New York Law Blog

In our ongoing series of posts surrounding topics that fall outside of our practice areas here at TGL, we’d like to point out the Department of Family Assistance. The DFA is split into two factions…the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the Office of Children and Family Services. Here is a breakdown of each and what they are responsible for:

The Office of  Temporary and Disability Assistance:

The Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) is responsible for supervising programs that provide assistance and support to eligible families and individuals.

OTDA’s functions include: Providing temporary cash assistance; providing assistance in paying for food; providing heating assistance; overseeing New York State’s child support enforcement program; determining certain aspects of eligibility for Social Security Disability benefits; supervising homeless housing and services programs; and providing assistance to certain immigrant populations.

The Office of Children and Family Services:

The New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) was formed on January 8, 1998 by merging the former State Division for Youth with the family and children’s programs administered by the former State Department of Social Services. The agency was created to improve the integration of services for New York’s children, youth, families and vulnerable populations and to promote their development and protect them from violence, neglect, abuse and abandonment. The Commissioner of OCFS is Gladys Carrión.

OCFS has numerous responsibilities including: foster care, adoption and adoption assistance, child protective services, preventive services for children and families, services for pregnant adolescents, child care and referral programs, and protective programs for vulnerable adults. OCFS is also responsible for the functions performed by the State Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped (CBVH), and coordinates state government response to the needs of Native Americans on reservations and in communities.

The agency operates 31 residential facilities, two reception centers, six community residential homes, and eight day-placement centers for juvenile delinquents and juvenile offenders placed in the custody of OCFS by family and criminal courts. OCFS works closely with municipalities such as the local social services districts and county youth bureaus to ensure that adequate youth development services and programs are available at the local level.

Programs within the OTDA include food stamps, home energy assistance, homeless housing, refugee and immigrant assistance, and temporary assistance. There are also various other forms of support services included such as child support enforcement and fair hearings.

The Office of Children and Family Services runs the gamut from adoption and child care assistance to protective services for adults. Any further forms or information that you may need on the topics can be found through each division’s website.

Many veterans of the Iraq war are finding themselves being misdiagnosed with a variety of ailments instead of the one they really have: some form of Traumatic Brain Injury. Also known as varying level of concussions, soldiers are being told they have varying forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder instead of being diagnosed with the debilitating brain injury they more than likely have. Along with the misdiagnosis comes the incorrect disability payment leaving some of these soldiers out in the cold when in fact they need help for the brain injuries they have suffered.

Mr. [Kevin, injured in a roadside bomb attack] Owsley is part of a growing tide of combat veterans who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussions, caused by powerful explosions. As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. About half the soldiers get better within hours, days or several months and require little if any medical assistance. But tens of thousands of others have longer-term problems that can include, to varying degrees, persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems and light sensitivity.

These symptoms, which may be subtle and may not surface for weeks or months after their return, are often debilitating enough to hobble lives and livelihoods.

To this day, some veterans — it is impossible to know how many — remain unscreened, their symptoms undiagnosed. Mild brain injury was widely overlooked by the military and the veterans health system until recently.

Mr. Owsley’s request for a Purple Heart, given to troops wounded or killed in action, was denied by the military, a devastating blow. Others say that their mild brain injury entitled them only to low disability payments, or, if the diagnosis was inconclusive, to none at all.

Army scientists are working on understanding brain injuries better so that they may diagnose any issues more easily, but it may be too little too late for soldiers who have suffered severe personal injury at the hands of bomb blasts in Iraq. Misdiagnosis is also leaving many veterans unable to work, pay their bills, and provide for their families. Veterans Affairs has now stepped in for better screening procedures for those going overseas as well as those coming home.

It was not until 2006, three years into the Iraq war, that the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs began to pay close attention to mild traumatic brain injuries. The Pentagon last year opened the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, a clearinghouse for treatment, training, prevention, research and education. This year it is spending a record $300 million on research for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We are more attuned to brain injuries now,” said Lt. Col. Michael Jaffee, the director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. “There has not been as aggressive an effort before.”

