Next week, the city Council of new York will be the bill which should legalize the apartments are located on ground floors of buildings or basements. We are talking primarily about the apartments in the Eastern parts of the city. The city Council hope that the law will create an additional number of affordable and legal housing and before legalizing illegal apartment.
Of living space on the ground floors and basements of buildings are found throughout new York. However, most of them do not meet fire safety standards and construction guidelines. In addition, building owners often rent these premises illegally.
«More than 100 thousand families now live in the basement, and we have no state policy in this regard», — said the chief lobbyist of the bill, Councilman Brad lander.
Negotiate the bill will be part of the pilot program and will cover one area of the city. He is obliged to regulate the technical characteristics of premises for compliance with building and fire regulations. In particular, under the new law, some areas will have to equip sprinkler system and to build more emergency exits.
The authors of the bill understand that the conversion and renovation of facilities will require considerable resources, which in turn can lead to higher rents. Then the rent will be unaffordable for the residents of East new York — one of the poorest areas of the city. Therefore, the act provides financial assistance to landlords to offset the costs, including cheap loans.
The mayor of new York bill De Blasio promises to allocate for the program of $5.7 million, hoping that the 5000 «basement» apartments will normalize in the near future. Simple arithmetic shows that for the reconstruction of one room of these funds will be allocated an average of $1140.
