Happy Friday, Bushwick!
Welcome to our newest series: Bushwick Fun Facts. In this Friday roundup, we’re bringing you stories about the neighborhood that we dig up through publicly available data.
This week, we’re looking at housing violations. Bushwick ranks 13th for poorest housing quality in all of New York City. According to public records, 73 percent of buildings have at least one maintenance defect. The rate in Brooklyn is 62 percent and the rate in NYC overall is 59 percent.
So, are there particular buildings with more problems than others?
Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. Most buildings that have already been hit with a housing violation in 2018 just have one; but, the buildings that account for the most violations have many, many more.
The three buildings with the most open violations are 1231 Broadway with 131; 414 Melrose Street with 70; and 363 Knickerbocker Avenue with 63. Both the Broadway and Melrose buildings have been issued an order by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, but as yet, 363 Knickerbocker Ave. had not.
In January, The Village Voice reported that the landlords at 1231 Broadway, brothers Hanny Chum Chang and Chen Ting Chang, had been harassing tenants in an effort to force them out and replace them with higher-paying newcomers.
Mercy Holdings LLC is the corporate owner at 414 Melrose and Singhs Realty LLC owns 363 Knickerbocker Ave., according to RealDirect and Property Shark respectively.
Bushwick is no stranger to housing woes: It’s the community district with the fifth-highest number of housing violations in Brooklyn. Last year, we wrote about 48 Jefferson St., a small building at the corner of Jefferson and Stanwix that accounted for the most 311 complaints in all of Brooklyn.
So that’s your Bushwick Fun Fact of the week. Have a question about the neighborhood that you want us to try and answer using data? Leave a comment below!
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Cover image courtesy of Ben White