Tuesday, August 30, 2022

After screwing homeowners out of financial aid from Hurricane Ida damage, Comptroller Lander wants to make a law to make renting basements legal

 


 City Limits

 Brad Lander’s Basement Resident Protection Law would create a “basement board” to oversee the conversions and ensure residents of these apartments—called accessory dwelling units or ADUs—have access to tenants’ rights and basic safety protections. It comes a year after rains from Hurricane Ida killed 11 New Yorkers in basement units.

As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida approaches, tens of thousands of basements and cellars—units often converted into illegal apartments—are still at immediate risk of flooding, and that number will triple in the next 30 years, according to a report by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander shared with City Limits Monday.

The report proposes legalizing and registering rental units via a legislative roadmap modeled after a law New York State enacted in the 1980s to convert commercial and manufacturing units into legal residences.

Lander’s policy plan, the Basement Resident Protection Law, would create a “basement board” to oversee the conversions and ensure residents of these apartments—called accessory dwelling units or ADUs—have access to tenant’s rights, such as eviction protection. It would also help homeowners put in place basic safety features to protect tenants from floods and fires.

“The idea of this legislation is that it would create a kind of interim set of rights, responsibilities and protections that would go really well with a pathway to legalization,” Lander told City Limits.

The plan would need to be implemented on the state level, and so he hopes to see a legislator in Albany take it up. It comes as the city marks one year since heavy rainfall brought by the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused deadly floods, killing 11 people residing in basement units.

The comptroller’s analysis found that 10 percent, or 43,000, of the city’s basements and cellars are at risk of flooding from rainfall or storm surges. The number of occupied basement and cellar units across the city is still unknown due to their secrecy, but estimates suggest they house at least 100,000 city residents—and that number could be much higher.

Such apartments tend to attract low-income renters, including immigrants, who are priced out of other forms of housing. As of now, tenants living in these units have no protections or rights if they demand safety features to protect them from floods, fires and other risks, and many are not incentivized to ask the city to intervene for fear of losing access to their homes.

“The only tool the city has is a vacate order,” Lander said. “That’s not what residents want, even if they’re in an unsafe unit.”

Lander’s proposal would require owners of occupied basement or cellars to register them, and would give temporary legal status to such units for up to five years—a change from current policy, in which most of the units would be deemed uninhabitable.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Need a place to park the illegals.

Anonymous said...

1776 said...
"Fascism is private ownership, but with complete government control. This is what the Democratic Party wants to achieve.
The so-called conservative wants to keep the government out of your wallet, off your back and out of your life" - Ronald W. Reagan.

Unknown said...

Rather than pretending basement units don't exist or making hundreds of thousands more New Yorkers homeless, how about legalizing only those basement units that won't flood, then evicting people from the minority of ones that will?

Anonymous said...

Should be good for infrastructure

Anonymous said...

Freeloading landlords win again....
Prove me wrong ...

Ned said...

Illegal apartments, Illegal partitions, bathrooms, cots in garages, tents in backyards and all boxes with no tax roll, certificate of occupancy or safety are now called "Accessory dwellings"
WTF?
A new name for illegal shit just like migrants, pilgrims, refugees, youthful offenders shooting, hitting senior citizens over the head with hammers.
These people are crazy and need to be removed, illegal means illegal period!
Full blown civil war coming. The haves VS the have nots!

Just wait till the city hacks try to force these 500 per week busloads of illegal locusts into private homes. The city already kicked 50 tourists out a Central Park west hotel and have already filled it up with pregnant border jumpers with children.

"Water problem you people all need to get out, we have relocated you to rooms and shelters across the city, take it or leave it"
Well hell, that Hotel sure fixed that water problem and re-filled those rooms with illegals fast!! Must have been some serious money and tax breaks on the table.

Let me get this right:
Have 5 plus kids by age 20, cry no money to feed'em all, break into this country and get handed food, free transportation, medical, EBT cards, cellphone and a $1000 a day 3 room suits on Central Park West?
---And a mayor putting our own taxpaying Americans and our own section 8s people out on the street to do so?
Oh the blacks and homeless Americans are going to love this, how long before full blown civil war, fire and riots on the streets over these 4th world invaders?
I'm guessing at the end of a month before December after the welfare checks get cashed and liquor & drug sales skyrocket.
Gotta put my truck on Long Island and get my extinguishers charged, the local firehouse will no longer do it.
I may put bars on the lower windows as well, jeez what a way to live!!

