Meet some of Staten Island's 'painted ladies'
Staten Island has New York City's highest-quality housing stock, according to a new report by City Comptroller Scott Stringer. (Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry)
CITY HALL -- Staten Island has New York City's highest-quality housing stock, according to a new report.
The borough boasts the lowest rates of deficiency for market-rate rental, rent-regulated and public housing apartments, as well as owner-occupied dwellings, an analysis from City Comptroller Scott Stringer found.
The report, to be released on Monday, uses 2002 to 2011 data from a survey by the U.S. Census and the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The triennial Housing and Vacancy Survey, mainly used for determining if a housing emergency exists, also records the physical condition of the city's housing supply.
The survey found 2.5 percent of market-rate rentals and 11.8 percent of rent-regulated units on Staten Island had more than three maintenance deficiencies in 2011, according to Stringer's report. Nearly three-quarters of market-rate rentals and almost two-thirds of rent-regulated units had no deficiencies at all that year.
In 2011, owner-occupied dwellings in the borough had a similarly low deficiency rate of 2.5 percent.
Out of all housing types citywide, 99.8 percent were structurally decent in 2011, according to the report. But that same year, nearly one-quarter of all households reported seeing evidence of rodents within three months.
"While much of New York City's housing stock remains in good condition and asset values have increased, significant pockets of our City's housing are deteriorating," Stringer said in a statement. "We still have much work to do to ensure that every New Yorker has a safe place to call home."
CONDITIONS AT NYCHA
Chief among Stringer's concerns is the New York City Housing Authority, which has roughly 178,000 apartments in 334 developments. Citywide conditions at NYCHA, his office said, are "rapidly deteriorating."
In 2011, 34.8 percent of public housing units were considered deficient, according to the analysis.
Staten Island NYCHA units had a deficiency rate of 9.1 percent. There are 10 NYCHA developments with 4,499 apartments on Staten Island -- the lowest number in all boroughs.
A NYCHA spokeswoman said the report, based on years-old data, echoed previous calls from Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration.
"This Administration has provided more support for NYCHA than any other in decades," the spokeswoman said.
There were roughly 219,680 open NYCHA work orders in June 2013, according to citywide figures. This June, there were about 81,490.
On Staten Island, the number of open work orders decreased during the same time from some 3,850 to 1,890.
STATEN ISLAND RENTAL HOUSING
Stringer said the report shows the disparities -- between boroughs and neighborhoods -- in how New Yorkers live.
The analysis found Staten Island has some of the best-maintained rental housing.
Of 55 city neighborhoods examined in the report, the South Shore had the lowest rental housing deficiency rates, with an average 0.23 deficiencies per unit, according to the comptroller's office. Mid-Island followed a close second with an average 0.34 deficiencies per rental unit.
The North Shore, with an average 0.68 deficiencies per rental, ranked seventh-best in the city.
All three sections of the Island had lower average rental deficiency rates than in Tribeca, the West Village and the Upper East Side of Manhattan -- some of the city's richest neighborhoods.
The comptroller's office didn't explain the borough's overall good standing compared with other parts of the city.
"A number of factors likely contributed to Staten Island's lower rate of deficiencies, but our analysis focused on the data collected by HPD and the U.S. Census," spokesman Eric Sumberg said.