That effort begins with screening. As of May, service members who deploy longer than 30 days will undergo neurocognitive testing before leaving, to establish a baseline for changes that may occur later, and again upon returning. At the same time, soldiers in battle who lose consciousness or feel dazed after a blast or other event must be screened by a medical provider and are either approved for duty in the field, told to rest for several days on base or sent to Landstuhl for further evaluation.

And what to do if the military is neglecting some of these soldiers? Some are considering going to federal court over the issue.

One of the oldest Hollywood cliches revolves around New York City and organized crime. But did you know that there is a faction of the government in place to investigate any issues within the city government? The Department of Investigation, more commonly known as the DOI, is the only organization of it’s kind in existence in the United States.

A relatively small outfit compared to its larger crime-fighting brethren, the DOI’s mission is daunting: Keeping 300,000 city employees at scores of agencies honest as well as city-elected officials, boards, commissions, the school system and the housing authority.

The oft-overlooked agency was created more than a century ago in the wake of the Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall scandals that robbed taxpayers of millions of dollars and became synonymous with political corruption.

But the DOI, one of the nation’s oldest law enforcement agencies, has been making a forceful case of late that it’s not a relic of the past.

Here are just a few of the cases the Department of Investigation has been involved in:

•  The department investigated former NYPD police chief Bernard Kerik for mail fraud, wire fraud, alleging conspiracy and lying to the IRS. 
• Two deadly construction accidents involving cranes from earlier in the year. 
• A fire in the Deutsche Bank building in which two firefighters were killed. 
• Cities employees were found faking doctors notes to get sick pay, as well as faking city parking passes.
• Issues at the Administration for Children’s Services, when “inadequacies” in the system  aided in the death of 11 children.  

 Does the Department of Investigation get all of the credit it deserves for doing amazing work to keep New York City on the straight and narrow?

As much as Hearn tries to publicize DOI’s victories (for deterrent value as well as boosting morale), her efforts aren’t always remembered.

Recently, a local newspaper detailed a successful initiative at ACS to hire former police investigators to help caseworkers. The pairings worked. Children were being helped, plucked from potentially dangerous environments.

The article failed to mention who pushed for the hiring of these new investigators: Hearn’s DOI.

Are law enforcement officials in New York state ready communications wise should another disaster happen in the state that would require the resources of all agencies? According to a new audit of the emergency radio network in the state, the answer is no. M/A-Com was hired during the Pataki administration to oversee a $2 billion dollar radio network that would connect all law enforcement agencies together throughout the state. Trials of the network on more than one occasion have failed so miserably that the state is considering dropping the current contractor and starting all over again. Just how important is this project?

Early planning on the project, the Statewide Wireless Network, began more than a decade ago within the Division of State Police, but the inability of first responders to communicate with one another during the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001, intensified interest.

Thousands of police, fire and medical workers cannot use the state’s current system, and large areas of the state are unreachable.

Tests last September on the project’s first phase of installation found that words could not be understood and that communications between relay towers were too often lost. Those problems recurred during retests in April and July, the audit said.

Is the contractor 100% to blame though? According to Tyco Electronics, parent company to M/A-Com, they have performed as well as the state has allowed them to:

Sheri L. Woodruff, a spokeswoman for Tyco Electronics, said the company had met all its contractual obligations, and blamed the Office for Technology for the delays. She said the state had failed to issue site approvals until Dec. 20, 2006, after the deadline for completing the first phase had passed. That made it impossible, she said, for the company to begin acquiring land on time.

The state then added further complications by beginning the testing too soon and shortening the 36-week testing cycle called for in the contract, Ms. Woodruff said.

She said Mr. DiNapoli’s characterization of progress on the system was “misleading and inaccurate,” and added that testing was part of the process of getting the system up and running. The first phase, which includes installations at 38 sites, was nearly complete, she said.

One thing everyone can probably agree on is that this is a project that is of the utmost importance for the state of New York. Law enforcement agencies need the ability to communicate with one another, especially at the time when they are all needed at a moment’s notice to work together. And at this moment, it looks like law enforcement is not receiving all of the help they need to do their jobs properly.

Daniel M. De Federicis, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers, said he was disappointed that the project was stuck in the first phase while troopers were “saddled with a patched-up radio system” that did not function in many remote areas.

