“I’m surprised, I’m baffled, I’m angry,” said City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who represents East New York, where the city ran an earlier basement conversion pilot in 2019. The area…
While Gov. Kathy Hochul included a pathway to basement legalization in her February budget proposal, the word ‘cellar’ is absent from her plan. The two terms may be indistinguishable to…
Brad Lander’s Basement Resident Protection Law would create a “basement board” to oversee the conversions and ensure residents of these apartments—called accessory dwelling units or ADUs—have access to tenants’ rights and…
‘In one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, people will continue to rent basement apartments whether they are legal or not. We need legalization to make them…
New Yorkers who withstood the flooding inside their basement apartments—often unauthorized conversions that do not meet city safety standards—now face new hardships and fears, like dangerous mold, future flooding, and…
