City housing inspectors are issuing more violations than ever for faulty apartment doors that are supposed to automatically shut to prevent fires from spreading, but thousands still remain unresolved, newly released city data shows.
A report on agency performance released on Tuesday shows that inspectors from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development issued roughly 22,300 violations for doors that didn’t close on their own between July and October 2023, the first four months of the current fiscal year. That’s nearly 40% more than in the same period in 2022 and part of an overall increase in violations issued for self-closing doors and other “immediately hazardous” conditions, including heat outages.
The spike in self-closing door violations issued to building owners comes two years after a deadly fire in the Bronx killed 17 people, including eight children.
Multiple doors to an apartment and stairwells failed to shut at the Twin Parks North West high-rise in Fordham Heights in January 2022, allowing smoke from a fire sparked by a space heater on the second story to spread throughout the building. The blaze sparked new laws penalizing landlords who fail to promptly fix doors that don’t shut and latch on their own, as well as additional funding to hire and train HPD inspectors.
But HPD data shows that nearly 30,000 violations issued since the Twin Parks fire are still marked “open” and unresolved despite the increase in alleged violations. Owners have corrected and “closed” another nearly 65,000 door violations in that period, according to the data.
Under a law passed in the wake of the 2022 fire, owners must correct self-closing door violations within 14 days or face daily fines of $250 until the doors are fixed. HPD must then revisit the building within 20 days to reinspect the doors.
Department spokesperson William Fowler said HPD is attempting to inspect every self-closing door violation to determine whether they have been corrected.
He…
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