The city shares responsibility for the recent acceleration of deterioration in these premises and immediate vicinity. The court takes judicial notice of abortive, scandulous and discarded urban land use planning and capital budget proposals in the 1950’s and 1960’s involving this building and two or three blocks east of Broadway. As a result an urban pocket of uncertainty and abandonment prevails in which the intervening tenants herein have had to endure uninhabitable housing.
The court also takes judicial notice of the varied racial, ethnic and economic mix in housing and commercial retail activities and the extensive stabilizing public and private facilities available in the surrounding neighborhood. Potentialities for housing preservation and development, protective of remaining tenants, have not been reasonably explored. The court is aware of massive city-wide housing needs and of pockets of poverty and housing decay within stabilized neighborhoods. Both must be addressed simultaneously. It is in this perspective the court approaches the instant proceeding.
The Legislature has conferred upon this court broad and flexible powers in seeking a feasible and constructive remedy and program for code enforcement under section 110 of the New York City Civil Court Act, regardless of whether or not the occupied building is owner abandoned.