Opinion: A Storm is Coming. The State Must Act Now to Make Basement Apartments Safe.

By refusing to include the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the revamped pilot New York State is complicit in the ongoing danger facing these residents Basement safety is not a luxury it s a matter of life or death and we need to right this wrong Ida aftermath in Queens On Sept Hurricane Ida dumped an unprecedented inches of rain per hour on New York City nine inches in total Our city s outdated sewer system was rapidly overwhelmed leading to deaths Eleven of those people drowned in basement apartments Just this month over two inches of rain fell on New York City in just one hour the second rainiest hour since Ida Once again streets turned into rivers and subways flooded Water poured into unregulated unsafe basement units Constituents have explained us that every time it rains they brace for impact As we approach the fourth-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida we are still failing to protect our bulk vulnerable That s why we introduced Resolution in the City Council urging Albany lawmakers to pass bills A S that would expand the state s basement conversion pilot undertaking to include unfairly excluded communities This plan which the city has failed to roll out in a timely manner would make hundreds and even thousands more basement apartments safe RELATED READING Navigating NYC s Housing Predicament Through Basement Living Extreme flooding is no longer a freak event As surroundings change accelerates decades of inaction have led to extreme weather becoming the norm The new seasonal reality will be flash floods and torrential storms Yet much of our housing stock remains woefully unprepared As environmental and housing crises are colliding no one feels the danger more than the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living in basement apartments The trouble is further exacerbated by Donald Trump and Republicans cutting over million in FEMA funding for New York City and New York State flood mitigation which affects Bushwick East New York East Elmhurst Corona and Astoria residents the preponderance The city tried to make basement apartments safe through the Basement Conversion Pilot Plan multiple years ago only to be stymied by city funding cuts and state regulatory obstacles Last spring the state lifted various of those obstructions but confusingly excluded the working-class neighborhoods of color with various of the highest concentrations of basement units Yet again our communities have been left out of the conversation Why Because state representatives lobbied against their own district s inclusion None of the district boards in our districts were included in this pilot even though Neighborhood Board represented by Councilmember Nurse hosted the original pilot numerous years ago before petering out due to the aforementioned obstructions the same hindrances which were lifted through contemporary State action By refusing to include the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the revamped pilot New York State is complicit in the ongoing danger facing these residents Basement safety is not a luxury it s a matter of life or death and we need to right this wrong We cannot wait for the next storm to remind us of our failures Ida was the warning and the clock is ticking The state must act now to make sure that every home can be a safe shelter Sandy Nurse and Shekar Krishnan are members of the New York City Council representing neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens respectively They submitted this op-ed in partnership with the Basement Apartments Safe for Everyone BASE Coalition The post Opinion A Storm is Coming The State Must Act Now to Make Basement Apartments Safe appeared first on City Limits