I wish, but as they said in the article: a rezoning got stopped and reduced literally earlier this week. The post about it is still up on this sub. https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/yeq8fd/city_council_moves_forward_with_gowanus_rezoning/

We on a roll… of member deference killing reasonable projects.

So the city wants to legalize death traps and use taxpayer funds to make these places meet existing COO requirements, due to overcrowding causing by rent control. Sounds like another fine government solution.

Legalized basement is dumb. There's a reason why folks have illegal basements - cheaper rent and owners don't want to report the income. Legalizing basements negates these benefits to owners. Why bother collecting legal rent from basement if you subject to additional x rules. Might as well keep it illegal

On the other hand, if you give tax benefits & funding to add additional floor to a house/building contrary to allowed zoning in area and make that new unit subject to rent regulation for x years- that is way more appealing to owners vs spend a ton of money to make a basement legally habitable and rent regulated.

The estimated cost from city to bring a basement to code for legalization ranges from $275,000 to $375,000 each. Would argue given that cost, better to use that money to raise the roof or even subsidize the renovations of unlivable vacant RS units to be rented back to market at pre-renovated RS unit rent price with conditions it stay RS until meets requirement to be deregulated or 15 yrs...which ever longest.

Basement apartments are awful and should never be normalized. Build more stuff and higher ffs

tell the homeless that that basement apartments don't fit your aesthetic for what housing should be and they therefore must stay on the street till we build a nice high density highrise made of massed timber.

Rent control isn’t the problem. Developers trying to squeeze every last cent out of tenants is the problem.

Bro people be dying out here in NYC basement units, shits been flooded twice in the last 12 months and it's only gonna happen more.

owner who wants to use a space that would otherwise be wasted: "I consent!"

resident who wants an affordable place to live: "I consent!"

random redditor: "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?"

Keep denying peer reviewed research. Even Brookings disagrees with you. https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/?amp

Rent control is only harmful because the city and state passed zoning laws that had no purpose but to increase congestion (parking) and make larger apartments (density). So we ended up with developers who could only build a limited number of very large units that were expensive af to construct.

If we reversed all of the zoning changes from the 60s we could actually make the rent affordable for everyone.

The whole point of legalizing ADUs is to regulate it so that doesn’t happen. Instead of how it is now in the shadows.

Basement apts will always be suboptimal housing no matter how nice you make it and has inherit risks. so if we putting so much effort to make it legal and high cost...why not apply that effort to adding another floor which offers better value to owner and renter qol of such a unit.

There's a reason why so few ppl sign up for the pilot program - they don't want to make the basement legal, have to report the income and host of other rules they have to follow for some rent when they can collect it anyway and not report it if illegal.

Not all basement apartments are the same. For every dangerous or suboptimal one there are plenty perfectly good ones.

You’re going to add another floor to your single or multiple family home?

Adding another floor is a lot easier vs making a basement legal, better housing, better qol for renter and more feasible.

Ask the owner and renter...which they prefer another legalized floor unit or basement unit. they will pick the first one

Highly skeptical Adams can deliver, but at least he has the right idea.

It's funny how none of these rent control studies ever look at New York. NYC isn't SF (pop. 815k) or Cambridge (pop. 117K) - those are absolutely inappropriate comparisons and no inferences can be drawn from them regarding a much larger city.

In flood-prone areas. It might surprise you to find out that plenty of areas of the city are not flood prone.

Doesn't need to be in flood prone area to be flooded considering most flooding is a result of backflow. Basements are lowest point in building so highly susceptible to backflow issues.

Yes, it does. They know exactly where this is likely to happen.

>A stormwater risk map issued by the city in May showed serious possible flooding at homes where 10 people drowned in their basement apartments when record-breaking rainfall pummeled the city Wednesday night.

https://www.thecity.nyc/environment/2021/9/3/22656482/mayors-map-showed-ida-victims-risk

and I'm telling you you don't need to be in a flood prone area to experience flooding. every basement and building has a risk

And I'm telling you in the 90 years my family has lived in Brooklyn, they've never experienced flooding in their basement or even neighborhood because they didn't live in flood-prone areas.

But I guess you think that's dumb luck instead of science.

it has happen..heck even in ida and insert whatever major storm - folks complain their toilets/sinks erupted in geyser. they were no where near flood risk area. Why it happen? backflow. system was overwhelm, Feel free to google and read their stories.

We are talking about people dying, not about toilets overflowing. This is the comment I responded to above:

>Bro people be dying out here in NYC basement units

um not a mere overflow...it can fill up rapidly and in drastic cases totally flooding basements quickly and trapping folks since it's the lowest point of a building,.

Yes. The Fire Marshall who doesn't want them to die or get flooded out.

Nope, having to meet fire code is part of being legalized. Anyone else?

That’s not how any of this works. You can’t just build another floor. There’s zoning laws that are designed to cause a housing crisis.

You mean the same zoning laws that don't allow the basement to be legally habitable? if you going to +1 unit to building and change the CO..it might as well be +1 additional floor vs the basement.

The cost to make a basement legal is enormous in terms of physical and monetary requirements. As someone who ponder and look into the cost - its not worth it not to mention the ongoing liabilities of a basement units. It be cheaper if I raise the roof of my house and build another unit. If the city offered me money and allowed the exception to my zoning to build another floor and keep it rent regulated for 15 yrs. Then its worth considering and better for the renter than any legal basement unit ever be.

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I've lived in one and people deserve better. They're abysmal and it's a stain on the city that we find it easier to shove people into them than to build anything else.

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If the city removed these stupid FAR limits I would tear down my house and build a 12 story building.

If I had a choice between sleeping in the street or sleeping in a basement apartment I’d sleep in the basement.