I'Jaz Ja'ciel | October 24, 2024

The City of Buffalo is asking a judge to toss out a lawsuit accusing the city of failing to enforce a rental inspection law aimed at reducing lead paint in its aging housing stock.

Here’s why the case has no merit, according to the city:

• Buffalo is enforcing its inspections law, known as the Proactive Rental Inspections Program or PRI — just not as quickly as some would like.
• Landlords — not the city — should be held accountable for failing to eliminate environments conducive to child lead poisoning.
• The state’s Green Amendment, which grants the right to a “healthy environment,” lacks key definitions that would prove any sort of guilt on the city’s end for lagging on inspections.

“The commissioner is performing inspections,” Assistant Corporation Counsel David Lee argued in state Supreme Court, referring to Catherine Amdur, commissioner of the city’s Department of Permit and Inspection Services. 

“Petitioners say she’s not doing them fast enough, but that’s different than she’s refusing to perform inspections,” Lee said. 

While inspections are mandatory under the law, the manner and pace in which they are carried out is discretionary, he said. 

Lee made his arguments last week before Judge Michael Siragusa on behalf of the city, which is arguing the lawsuit filed by the Partnership for the Public Good and others should be dismissed.

Attorney John Lipsitz, representing the Partnership and other plaintiffs, defended the lawsuit, arguing the PRI law states the commissioner must see that all rental units in the city are inspected.

Through the four-year period since the PRI law was enacted, only 13.4 percent of the city’s 36,000 rental units (fewer than 5,000)  had been inspected and only 458 certificates of rental compliance had been issued, Lipsitz told the judge.

He also said the Department of Permit and Inspection Services added uninspected homes to its rental registry, despite the PRI law mandating inspections and Certificates of Rental Compliance before such action could be taken.

“The city, because of its improper conduct and putting all these houses on the rental registry where they do not belong, has caused harm under the Green Amendment,” he said.

Siragusa said he would have a decision on the city’s motion to dismiss the case in coming weeks.

Last week’s hearing was the first held on a lawsuit filed in July by four community organizations — the Partnership for the Public Good, People United for Sustainable Housing, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, and the Center for Elder Law and Justice — and four individuals, representing themselves as well as “all individuals who live or are asking to live in properties subject to the city’s rental inspection law.”

The suit alleges that the city has failed to enforce its own rental registration law, which was adopted by the Common Council in 2020, and is aimed at identifying properties with lead paint that needs to be remediated.

The suit asks the court to require the city comply with the regulation. It also asks the court to declare that the city’s failure to enforce the law fully “violates the rights of the most vulnerable of the city of Buffalo to a safe and healthy environment,” as guaranteed by the Green Amendment of the New York state constitution.

Every year, approximately 450 children under the age of 6 in Buffalo are diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels. The city had three of the four ZIP codes in the state with the highest percent of children tested with elevated levels of lead in their blood, according to state Health Department data for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.

Lead-poisoned children suffer neurological damage, learning disabilities, attention disorders, hearing and speech problems, decreased IQ and a decreased lifespan, the lawsuit states.

Following court arguments last week, Partnership for the Public Good and several others who brought the case against the city told Investigative Post that city officials continue to evade responsibility in performing inspections and enforcing landlords to maintain safe living conditions.

“Once again, what we’re hearing is City Hall saying: ‘It’s not our problem if children are being lead poisoned; it’s not our problem if tenants are being made sick from their rental units.’ And that’s not a position that we can accept,” said Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good.

Janayia Capers, housing justice organizer at PUSH Buffalo, which advocates for affordable housing and tenants rights, also expressed concern. 

“The city hands out the certificates,” she said. “They have the right to do that, and they have the right to also tell the landlords: ‘If your house isn’t fixed, then you can’t rent,’ right? But they’re not doing that.”

The city recently said updated figures show about 6,000 of the 36,000 units that qualify under the city inspection law have been inspected.  Amdur told Investigative Post the city is beefing up its proactive inspections unit, whose staff had dropped to three. Seven more inspectors are being added, she said.

Erie County has also said it is hiring additional inspectors for lead inspections, which will focus on Buffalo.

Still, the suing organizations are hesitant to believe that the city’s additional hires will help enforce proactive inspections.

“One thing we have seen is even the couple of inspectors that are assigned to PRI actually end up taking on all kinds of other duties and going on block walks, going on clean sweeps,” Ó Súilleabháin said.

“So hiring more will not necessarily mean that the number goes up hugely,” she said.