New Law Expedites Graffiti Cleanup

Photo via EssG's flickr

For years the city needed permission from property owners in order to clean up graffiti, but as of April 7th there's a new law in town. Now the Department of Sanitation's taxpayer-funded Graffiti Free NYC program doesn't need to go through a long waiver-signing process before going to work on what some see as nothing more than illegal eyesores. South Bronx graff-watchdog Sidney Flores told the Daily News, "The faster they get the graffiti, the better. We need to take our streets back."

The program will deal with backlogged complaints first, then take it tag by tag from there. They'll have a lot more work on their hands—the paper points out that "1,500 Bronx owners who were mailed graffiti waivers from July 2009 on failed to respond," leaving the DoS with their hands tied. With the new law, if an owner doesn't respond within 35 days, they can buff away. Business owners with graffiti you consider artwork, you've been warned.

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By Jen Carlson in News on April 13, 2010 3:04 PM

Comments [rss]

Daily Toker

The faster they clean us up, the faster I'll put them back up!

Spirit of 76

Is Jake back from his "war" at the Highline Revs-Cost tag yet?

FakeHipster

Lets see if I can just get all this out of the way:

"Graf is art!"

"No it's not!"

"Please, those letters are not real graf, this is kids stuff"

"Great, more white washing New York, we need to go back to the good old days"

"You mean when people got raped and killed frequently? okay buddy"

"cxb insanity derail"

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you, transplant"

"Fuck hipsters and bike riders!"

"Yeah, fuck hipsters and bike riders!"

Wza

You left out the racist comment, Honky.

Boogie Down

Thank you for this great service to the Gothamist community. You've saved most of us from a near coronary. Well done!

digiart2001

This is certainly controversial in my eyes. It's one thing to help out removing graffiti for which property owners themselves complained about. I think it's a good idea to help out.

But if a property owner did not file a complaint? Then who is to decide what is "graffiti"? What if the property owner created a piece of art, or some message on their own property? 35 days is not much time for a property owner to respond. What if they are on vacation and have come home to a two-foot high stack of mail to read through. And how long does the process take to file a waiver. Something tells me it might take a month in itself! I can see potential 1st amendment violations occurring in the future. It's cutting it close to have government decide which message to erase and which to keep.