New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) reached a settlement agreement with a building owner to correct 42 lead-based paint violations in two of his buildings in the Bronx.
After months of litigation, Ved Parkash agreed to pay $60,000 in civil penalties and correct violations under Local Law 1 of 2004 (LL1), New York City’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act. Parkash has already made significant progress in addressing the lead-related conditions and HPD continues to monitor compliance with the settlement for these buildings.
“We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, there is no safe level of lead exposure in children. HPD has been working with property owners to make sure they understand and comply with their responsibilities under the expanded law, and cracking down when they do not, as in this latest case,” said HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll. “As a part of LeadFreeNYC, HPD is committed to keeping children safe from lead through enhanced enforcement, education, and resources for property owners to make good on their obligations.”
In the past fiscal year, even with Housing Court limited in its capacity, HPD has continued to initiate cases seeking correction of lead-based violations and compelling owners to complete work to comply with turnover requirements under LL1. The buildings subject to this Order to Correct are:
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- 1585 White Plains Road: 12 lead-based violations in 10 units
- 58 E. 190 St.: 9 lead-based violations in 7 units
The owner has until Aug. 29 to correct the conditions and a provision in the order allows HPD to bring the cases back for additional civil penalties if the violations are not corrected in time.
The majority of violations were issued based on HPD’s proactive audit of the buildings, which found that the owner failed to maintain records related to lead-based activities in the building; specifically, 42 of the violations were issued in apartments for which the owner failed to keep records about lead-based paint inspections and abatement on turnover.
Additional building-wide violations were issued for failure to maintain records specifically related to annual inspections and investigations and for failure to maintain all other records required under Local Law 1. Although some of these record keeping violations cannot be corrected for past periods, the owner will be under order to maintain these records going forward and HPD will require submission for the next year. HPD also required correction of any and all open lead-based paint hazard violations, which would be issued in apartments where a child under six resides and there is peeling paint that has not been proven to be lead free.
