The Inadequacies of 311

311 complaints – the city’s knight-in-shining-armor answer to the endless and often illegal problems suffered by the tenants of NYC at the hands of their landlords.  How effective is a 311 complaint?  In my experience  – not at all.

You can call or go online to make a non-emergency complaint to 311 for a number of things, most popular apparently being a noise complaint, according to this article from 2013, which sings the praises of the service. Even better, the NYPD promised to aggressively follow up on these complaints according to this Gothamist.com article from 2014 as part of the NYPD’s “quality-of-life efforts.”

For me, the two times I have resorted to 311 (generally haven’t for fear of retaliation) went something like this:

– call 311

– receive complaint number

– inspector shows up

– inspector is denied access

– complaint is closed

Obviously if you have a dreaded bed bug infestation in your own apartment, you will give access to the inspector and perhaps (but still not definitely) the situation will be resolved (maybe even within the 30 days the city gives your landlord to fix it – hope you sleep well in that MONTH).  But if the problem (whatever it is) is in another apartment, say, your landlord’s, gooooooood luck with that.

I lived on the 2nd floor of a brownstone several years ago, and the landlord decided to rent the parlor level to a GYM.  No, this was not a commercial building.  No, this was not legal.  No, this wasn’t some well-maintained brownstone, with soundproofed walls, or a sturdy structure.

I found out it was going to be a gym when I noticed the new tenant painting the walls bright orange, and lining the walls with mirrors.  Swell! Random people were coming and going during the gym’s hours, not to mention they didn’t keep the front door locked, not to mention the noise and the shaking.  Ohhhh, the shaking.  The first morning the gym was in business, I was woken at 6 AM by the rather violent shaking of my bedroom.  Inconvenient at the very least – possibly structurally dangerous at most – they had removed walls to create a floor-though open space.

I tried very hard to work with the owner of the business.  He agreed to only use the treadmill after 8 AM.  That was essentially it.  That was the only concession.  Then there was the incessant loud music.  Then there was the weird dude who slept there every night (not the tenant).  They kept their doors open all the time, so the music was even louder, and the machines as well.  And they were unpleasant (after a few weeks) and clearly did not care that they were inconveniencing the other tenants of the brownstone.  The neighbors did not appreciate the sidewalk group workouts or the business signage on the building.  The landlord was no help.  After all, he had rented it to them fully knowing they intended to open a gym.

It’s no mystery why they wanted this apartment – the rent was far cheaper than a commercial space would be, yet they acted as if they deserved all the amenities and respect a commercial space would give them.  They often asked me to “understand” that they were trying to run a business and they were already losing some because of the 8 AM treadmill start time.  I was dumbfounded.  The funny thing is, they would likely have had so much more business if they were in a commercial space – one visible on a commercial block, which gets more traffic.

I waited AGES to file a complaint with 311.  I struggled with it.  I felt it was a very last resort.  I worried about retaliation.  I felt this guilt – maybe I was being silly, expecting my bedroom not to shake.  People have noisy neighbors all the time, right?  In fact, I waited until there was already a complaint.  When I finally filed one, I did so anonymously, even though I figured it likely they would assume it was me.  At least I felt better knowing it was not just me who filed one (the original complaint was anonymous too).

All that fretting to have the building inspector (after months of waiting for one to respond) arrive and be denied admittance to the apartment.  Complaint closed.  What the hell?  You could see clearly through the front windows that it was being run as a gym.  There was a SIGN.  There was a web address.  It was obvious that it was a business and no walk-through was needed to see anything more then what you could see from the street.

Many more anonymous complaints were filed (not just by me), and not a single one went anywhere because the building inspectors were denied admittance.  HUGE loop-hole.  EXTREMELY disappointing.  MASSIVELY ineffective.

But what happens when you live in a building where your landlord is not just ignoring their legal obligations to provide a habitable living space, but actively perpetuating the problem?  What if the reason you keep having a terrible roach infestation, rodent infestation, or worse – a bed bug infestation is because they don’t mind living in squalor and therefore never bother to eradicate the problem?

Sure, they might (MIGHT) get the crappiest of crappy exterminators to your apartment so you stop showing up at their door or filling their voice mail with messages, but that only helps if the source of the problem also gets treated.  Again, in this instance, you are helpless because the landlord has to allow the inspector you have summoned into their apartment.  Even if you have an infestation, they only have to treat your apartment and the neighboring apartment(s) – but unless one of those is the landlord’s, they can keep feeding the problem until they have been sucked dry by those nastiest of pests.

Even if the inspector is able to gain access and confirm there is an infestation, the landlord has 30 days to deal with it.  If you have ever had bed bugs, this is an eternity.  At this point, if they hire someone, chances are it has already started to spread to the rest of the building, and since they are only legally responsible for treating their own apartment (where the infestation is) and the neighboring apartment(s), it will eventually get passed back and forth with the untreated apartments, and so on.  But definitely keep shelling out the big bucks to live in misery.  At least the neighborhood is nice?

In the decade that I have lived in NYC, there have been many, many times I had good reason to call 311, however I haven’t. Again, this has been for fear of retaliation, concern that it would not be handled in a timely manner, and because I give my landlord way too many chances to right the problem.  Now it is because there is no point in a lot of situations.

It amazes me what landlords get away with in this city.  In many cases it is down right criminal.  Yet there is no blacklist for landlords like there is for tenants (for even stepping foot into Housing Court – whether you win or lose).  Why is that?  I’m sure that there are plenty of landlords out there that have valid issues with tenants.  But, there is no easy, immediate protection for tenants, much less a way to avoid the worst of the landlords before choosing an apartment.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know what you might be getting yourself into with a perspective landlord or management company?

Apparently there is one apartment listing site that attempts to do this – Rentlogic, according to this recent NY Times article.  But it isn’t quite there yet.  This is somewhat helpful, but I think there should be something more official coming out of, say, the NY State Attorney General‘s office, or perhaps the NYC Mayor’s Office (perhaps I’m being too idealistic here).

In any event, there should be more effort on the city’s part to crack down on the slumlords of NYC.  It is egregious what they get away with, and for those of us who pay our rent on time every month, we deserve much better.