“That is of great concern to us, since they need to know that another fellow trooper, law enforcement officer or dispatcher will answer their calls for assistance in times of emergency,” Mr. De Federicis said.

The state has set a deadline of August 29 to make a decision to stick with M/A-Com or move on to another radio contractor.

Sad news this week in Brooklyn where a five year old boy fell ten stories to his death through an elevator shaft in South Williamsburg. Residents of this particular building have made many complaints to the New York City Housing Authority regarding the elevator bank which was due for inspections in April of this year, but upon investigation seems to have not been inspected since October 2007. City law states that elevators are to be inspected once every six months, but the investigation into the accident clearly shows that this particular elevator hadn’t been inspected in over nine months.

Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said it was too early to say which city agencies, if any, would be investigated. He said the first step would be to obtain safety and elevator inspections records to determine who was responsible. “We have officially begun an investigation through our rackets division to determine if there is any criminality involved or laws were broken,” he said.

A housing authority spokesman, Howard Marder, said on Wednesday that the district attorney’s office had served subpoenas on the authority. He also said the authority’s chairman, Tino Hernandez, asked the city’s inspector general to participate in a joint investigation by the authority, the Police Department and the Department of Buildings to determine the cause of the accident.

The death of Jacob Neuman brings to light an issue that many believe should’ve been addressed earlier according to some. Are federal cutbacks to blame for such a horrible tragedy?

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, said in a statement on Wednesday that elevator problems were among the major complaints that he received from housing authority residents in Manhattan. “Yesterday’s tragedy should be a wake-up call for the New York City Housing Authority,” he said.

Although the elevators in Jacob’s building were due to be modernized in 2004, the authority said it deferred the work twice because of federal cutbacks. Authority officials said the 17 unsatisfactory ratings the elevators received in the last 21 inspections were mostly for minor problems like broken light bulbs, but officials have failed to provide detailed inspection records to reporters. Officials had said through most of Tuesday and Wednesday that they were unable to find them. But late Wednesday, Mr. Marder said the subpoenas prohibited them from turning them over.

Following up last week’s post on “never events” in regards to medical malpractice, here is the list of “28 errors that should never happen” from the National Quality Forum. The NPQ is a nonprofit health care safety agency, and this list represents “never events”, or avoidable errors.

1. Surgery on the wrong body part.
2. Surgery on the wrong patient.
3. Wrong surgical procedure performed on a patient.
4. Object left in patient after surgery.
5. Death of patient who had been generally healthy during or immediately after surgery for a localized problem.
6. Patient death or serious disability associated with the use of contaminated drugs, devices or biologics.
7. Patient death or serious disability associated with the misuse or malfunction of a device.
8. Patient death or serious disability associated with intravascular air embolism.
9. Infant discharged to wrong person.
10. Patient death or serious disability associated with patient disappearing for more than four hours.
11. Patient suicide or attempted suicide resulting in serious disability.
12. Patient death or serious disability associated with a medication error.
13. Patient death or serious disability associated with transfusion of blood or blood product of the wrong type.
14. Maternal death or serious disability associated with labor or delivery in a low-risk pregnancy.
15. Patient death or serious disability associated with the onset of hypoglycemia, a drop in blood sugar.
16. Death or serious disability associated with failure to identify and treat hyperbilirubinemia, a blood abnormality, in newborns.
17. Severe pressure ulcers acquired in the hospital.
18. Patient death or serious disability due to spinal manipulative therapy.
19. Patient death or serious disability associated with an electric shock.
20. Any incident in which a line designated for oxygen or other gas to be delivered to a patient contains the wrong gas or is contaminated by toxic substances.
21. Patient death or serious disability associated with a burn in the hospital.
22. Patient death associated with a fall suffered in the hospital.
23. Patient death or serious disability associated with the use of restraints or bedrails.
24. Any instance of care ordered by or provided by someone impersonating a physician, nurse, pharmacist or other licensed healthcare provider.
25. Abduction of a patient.
26. Sexual assault on a patient.
27. Death or significant injury of a patient or staff member resulting from a physical assault in the hospital.
28. Artificial insemination with the wrong donor sperm or donor egg.

