It was good news this year when, after years of beating around the bush, Albany legislators put in the budget a pilot program to help bring the city’s many basement apartments up to some semblance of code. Local efforts to do so had snagged against heavy state requirements that didn’t do much to increase safety, so clearing that hurdle is a big step.
At least, in theory, because of the 15 community districts picked to participate, only one is in Queens, which has four out of 10 such dwellings. A big chunk center on neighborhoods that just don’t really have this type of housing.
This is classic Albany. Years and years of lethargy, solemn statements, pressure groups, maneuvering and horse trading, all culminating in a few weeks of frenzied budget negotiations during which legislators are trying to hash out details for a dozen big-ticket policies at once, which generate poorly-constructed and ill-considered policy that they can all still slap themselves on the back for.
There’s hardly a better exemplification of lawmakers’ focus on getting the headline and not the details right than a pilot geared largely towards the wrong neighborhoods.
Let’s be clear here that, while the Legislature certainly has access to competent urban planners, cartographers, engineers and other experts, you don’t need to have an advanced degree to see the problem here. Anyone who is decently familiar with typical housing setups across NYC boroughs, or even bothers to take a brisk walk around some of the neighborhoods at issue, would see that Harlem or Soho simply aren’t conducive to basement apartments as, say, Central Queens.
Whatever methodology the Legislature used to come up with these neighborhoods, it certainly had nothing to do with need, demand or feasibility, which means it was probably a direct result of political strategizing; it’s possible that legislators never even stopped to consider need.
That’s all the more disheartening because there certainly is need. Who knows if this legislation would even have made it in the budget were it not for the shocking fact of 11 deaths from underground apartment flooding during Hurricane Ida three years ago.
This represented just the most acute example of the dangers of unregulated basement apartments, which often have poor ventilation, insufficient egress in case of fires and other code violations that directly threaten the safety of tenants. The danger is self-reinforcing, as the unlawful nature of many basement apartments, and all cellar apartments, makes tenants wary of rocking the boat with landlords or city authorities.
Despite these hazards, people won’t stop renting out and occupying basement apartments, for the simple fact that these spaces will continue to exist and there will continue to be demand for cheap housing in NYC, particularly as long as housing development falls well below that demand. There’s no real alternative to hitting some balance that doesn’t allow a Wild West of dangerous dwellings but isn’t so onerous that compliance is all but impossible.
As poorly-designated as this pilot program might be, let’s hope at least that it produces some actionable data on the best way forwards towards finding this balance citywide. Perhaps next year, Albany might finally do something about the scourge of dangerous underground apartments that can reach the neighborhoods where those apartments actually are.