Ned
www.nra.org

Disgruntled Citizen said...

It's not going to happen because then the landlord would have to pay taxes on that rent and can't harass their basement tenants like they do now. The third world origin landlords like to shut off water, heat (what heat???), electricity, gas, wi-fi, steal mail, kill pets and threaten and bully the tenants. Do you think there's Tenants Rights in China, Pakistan, India, Guyana, Korea, Egypt, the Philippines or the Dominican Republic? Those people get shot if they don't vacate. Have you heard of housing court in China? It's called a Re education Camp where you learn to slave away to make things to sell in 99 cent stores.
With this new category, the NYC property and school taxes on their house will go up. They want tax free dollars from the basement dwellers. The City will require things like windows and smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, heat in winter, vermin free residence and will have to get a certificate of no harassment.

Anonymous said...

There always was a law to make basements legal, provided you have two fire exits, and get the proper paperwork approved. The issue is ILLEGAL conversions, which do to conform to the rules, endanger the tenants, and do not compensate the neighborhood for resulting additional services exploited. There is a reason for those rules, as the floods and fires proved.

Anonymous said...

So the comptroller is in charge of making laws now.
Talk about Banana Fudge Republic of Socialist NYS.

Anonymous said...

Sure right after he MAKES SURE THE OWNER who created the illegal conversion pays all fines due in full, pays for all necessary work to make them safe and actually PROVES that work was done to an actual DOB inspector not self-certified, proves that all income taxes were paid on all rent received while the illegal unit were illegally rented, then we can talk about legalizing them. In no way should the taxpayers have to pay a single penny to "help" legalize them. That onus must be FULLY on the owner.

Anonymous said...

This must be the free market economy in action.

Anonymous said...

In order to legalize them, they need a secondary form of egress - i.e., a secondary exit. How many landlords want to go through the extra expense of putting in another entrance to their basements, even if it would save lives in the event of a fire or flood?

Anonymous said...

@"free market economy in action"
Soros won’t allow that.

Anonymous said...

Give it another ten, fifteen years. It's going to be infinitely worse. The place will be unlivable.

Anonymous said...

@“ Give it another ten, fifteen years. It's going to be infinitely worse. The place will be unlivable.”

Well, there will be a lot more floods probably. It won’t be under water like Miami though. Can’t be global warming, so it must be Soros and Gates rain Machines and bouncing lasers off the moon.

Anonymous said...

Well, basements are better than trailer parks full of QAnon creeps.

Anonymous said...

Joe Biden to Request Another $11.7 Billion in Emergency Funding For Ukraine

There we go. TA Lunatic creep with his Q-Anon donors.

Anonymous said...

"so it must be Soros and Gates rain Machines and bouncing lasers off the moon."

Must be. Maybe you put Gates in charge of the Climate.


Microsoft’s MSFT -1.7% billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/01/11/bill-gates-backed-climate-solution-gains-traction-but-concerns-linger/?sh=67eafcd2793b

Forbes the conspiracy Qanon news site, right?

Anonymous said...

"Well, basements are better than trailer parks full of QAnon creeps."

Full of TA Commies.

Anonymous said...

TA Commies don’t store their property on the streets for free, year round.

Anonymous said...

Everything is going down the sewer because of Bidenflation. We're heading for 2008, only this time there will be no recovery.

Anonymous said...

Its'time to reign in government spending and send it to zero except the military
Fire all of Congress this November and get MEGA MAGA installed.

Anonymous said...

@TA Commies don’t store their property on the streets for free, year round.

They steal other people's properties and store WEF indoctrination in their stupid heads.
Lunatic communists.

Anonymous said...

"TA Commies don’t store their property on the streets for free, year round. "

That's because they don't have any.
They own nothing and they will be happy.
Didn't you get the memo TA commie from your master Klaus?
Telling you, you are doing too much drugs. You are a zombie like the Biorobot.


Anonymous said...

@“ That's because they don't have any.
They own nothing and they will be happy.
Didn't you get the memo TA commie from your master Klaus?”

Thank you! He/she/it Mega MAGA freeloader.