Last week, senior TGL partner Jeffrey Lichtman was a guest on CNBC’s "Street Fight" speaking on the topic of websites that assist people in finding a lawyer. Here is the full transcript of the segment:

Mark Haines: People turning to the internet for all kinds of matches these days, even lawyers are getting in on the action. Time Magazine recently profiled a new website WhoCanISue.com set to launch next month to help people determine if they have a case, and even though that rarely stops them, and to hook them up with an attorney. Are sites like this making people more litigious? Should corporate America be worried? We have a Street Fight. Jeffrey Lichtman, plaintiff attorney at Trolman, Glaser and Lichtman, also the former president of the New York state trial lawyers association and Susan Dwyer, partner with Herrick, Feinstein joins us as well. Susan I’ll start with you. In the notes here, I was struck by this sentence: “Anytime you want to focus people on who can we blame as opposed to what happened that’s bad.” Who can we blame is the name of the game isn’t it though for lawyers?

Ms. Dwyer: It’s the name of the game unfortunately, if the big question is ‘should corporate America be worried?’ I think the answer is ‘all of America should be worried.’ If you have a legal system that is creating claims, finding ways to make a claim so that there has to be a response by a company in litigation, that drives up the cost of goods, it clogs the courthouses and denies access to legitimate claims and keeps the country from being able to compete in a global economy.

Mr Haines: And I’m sure Jeffery you agree.

Mr. Lichtman: Oh definitely. The constant refrain about how we’re supposed to be protecting corporate America from itself always amazes me. Really all we’re talking about here with a website is an opportunity for consumers to get information and possibly access if they’ve been injured i guess if we’re talking about personal injury and that’s germane to me because I represent people who have been seriously hurt in accidents. But the idea that we have something to fear that America should be afraid of its ability to compete in the global economy because someone is giving access…

Ms. Dwyer: The number one cost for corporate America though is tort. Frivolous lawsuits.

Mr. Lichtman: You have statistics to suggest that is true? I haven’t seen anything to suggest that.

Ms. Dwyer: Well a lot of wall street strategists do  believe that is true. They say that the cost of the system fighting litigation is some of which is merited, but a lot of which is not, is hampering competitiveness in this country.

Mr. Lichtman: It’s an argument that has been tried so many times, it fails, it’s not accurate, it’s not true. As a matter of fact, they talked about frivolous litigation back when plaintiff lawyers decided it was time for tobacco to own up to the fact that they were promoting a drug that was killing people. And if you’ll all recall back to the New York Times front page when they all stood up and said ‘we swear to tell the truth’ that tobacco isn’t killing people it’s just, can’t buy it. The idea that people can get information and get access to get help, that’s important.

Ms. Dwyer: You have to have to look at this like the gimmick that it is. People have lots of ways for people to get hooked up with lawyers who can represent them, and they should have access to the courts when they have legitimate claims. But when the premise of the website is, and by the way they can’t even get the english usage right, it should be whom can I sue and not who can I sue, you have to watch out that these guys are going to be the watchdogs for corporate america and keep them on the straight and narrow? No, this is about and by the way the advance for this website is that you’re going to answer five to ten questions it’ll take you two to three minutes and while you’re answering the questions, five ads from lawyers who have paid to have their ads flash in front of you are going to come up, and when you’ve hit the last question, boom, you can go to the lawyer that  paid the most for that practice area. That’s no way to determine do you have a legitimate claim. What kind of lawyer would ask ten questions and take on a lawsuit. It’s about shaking the trees, and signing up clients.

Erin Burnett: She’s got a fair point Jeffrey.

Mr. Lichtman: Susan, is that a fair point? The idea that an individual can go onto the computer, and have several questions answered and from that link get to a lawyer who is prepared to answer questions and give advice, I think that is pretty amazing in our society. What makes you think that just because someone is sitting back in their house or their apartment who’s had i guess we’re talking about accidents here, who is hurt, is necessarily going to have a claim? The whole concept of frivolous when it comes to these claims is silly. Lawyers, although we do good and we do a lot of good, we’re not in it as philanthropists, and lawyers aren’t taking on cases that are frivolous. The idea, as I sit here in the stock exchange, is to make money.

Mr. Haines: You instantly got Susan and me to twitch when you said that. But that leads me to a point though Susan. Isn’t part of the problem, to broaden out the discussion a little bit, isn’t part of the problem that the courts and the judges are very reluctant to use the tools already at their disposal to quash frivolous suits?

