It only gets more embarrassing for Mayor Eric Adams’ comically toothless “crackdown” on the town’s out-of-control sidewalk scaffolding scourge.
After Adams announced a “Get Sheds Down” program last week to scale back the variety of construction eyesores that appear to face endlessly, Post columnist Howard Husock revealed that NYCHA, the town’s public housing authority, has more long-standing sheds in place than any private landlord — 26 miles of them.
But immortal-seeming, city-owned scaffold abominations aren’t only at quasi-autonomous, cash-strapped NYCHA locations.
In addition they blight office buildings which might be 100% owned and managed by City Hall itself.
Realty Check found Public Disgrace No. 1 at 2 Lafayette St., a century-old, 21-story, 350,000 square-foot property across the road from the Municipal Constructing.
![Scaffolding has surrounded 2 Lafayette on all four sides -- along Lafayette, Elk, Duane and Reade streets.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000020163209.jpg?w=1024)
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It’s run by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, a sprawling bureaucracy with a $1.3 billion annual budget and 2,615 employees.
DCAS is charged with acquiring, selling and leasing city property, its website says.
You’d think that with the actual estate-driven priority, it might know how you can properly maintain its own structures and fix any potentially dangerous flaws in a timely fashion.
But sheds have long surrounded 2 Lafayette on all 4 sides — along Lafayette, Elk, Duane and Reade streets.
The gloomy tunnels cover storefronts and subway entrances and supply refuge for dope-smoking vagrants who harass people coming to work.
The town’s Department for the Aging has offices at 2 Lafayette, however the sheds appear to be ageless.
They’ve been up since 2017, in accordance with Department of Buildings records. Sources in neighboring buildings — and inside 2 Lafayette St. itself — said they rarely if ever see any facade work being done.
![2 Lafayette St. is run by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000020163234.jpg?w=1024)
For good measure, the sheds which might be imagined to protect passers-by from falling debris is perhaps dangerous themselves.
The DOB records show an open shed violation at 2 Lafayette from April 5, which states “pedestrian protection doesn’t meet code specifications” as a consequence of “deteriorated mud sills in multiple locations throughout shed.”
A DCAS spokesman said the sheds were put as much as “mitigate unsafe conditions for the general public” as required under Local Law 11, the 1998 laws that toughened earlier rules for façade inspections every five years for each constructing at the least six stories tall.
![Mayor Adams announced a “Get Sheds Down” program last week to reduce the number of sidewalk scaffolding](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000014568391-1.jpg?w=1024)
The constructing has “planned façade work and might be entering the design phase inside the subsequent six weeks.
Design will take an estimated 18 months,” the rep said.
As for the open DOB violations, “DCAS is working with its contractor to evaluate the violations and make repairs.”
At this rate, Adams will solve the migrants crisis first.