Staff shortages at DOB and DOI call into question the safety of 1.1 million buildings in New York City

The Flatbush building collapse and a litany of other dangerous building problems in New York City over the last several years have occurred at a time of critical staffing shortages that started during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not been rectified.

The staffing shortages are not only at the Department of Buildings but also at the Department of Investigation. And since we're talking about an agency that has had chronic corruption problems for over a century, the staff shortages go hand in hand in making it more difficult to guarantee that the more than 1 million buildings in the five boroughs are safe and secure.

City Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez, chair of the Housing Committee, spoke Thursday about the fact that the agency overseeing approximately 1.1 million buildings and 44,000 active construction sites is woefully understaffed.

"They are absolutely doing more with fewer people and it's troubling because they're the ones that are responsible for keeping construction sites safe," Sanchez said.

According to the city comptroller's dashboard, the agency has 168 vacancies, more than 9% of its budgeted headcount, and shortages, Sanchez said, can lead to things being missed or overlooked or simply not done.

"What we have seen yesterday is a site that is exactly what the City Council has been asking DOB to focus on. It's a site where the developer had a history of non-compliance, a history of dangerous construction. That should have been a place that was getting a lot of attention from the Department of Buildings," Sanchez said.

A DOB spokesperson told CBS News New York staffing has been a top priority of the agency and in the last two months, 63 hires have been made.

Those hires, he said, have reduced the vacancy rate among inspectors by 50%

There's another agency, the Department of Investigation, dealing with staffing shortages that also play into the ability of the city to guarantee that buildings are safe. The DOI has 272 vacancies, according to the comptroller's office, and that makes it more difficult to make sure that employees of an agency with a history of corruption problems are not succumbing to temptation.

"When people feel like the heat is off and there isn't as much inspection, there isn't as much oversight going on, that's when corruption can blossom," said Mark Peters, a former DOI commissioner, "and we know from some of the corruption investigations we did when I was commissioner that a lot ... sometimes that corruption threatens public safety in a very real way."

Recent structural problems suggest he's right.

For example, when the corner of an apartment building in the Bronx seared off in 2023, an investigation found that contractors removed bricks from a load-bearing pier, there were false safety filings, and the licensed engineer responsible for facade inspections had a history of severe regulatory lapses.

"We have to make sure the Department of Investigation is able to do its work to probe into the Department of Buildings, and we also need to make sure that inside of the Department of Buildings they are set up to catch weird, you know, anomalies when they happen," Sanchez said..