Ms. Dwyer: Very reluctant and if you look at the model of medical malpractice that is where we did something, we did something right. I think you’d have to agree Mr. Lichtman. That you no longer risk take frivolous medical malpractice cases that cost a lot of money for you to pursue and take a lot of your time. We’ve put in place tort reform, med malpractice reform in order to get to the step of bringing on a lawsuit you have to be vetted,  it isn’t two to five questions in three minutes, you have to satisfy a panel of experts that you have a viable claim. That’s what we need in this country. If we’re gonna have litigants who can find lawyers this way, we need some way to curb their ability to bring suits that just clog up the courthouse.

Ms. Burnett: Like the McDonalds coffee suit Jeff, the famous McDonalds coffee suit.

Mr. Lichtman: You know every time a lady says to me the McDonalds coffee suit no one understands just how seriously that woman’s private pars were damaged, seriously damaged and everyone wants to say McDonalds coffee…

Ms. Dwyer: But who’s fault was it? The question is who’s fault was it?

Mr. Lichtman: It was McDonalds fault. They were overheating their coffee they paid damages, what was it now Mark you’ll tell me? Less than what they make in coffee in a day. It’s a silly thing to bring up and it’s not fair.

Ms. Dwyer: But she put the coffee between her legs!

Mr. Lichtman: Oh please.

Mr. Haines: Our thanks to Jeff Lichtman and Susan Dwyer Thank you very much for joining us.

With the outbreak of fatal construction accidents across New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has chosen someone to fill the post of buildings commissioner after City Council downgraded the qualifications for the position. The New York Times had a brief write up on the new appointee, and since this is such a critical issue at this time in the city, I thought I’d highlight the entire article here.

Less than 24 hours after the City Council approved a bill downgrading the qualification requirements for buildings commissioner, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Friday that he intended to appoint Robert D. LiMandri to the post.

The mayor said that Mr. LiMandri, a 19-year veteran of the real estate industry and the acting buildings commissioner since April, would modernize the department, oversee an expanded cadre of inspectors and crack down on safety violations plaguing the city’s construction sites.

“Bob LiMandri is innovative, tough, and without any doubt, the most qualified person to lead the New York City Department of Buildings into a new era,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

The mayor will formally appoint Mr. LiMandri after he signs the bill changing the requirements for the job. But professional societies of architects and engineers bitterly opposed the dilution of qualifications and may yet bring a suit to block the changes.

“We regret that an issue regarding public safety was treated in such a cavalier fashion,” said Fredric Bell, executive director of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Since 1968, city law has required that the buildings commissioner be a licensed architect or engineer. But Mayor Bloomberg insisted that he needed more flexibility to find someone who was both a talented manager and familiar with technical issues.

The new legislation requires that either the commissioner or first deputy commissioner be licensed. Mr. LiMandri has an engineering degree but no license.

The professional societies said that they had no quarrel with Mr. LiMandri, but that architects and engineers who went through the arduous licensing process necessarily acquired a comprehensive understanding of zoning codes and building practices.

Is this the right appointment by Mayor Bloomberg? Or will construction accidents still be a problem in New York City?

Are doctors prescribing certain narcotics without fully understanding them? As popular pain medication OxyContin became too expensive for insurance companies to pay for, doctors turned to Methadone, which was previously used to rehab heroin addicts. For some it is working, for others it leads to death. Many doctors are not familiar with the drug, and are prescribing it in too high of a dose, as well as not advising their patients on how to properly use the drug.

A synthetic form of opium, it is cheap and long lasting, a powerful pain reliever that has helped millions. But because it is also abused by thrill seekers and badly prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with its risks, methadone is now the fastest growing cause of narcotic deaths. It is implicated in more than twice as many deaths as heroin, and is rivaling or surpassing the tolls of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.

“This is a wonderful medicine used appropriately, but an unforgiving medicine used inappropriately,” said Dr. Howard A. Heit, a pain specialist at Georgetown University. “Many legitimate patients, following the direction of the doctor, have run into trouble with methadone, including death.”

