As this column predicted a couple of months ago, the proposal to somehow legalize those illegal basement apartments or rooms is back in the news. The mayor is looking for ways to provide apartments for the homeless. Now Queens Borough President Melinda Katz says that we need to make the converted illegal basement apartments safe.
Well, the civic associations which are in the R1, R2and R3 neighborhoods have been fighting for decades to prevent and remove any illegal rooms and apartments in their communities. The housing stock in these neighborhoods is usually one-family homes. People bought homes in these neighborhoods because they wanted lawns, flowering gardens, nice bushes, trees, and lots of green spaces in which to raise families.
Civic associations affiliated with the Queens Civic Congress want to maintain the quality of life they currently have in their neighborhoods. They know that sometimes a speculator buys a house and puts in illegal rooms in the basement just to make money. You can tell which these houses are because they have cars parked across the sidewalks or on the lawns, the lawns are full of dirt and weeds, the gardens are unkempt and there is trash everywhere. Sometimes these houses are rented out to college students who have loud parties and who literally destroy the places. Sometimes two or three families live in a basement area.
If the officials were to decide to make it legal for people to live in basements, then the problems mentioned above would just get worse. If basements were made legal, then some owners would just build more rooms to house more people. Since landlords want to make money, they would probably have unlicensed people do the construction with fire-prone construction materials and illegal wiring. We constantly read of such fires in illegal rooms with the deaths of people living there and also the fatalities and injuries involving firemen and firewomen who go in to fight a blaze in rooms which are literally death traps. We lost two firemen in the Bronx a couple of years ago with several others injured.
This column has written about this problem in the past. It has told of the illegal basement rooms in the houses in the Hillcrest Estates Civic Association neighborhood just west of St. John’s University. If there ever was a fire in one of these houses, we would lose two or three students with firefighters likely to be injured as well.
Regretfully, the DOB has never been able to get a handle on these illegal rooms in private houses and in apartment houses. Even now, more DOB inspectors are being charged with taking bribes to let illegal thing happen and city officials want to have these inspectors make sure basement apartments are built legally. The law does not permit inspectors to get inside of these houses without a warrant and people are afraid to swear out a warrant.
The mayor and the borough president are correct in wanting to find housing for the homeless. There are thousands of homeless children who live in shelters or hotels for the homeless yet must attend school where they have problems learning with the teachers being blamed for their inability to study and do homework at night.
Yet, there is vacant land and buildings the city has foreclosed on which could be used for housing. There are many boarded-up buildings all over the city which could be used for housing. You just have to look.
GOOD NEWS OF THE WEEK: The Sanitation Department has done a good job plowing and salting and sanding this winter. The city should think about closing the roads and just plowing when a deep snow falls.
BAD NEWS OF THE WEEK: The city should not let the plows leave snow in the middle of the street to melt or let people do that when shoveling out their cars. Also, how can one get to a meter or their car if they are covered by snow?
