Dear New Yorkers,

One year ago today, Hurricane Ida revealed the deadly cost of a decade of inaction to ensure basement and cellar apartments are safe places to live.   

And yet one year later, little meaningful action to address the dangers of unregulated basement units has occurred.   

Basement and cellar apartments, most of which exist within an informal rental market due to regulatory and financial barriers, currently house tens of thousands of New Yorkers, especially working-class immigrants and people of color. As the housing crisis has grown, New York City and State have struggled – and mostly failed – to ensure tenant safety, to navigate conflicts between owners and basement-dwellers, or to provide a predictable system that could attract capital for improvement.  

Fortunately, New York City’s history offers a path forward. The issues facing basement dwellers strongly resemble challenges that loft tenants faced in the early 1980s: an informal system that left loft tenants without physical safety or legal protections; building owners without enforceable legal obligations or a clear path forward to meet them; and outdated City and State laws in the face of a rapidly changing city in crisis.  

That crisis was met with the passage of the Loft Law, which provided both immediate protections and rights to tenants and established a comprehensive process for the long-term conversion of commercial and manufacturing buildings to legal, safe residences. While the Loft Law is far from perfect and has its own sets of challenges, it provides a strong model for bringing basement units into the light.    

Not coincidentally, this week my office released Bringing Basement Apartments into the Light - a report that outlines a path to provide basic rights, responsibilities and protections for basement apartment residents and owners. 

Within the report I am advocating that the State adopt legislation that would create a new “Basement Resident Protection Law” that would recognize existing basement units, require owners to provide basic safety interventions like smoke detectors and backflow preventers and offer resources to install them, grant basic tenant protections, and establish a Basement Board to oversee these rights and responsibilities. This interim approach would work in tandem with existing legislative efforts in Albany to establish a pathway to improvements and legalization of many of the units, and with relocation of tenants from those that are most dangerous. 

As the City and State consider next steps in responding to the overlapping nature of our affordable housing and climate crises, the anniversary of Hurricane Ida must prompt bolder action.   

The lives of occupants in basement and cellar apartments are at risk and every storm season poses another threat to occupants and homeowners. They both must be granted a process by which they can implement emergency safety protections, prevent tragic and avoidable deaths, and access support toward longer-term solutions.

In solidarity, 

Brad