Issues with this particular drug run deep, especially with the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA actually had the drug listed in “dangerously high dosages” within Methadone packaging until the last quarter of 2006. It took an increase in deaths for the FDA to examine the recommended doses in drug packaging, and now the organization is considering calling for doctors who are going to prescribe the drug to take a special class on the matter to prevent errors and medical malpractice issues.

Tony Davis, a contractor in Victorville, Calif., had just turned 38 in 2004 when, after years of migraines and back pain, he saw a new pain doctor in his Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. The doctor, who had already given him the sedative Xanax, prescribed methadone because of his continued pain.

The second day on the two medications, Mr. Davis said, “I’m feeling really weird,’ ” recalled his wife, Pebbles Davis. The two lay down for a nap and when she woke up, her husband was dead.

Ms. Davis recalled that the coroner had told her, “Given the medicines he was on, his brain forgot to tell his heart to beat and his lungs to pump.” The case went to an arbitrator, who ruled that although Mr. Davis had overused his drugs in the past, the doctor had failed to warn him about the new risks of starting methadone together with Xanax and that the care was substandard. Ms. Davis was awarded more than $500,000. “I never had any idea of the risk nor did my husband,” she said.

The drug may be misunderstood, with the general population believing that any narcotic death would be attributed to patient misuse, but that may indeed not be the case:

As early as 2003, alarmed by the rise in methadone-related deaths, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration made an urgent call for more systematic and detailed state and national reporting about opioid deaths — a call that still goes unanswered.

Misuse by abusers was first seen as the problem, but now, said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment of SAMHSA, “We know that a significant share of the methadone deaths involve doctors making well-intended prescriptions.”

To see a video story on this subject, visit the New York Times video section.

Many apartment buildings in New York City are in violation of the Fair Housing Act, and now the federal government is taking notice. After inspection of certain properties around the city, the federal prosecutor’s office found that many doors were not wide enough, there was issues with size in also both kitchen and bathrooms, and that mandatory bars that were needed in bathtubs could not be installed because of poor wall construction. Many in the real estate sector of the city thought the issue would go away, but roughly twelve landlords and architects received letters from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan to inform them that their buildings were not compliant with disability laws.

Last week, the United States attorney’s office filed a lawsuit against one of the recipients, AvalonBay Communities, and its architects, charging them with discrimination against disabled people by failing to provide sufficient access at Avalon Chrystie Place, a building on the Lower East Side with 361 apartments.

Now other landlords and developers — virtually everyone who has built an apartment house in New York City since 1991 — fear they may be next. Along with city officials, they assert that compliance with what is known as Local Law 58 satisfies the standards set by the Fair Housing Act.

“This is not limited to these 12 or 13 buildings,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry’s powerful lobbying arm. “If there’s a decision that Local Law 58 does not meet the criteria for apartments’ being accessible, you could easily argue that every building built since 1991 wasn’t built in accordance with the federal guidelines.”

Estimates would put the number of apartments built since 1991 at roughly 100,000 meaning that they would all have to be renovated to comply with federal regulations. But do these buildings really not comply with federal standards? Some landlords and architects believe that New York City Local Law 58 actually does meet federal standards when it comes to disability issues.

Edward M. Schulman, general counsel for AvalonBay, said the company’s housing was “fully accessible to persons with disabilities.”

“Our buildings have been constructed in compliance with New York City’s Local Law 58,” he said. “We are at a loss to understand why the federal government is suddenly viewing New York City’s Local Law 58 as deficient and unsatisfactory.”

When a few buildings were recently inspected to see if they met Fair Housing laws, it was found that actually non of them did comply.

The federal investigation in New York began with a 2006 survey by the Fair Housing Justice Center, a nonprofit New York group, covering 14 recently built apartment buildings in Manhattan, including AvalonBay’s Chrystie Place.

Diane Houk, executive director of the fair housing center, said that her group found that all 14 buildings had interior apartment doors that were too narrow, 28 and 30 inches, thermostats as high as 63 inches from the floor and a lack of clear floor space in the bathrooms.

“We found that none were in compliance with the Federal Housing Act and referred all the information to the U.S. attorney and briefed HUD,” she said. “I do not understand why New York City developers and architects thought they were exempt.”