Jan. 7, 2026 — Every mayoral administration I can think of comes into office explaining how it will do better than its predecessors in achieving inter-agency coordination. Among the low-hanging fruit for the Mamdani administration is a problem of civil rights law enforcement that has lingered for more than 30 years. The Department of Buildings (DOB) and the Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) need to be recruited to be additional eyes for Commission on Human Rights and for in-court Human Rights Law enforcement, and the Department of Transportation (DOT) needs to be recruited to stop acting as a barrier to accessibility and to begin acting more as a facilitator of accessibility.
Second-class citizens
Go down any street in any neighborhood in New York City – rich or poor, residential or commercial, dominated by any racial, ethnic, or religious group – and imagine that you are using a wheelchair (if you aren’t already), or that your mobility impairment makes it difficult to navigate steps. You are frequently out of luck when it comes to being able to access apartments, stores, and office buildings on equal terms as those enjoyed by people without disabilities.
Forget the American With Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The shame of it locally is that the comprehensive revisions to New York City’s own Human Rights law became the strongest law in the country in this regard all the way back in 1991. (Disclosure: I was a principal author of those revisions.)
So, housing providers, employers, and operators of every sort of public accommodation have had more than 30 years to comply. Many still have not.
Unlike the FHA, which only requires a housing provider to permit the occupant or prospective occupant to make a pro-accessibility modification, part of the housing provider’s default obligation under the City Human Rights Law is to make and pay for the modification. The most typical common-area modifications are ramp and lifts.
(Unlike the ADA — and contrary to the myth spread by owners and operators of public accommodations, including office buildings, a myth never effectively countered by the City Human Right Commission — older buildings are not “grandfathered in” under the City Human Rights Law; all buildings are subject to the local law.)
But complying is too burdensome!
Probably even before this column is read fully, the right-wing hysteria machine will be fired up: A flood of litigation! The costs will be crushingly high! Business-killing regulation! (Depressingly, there are supposedly progressive local pols who sound very similar.)
Back on earth, two basic facts need to be borne in mind. First, 35 years on, you should have already complied. Laws are supposed to be enforced. Second, the City Human Rights Law has a built-in safety valve. Anyone charged with a violation can demonstrate (with evidence, not shouting) that making a modification would cause an undue hardship. Or that paying for a modification would cause an undue hardship. Or both.
The enforcement problem
The Human Rights Commission has had its capacity profoundly limited by inadequate staffing. From peak city-funded staffing levels in the Dinkins administration to the depths of the Bloomberg administration, there was something like a 90 percent cut in city-funded personnel. Staffing did improve from its low point during the de Blasio and Adams administrations, but the agency remains underfunded.
Part of what this means is that the agency has not been able in a serious and comprehensive way to do the work of affirmatively going out and about in the city, identifying unlawful inaccessibility and then prosecuting violations.
The opportunity
Just today, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of Legal Service’s Christine Clarke as the new head of the Human Rights Commission, adding in his speech that, “I do think housing is one of the most critical examples, however, because what we’ve seen is a lack of interest in prior administrations in the question of following through on this kind of discrimination… . The important thing is not just to resolve the cases in front of us but to also make clear to all New Yorkers that we will not tolerate violations of the law… .”
So, it is an opportune moment to begin to do better.
DOB routinely sends out inspectors. HPD also has inspectors to look into claims of violations of the Housing Maintenance Code. Just a week ago, DOB announced the winners of its “Building Accessibility Innovation Challenge,” one who whom called for “building access reports,” at least for commercial spaces.
It would be easy for both DOB and HPD to add to the inspection checklist the question of whether the main entrance to a building is or is not accessible and to flag apparent violations for the Human Rights Commission and the public. This does not involve additional inspections; it would simply involve the inspector posing to himself or herself an additional question, the apparent or preliminary answer to which will be obvious.
What about DOT? That agency sometimes stands in the way of the installation of a needed ramp or lift because of hyper-technical insistence on the extent to which such modifications intrude onto the sidewalk or similar issues. With a different mindset, it could be posing the question, “How can we protect public safety and facilitate greater accessibility?”
Part of the payoff here depends on greater funding for the Human Rights Commission and a renewed sense of civil rights mission. For many years now, far too much emphasis has been on serving specific “stakeholders,” assessing that some groups “particularly” or “especially” need to be protected, and eschewing the litigation pathway that leads to meaningful penalties, and far too little emphasis has been placed on the “old” civil rights idea that everyone’s rights should be protected and that the Human Rights Law is not an exception to the principle that law enforcement needs to create deterrence.
(The concerning moment in the Mamdani speech was the disclaimer, responding to a question about “small business,” of seeking to penaliz, instead focusing on “compliance,” as though that were a separate issue. Without penalties, a general deterrent is not created. Covered entities realize that, in such an environment, continued non-compliance makes a perverse kind of sense: either they will continue to get away with conduct violating the Human Rights Law, or, after getting caught, they may ultimately have to do no more than what they were obligated to do years or decades ago. There is a very similar dynamic at play with discrimination of the basis of lawful source of income, like Section 8 or other housing subsidy: though the law provides for it, no effective deterrent has yet been carried out in practice.)
One hopes that the Human Rights Commission will be reinvigorated. But, even if it is not, the work of the sister agencies would be important. Victims of discrimination. as well as fair housing organizations like the Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC) can bypass the administrative process entirely and go to court. Having apparent violations flagged and on record could usefully help focus and support litigation efforts.
Crazy new idea? No. Section 906 of the City Charter, incorporating in 2018 provisions of the Human Rights Law that had existed for many decades, already provides that, “So far as practicable and subject to the approval of the mayor, the services of all other city departments and agencies shall be made available by their respective heads to the commission for the carrying out of the functions of the Human Rights Commission.” Let’s finally do it.