Porch catastrophic injury: New York says it's up to you

The effort to fix many of the 500 dangerous porches was delayed by a backlog in inspections, landlord resistance and a bogged-down Cook County Housing Court system. With most of those problems now fixed, McCaffrey said the once high-priority list of porch addresses "hadn't been maintained or updated for several years. It took us a while to find it."

Noting the city's stretched manpower, McCaffrey defended the current inspection regimen, saying it's up to building owners and tenants to be vigilant, said John Q. Kelly, a New York catastrophic injury lawyer.