Who is my landlord and what has he done
As the Village Voice and CurbedNY reported, a team of consumer-minded Internet "hacks" has launched "Who is my landlord?," a site designed to let tenants easily identify their landlord (not as easy it sounds, especially when dealing with a slumlord) and look up Department of Buildings violations all in one spot. (Tip: You have to click on the tiny blue Department of Buildings link under the violations tally to see the nature of the violations.)
So far, the site-in-progress has indexed 798 buildings. It's a great idea, and we look forward to seeing it grow. To make it even more useful, we hope they'll also start pulling violation and complaint information from the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) database. That's where complaints about heat, hot water and bed bugs reside, whereas the Department of Buildings violations tend to be more structurally-related.
(Whoismylandlord.org; CurbedNY.com; VillageVoice.com)