Objective

To determine whether the New York City Commission on Human Rights reviewed and addressed housing discrimination complaints timely and in accordance with its policies and procedures and the related laws. Our audit covered the period from July 2019 through March 2025.

About the Program

The New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is charged with enforcing the New York City Human Rights Law (HRL). The HRL prohibits discrimination in housing based on age, race, lawful source of income, familial status, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, military status, and other protected classes. The HRL also prohibits discrimination in leasing and sales, including in advertisements and interviews, mortgages, loans, or conditions aimed to steer people toward or away from certain neighborhoods.

CCHR enforces the HRL through law enforcement, community outreach, and media, as well as legislative and policy work. Its Law Enforcement Bureau (LEB) is responsible for the intake and investigation of housing discrimination cases. Complaints alleging discrimination come to CCHR from various sources, including individual members of the public, community-based organizations, attorneys on behalf of individuals, and elected officials. CCHR can also initiate its own (Commission-initiated) investigations. CCHR refers to incoming complaints alleging discrimination as “inquiries.” Inquiries are submitted to CCHR via mail, email, telephone call (including those coming through NYC311), voicemail, CCHR’s online web form, or in person. After initial discussions with the inquirer, CCHR staff will offer an intake appointment, during which CCHR will collect and review the inquirer’s evidence, confirm key dates, identify relevant parties, and determine if a complaint can be filed by CCHR. A copy of the complaint, as drafted by CCHR, is shared with the inquirer to be confirmed and signed, thereby turning the inquiry into a complaint.

In August 2017, CCHR implemented an electronic case management system—Dynamics—where all inquiries should be entered. Dynamics assigns each inquiry a unique system-generated number. Dynamics should also contain all case documentation, such as case participant information, type of discrimination, key dates (e.g., date of alleged discrimination), and case status. CCHR personnel also retain certain case-related records in OneDrive and SharePoint.

According to CCHR’s case records, from July 1, 2019 through July 31, 2024, CCHR received 51,702 housing discrimination inquiries. Of these, 48,443 (93.7%) were recorded as resolved, 1,831 (3.5%) were active, and 1,428 (2.8%) had been canceled. According to Dynamics, as of July 31, 2024, 474 of these inquiries had been filed as complaints.

Key Findings

• CCHR does not adequately monitor the handling of housing discrimination inquiries and complaints and has not developed adequate policies or benchmarks to ensure inquiries and complaints are reviewed and investigated timely. Agency records reveal substantial delays. For our sample of 29 inquiries submitted to or initiated by CCHR during the period July 1, 2019 through July 31, 2024, determinations¹ averaged more than 2 years after complaints were filed, five cases were closed for administrative convenience after 3-plus years, and for the 18 inquiries where the submission date was documented, decisions took over 3 years on average—including one that lingered for more than 7 years. Among the factors that contributed to these delays:
  ▪ Officials did not ensure that staff reviewed and responded to inquirers within 14 days of receiving notification of a housing discrimination allegation. For a sample of 46 inquiries, CCHR staff entered inquiry dates and the date when staff attempted to contact the inquirer for only 25, and for 12 of these 25 (48%), they did not contact the inquirer until approximately 39 days after CCHR was contacted. In one case, CCHR’s first attempt to contact the inquirer did not occur until more than 5 months (165 days) after CCHR received the inquiry.
  ▪ CCHR has no policy requiring its staff to conduct timely intake appointments for submitted inquiries. For 19 inquiries where the intake appointment date was documented in Dynamics, we found LEB staff did not conduct an intake appointment for these inquiries until, on average, almost 3 months (84 days) from the day the inquiries were submitted. In one instance, LEB staff did not conduct an intake appointment until almost 9 months (266 days) from the inquiry’s submission date.
  ▪ Despite CCHR’s guidelines, which state that assigned attorneys should submit an initial draft complaint to their supervisors within 14 days of the intake appointment, we found officials did not monitor the timely preparation of complaints. LEB staff did not record an inquiry submission date, draft submission date, or intake appointment date for 21 of a sample of 27 publicly initiated complaints. For the remaining six, on average, attorneys took nearly 4 months (115 days) to submit a draft complaint to their supervisor. In one case, the assigned attorney took more than 11 months (336 days) from the intake appointment date to document their draft complaint in Dynamics.
  ▪ Officials did not replace attorneys assigned to ongoing investigations in a timely manner. Despite the importance of the assigned attorney’s role in CCHR’s investigative process, when the initial case’s attorney left CCHR or was removed from the case, on average, it took CCHR over 11 months (348 days) to reassign a new attorney to five of 36 sampled complaints. In one case, CCHR took over 2 years (812 days) to reassign an attorney to the ongoing complaint.
• CCHR did not ensure its staff documented and maintained evidence of case supervision for sampled housing discrimination complaints.

Key Recommendations

• Develop policies and implement procedures to mitigate delays in housing discrimination complaint processing, including but not limited to:
  ▪ Establishing time frames for each step of intake, complaint filing, and investigation processes; monitoring dates in Dynamics; and following up with staff where there are delays.
  ▪ Analyzing Dynamics data and conducting a risk assessment of LEB’s resources to identify where bottlenecks may be occurring in order to understand the root causes and proactively address them.
  ▪ Strengthening current policies to better guide staff and developing strategies for monitoring compliance.
• Establish a procedure that prioritizes attorney reassignments to minimize disruption in investigative activity.
• Ensure staff are maximizing available tools and resources to facilitate thorough case management, including but not limited to:
  ▪ Documenting and maintaining evidence of case supervision.
  ▪ Ensuring staff record all intake and investigation activities and essential documents, including the file maintenance checklist, in Dynamics.
   

1 For the purpose of our report, the term determination refers to decisions made within CCHR’s LEB.