This is no way to live
Imagine living day in and day out in a dark cellar apartment without sunlight or fresh air, adjacent to a furnace and hot water heater. The ceiling height is less than seven feet, and of course, there is only one, or maybe no direct exit to the exterior. These are the illegal and unsafe apartments that house many struggling immigrants in Queens today.
It has taken generations to improve the quality of life for immigrants in this city. The tenement reform laws of the Progressive Era mandated minimum standards of light, air and sanitation. Yes, the primary intent was to combat disease, but it was also a matter of respect for lower-income New Yorkers. No one, we believed, should live under crowded and unsanitary conditions, and our laws and building codes reflected that. The benefits of such standards have never been more clear than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After Ida, we can add the perils of flooding. The unprecedented rainfall filled the sewers and burst through into basements. I am still cleaning up the mess in the cellar of my office from the sewage backup, as are many of my neighbors in Sunnyside. The poorly maintained system simply could not handle it. When the sewer water flowed into the illegal dwellings, some occupants had no way out. You can’t open a door inward against tons of water.
Here’s a radical idea: Maybe we should address this larger issue before proposing families be placed in harm’s way.
As a practicing architect in Queens, I must inform my residential clients of the legal restrictions on the use of basement and cellar spaces. Homeowners cannot simply install a three-piece bathroom (toilet, sink, shower/tub) for their own use without meeting basic requirements of exterior egress and limited plumbing fixtures. Also, only windowless rooms under 60 square feet and used for storage are permitted, specifically to prevent bedroom spaces.
For a basic cellar bathroom, a homeowner must place a Restrictive Declaration on the deed stipulating that the space will never be rented. This is not to keep certain people out, nor is it to foster low density. The building code makes it impossible to get around these current requirements in order to make sure below and partially below-grade occupancy is safe.
FDNY regulations are another major hurdle. The Fire Department is rightly concerned about having people sleeping next to boilers, which are typically not enclosed in fire-rated spaces nor properly vented. Furthermore, they have mandated sprinklers for these cellar apartments, and that extensive and costly new plumbing is a deal-breaker.
The solution is rarely simple. If you want to create a new legal unit, the space must be brought up to code. The minimum habitable ceiling height in the city is eight feet. My home cellar is barely seven. The 2014 code says in single-family houses, a basement (not a cellar, which is more than half below grade) can be seven feet. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we should alter the regulations for cellar apartments to allow sub-standard dwellings? And two-family homes still need an eight-foot ceiling. What property owner would embark on costly excavation?
A couple of years ago the city, pushed by landlords, community activists and politicians, launched a pilot program to legalize these units in a specific part in Brooklyn. Invited by one of the non-profits involved, I participated in several preliminary meetings on this.
From my experience, the health and safety standards precluded most conversions. The truth is that the program failed not because of inadequate funding or the lack of political will, as some have suggested. No amount of money can remediate the potentially dangerous existing conditions in many if not most of these apartments.
The program never got off the ground because most illegal apartments are unsafe for families to live in, period. You cannot bring them up to code in a reasonable manner.
Unless, that is, we bend the rules. Unless we say that the families living there like moles do not deserve decent homes. Is that something that we are prepared to do, 120 years after the Tenement House Act of 1901 set basic safety standards?
Between the pandemic and the flooding, we have to recognize that the high standards set by the building and zoning codes are in place for the best reason imaginable: to protect the health and safety of New Yorkers, not only from historic floods but from everyday risks. From the 1920s onward, housing design in Queens demonstrated how strong building codes and regulation resulted in quality construction. The goal then was to provide more light and air, and safety. Now is the time to reinforce those standards with innovation and not retreat from them.