette,
then shook his head, and said that he could not comment any further
because he was afraid of retaliation from his landlord.

EveryBlock has record of a permit that was disapproved at this location. EveryBlock NYC is awesome for quickly seeing the most recent permits granted, or all the demolitions, and so on. It’s also the only place where you can see permits in context with other info on a particular block.

But when you really want to drill down into the history of a building according to the Department in charge of such things, you want to become a Buildings Information System ninja. The BIS from the NYC Department of Buildings has a crazy-ton of detailed information going back decades. This building serves a good example of the wealth of data exposed by NYC.

There are 25 different ways to search the system, and the easiest of them is #1:

Pick a borough, put in the house number, type the address, and hit “Go”.  If you have a permit number, complaint number, or other details, you can roll that way, but Address is usually the best way to go, because you get a complete view of everything that the system knows about a building- the “Property Profile Overview”. Here’s the one for this building:

Here’s a list of complaints lodged against the building. There are 41 going back to October 2002, when the complaint was “RENOVATION WORK ON ENTIRE BUILDING WITHOUT PERMITS”. When the inspector (Badge # 047) got there, the determination was ” NO VIOLATION WARRANTED FOR COMPLAINT AT TIME OF INSPECTION”.

There are a lot of spot-on complaints about this place operating as an illegal hotel. Just last Friday, a complaint was filed and investigated on the same day. The complaint was “THERE ARE SEVERAL ROOMS AT THIS RESIDENTIAL BLDG THAT AREILLEGALLY BEING
USED AS HOTEL RMS. THE ROOMS ARE RENTED TO TOURIST AND HOMELESS
INDIVIDUAL SUBSIDIZED BY THE CITY.OPEN COMPL#1258909″ and the disposition was “REFER TO MAYOR’S OFFICE OF SPECIAL ENFORCEMENT “, a department that apparently has a description and not much else.

Here’s another complaint from last month:

CALLER REPORTING HALLWAY DOORS ARE BLOCKED BY CLEANINGEQUIPMENT FROM 2FL TO 7FL BETWEEN 11AM AND 5PM IN RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGCONVERTED TO HOTEL ROOMS

With a similar disposition:

G7 – COMPLAINT REFERRED TO MAYOR’S OFFICE OF SPECIAL ENFORCEMENT

That’s just a history of complaints. Here’s the history of DOB Violations. These relate to mechanical and architectural issues like bum boilers and issues with building facades.

Here is the history of EOB violations at the location. “EOB” stands for “Environment Control Board“– these are violations relating to “health, safety, and a clean environment”. The most common ones are “FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ELEVATOR“. Working without a permit is another no-no.

As you can imagine in a city as dense and tall as New York, elevator permits are a big deal. There is a separate page for that in the system as well.

So that’s the basics. This building doesn’t have an “illuminated sign” or “marquee” on it, because there are no permits for that.

Just for reference, here’s the history of the enormous Walgreens sign at One Times Square. Apparently it was a Dow Jones sign in 1999. Stocks then, drugs now. Makes sense.

So here’s the upshots:

• Awesomely detailed articles about civic issues in places like Gotham Gazette are essential to understanding your city
• EveryBlock allows you to be endlessly surprised by what’s going on near any point in the cities we cover
• Online databases maintained by decades of municipal workers can yield more info than you ever thought your mind could handle

“Twenty-Eight (28) rooms, Single Room Occupancy each story.” And the city teems with life.