1. NYC Dep't of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD): IT Proposal IT Solutions to Improve Productivity Chris Simi December 8, 2011 UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy PP 290: IT and Public Policy

2. About HPD Approximately 2,500 employees spread among several major divisions: Development: finances new construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing units Enforcement: enforces NYC Housing Maintenance Code Legal: provides legal support for Development, litigates Housing Code violations Asset Management: oversees continuing affordability of HPD- financed units Architecture and Engineering: approves plans, performs construction monitoring and inspections of HPD-financed work In the process of implementing Mayor Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace Plan, a 14-year program to build or rehabilitate 165,000 units of affordable housing.

3. 3 Phases of a Project Financing put togetherConstruction permits pulledProject transferred to Asset Management division Sponsor and property review Construction monitoringOngoing oversight of building, rent roll, tenant selection, etc. Plans reviewed, modified, and approved Final inspectionsProject eventually decouples from City's regulatory agreement Required City Council/Mayoral approvals obtained Conversion Legal documents drafted Pre-ClosingRegulatory Period Construction/ Rehabilitation Completion

4. REVIEW PROCESS Dep't of Finance Dep't of Buildings Assessor's Office Dep't of Environmental Protection Production Tracking Databases Legal Lexis Nexis GIS Unit Asset Management

9. Property Taxes and Water/Sewer Charges

10. Assessor's Office

11. Simplify Things (But Don't Reinvent the Wheel) CMS Dep't of Finance Dep't of Buildings Assessor's Office Dep't of Environmental Protection INTERNAL Production Tracking Databases Legal Lexis Nexis EXTERNAL GIS Unit Asset Management Report

12. How It Would Work Create an Application Programming Interface (API) to fetch data from the various data sources. Easily implemented because every property in New York City is uniquely identifiable by its borough/block/lot (BBL) number. There are some complications here Direct the API to feed results into a user-friendly MYSQL database report.

13. Benefits Efficiency! Less staff and resources devoted to creating new databases Project managers would spend less time tracking down the various pieces of data; would also reduce human error in manual searches No need for people to learn a new database; they would keep using the ones they are used to. Each element of the script would be fairly easy to modify or add to going forward Open source nature of software means no need to rely on companies that could go bankrupt or individuals who may leave the agency Create a coherent report giving an overall summary of a property's status Troubling issues could be further investigated by following up with the original source Elegant: doesn't create any new, redundant data