Basement Apartment Rules Get Low Marks From Experts

"In an office building in downtown Manhattan, an 8-foot-long banner stretched across the length of a fluorescent-lit hallway. Five-inch-tall red letters indicated the location of an entrance to a basement apartment, as required outside each unit. That's according to proposed rules from the Department of Buildings for a pilot program to legalize those illicit spaces. The rules specify both the color and 5-inch height of the letters on the sign."

"It's one of several such measures in the proposed rules from the Department of Buildings that safe housing advocates say impose obstacles or make it untenable for homeowners to participate in the basement legalization pilot program. Those regulations, along with a related set from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, also open up tenants to the possibility of losing their homes and homeowners to costly penalties if they do not complete the program, advocates and lawyers warn."

A pilot program would allow homeowners in designated neighborhoods to convert unauthorized basement and cellar spaces into legal, habitable apartments while avoiding the state's multiple-dwelling law and allowing tenants to remain in place. Proposed Department of Buildings rules prescribe detailed, prescriptive requirements, including five-inch red lettering for basement-entrance signs. Those measures include other conditions that can create obstacles to homeowner participation, expose tenants to potential displacement, and subject homeowners to costly penalties if full compliance is not achieved within the program timeline. The rules as written risk undermining the feasibility and goals of the legalization pilot.

Read at Brownstoner