Posted on 12/01/2003 1:47:50 AM PST by sarcasm
The city's skyrocketing immigrant population and tight housing supply are forcing tens of thousands of New Yorkers to cram into illegal apartments, many of them potential deathtraps, a Daily News investigation reveals.
In extreme cases, as many as 10 people are packing one-bedroom apartments, denying them basic human dignities of privacy, fresh air and cleanliness.
Children are forced to sleep on kitchen floors, and parents and their youngsters lie side by side in bunk beds. For many kids, beds double as play areas.
Families are piling into basements, attics and garages converted into illegal apartments that are a match or a frayed wire away from becoming lethal firetraps. Others are forced to double up with relatives lucky enough to have an apartment.
Experts estimate there are more than 100,000 illegally subdivided apartments in the city, created by greedy, unscrupulous landlords looking to make a quick buck.
In a city where tiny studios can rent for thousands and penthouse apartments can go for millions, the scandal of the have-nots doling out what little they have for virtually unlivable dwellings is shocking.
"We don't want to live like this," said Guadalupe, 32, a Mexican immigrant, who shares an $826-a-month two-bedroom East Harlem apartment with nine relatives. "We do it because that's the only way we can afford the rent."
Guadalupe, who didn't want her last name used, shares an 8-by-10-foot room in which she, her husband and three kids sleep in a bunk bed and crib squeezed against a wall.
In the bedroom next door is Guadalupe's nephew, his wife and baby. Guadalupe's brother and cousin occupy the living room, behind a green curtain.
The living arrangement doesn't even come close to city standards dictating that every person should have a livable area of 80 square feet and a bathroom serving no more than six.
For six months, Elizabeth Campos, her husband and three children have shared a one-bedroom apartment in East Harlem with her sister, Alba, and her four children. The place is so small that Alba sleeps on a mattress in the kitchen. The children, between 9 months old and 13, pile up in bunk beds that double as play and study areas.
Although every adult in the house works — Campos and her sister are baby-sitters and Campos' husband is a cook — it is an arrangement they must tolerate to afford the $800 monthly rent.
"We work two, three jobs sometimes, but the money is still not enough," said Elizabeth Campos, 30, a Mexican immigrant. "I think you have to be very rich to pay the rent in New York."
The housing shortage has been intensified in the past decade by a skyrocketing immigrant population and the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods, a process that has displaced thousands of families.
"The population has been growing without the corresponding increase on the housing supply, and the illegal market has filled the gap," said Frank Braconi, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a Manhattan-based think tank.
"Since [former Mayor Ed] Koch, each administration has been reluctant to enforce housing and zoning codes, and the longer the problem is ignored, the more difficult it becomes to solve," Braconi said. "But if they simply decide to crack down on illegal units now, where will all the people who are living in these apartments go?"
While New York's housing stock increased by 7% — or 208,000 units — in the past decade, the city's population jumped by nearly 700,000, census data show.
At the same time, the official number of homes occupied by at least two families increased by 18,000 to 221,000 from 1996 to 1999, according to the Census Bureau's 1999 New York Housing and Vacancy Survey.
Mayor Bloomberg announced last December a $3 billion program to create 65,000 affordable homes in New York by 2008, the biggest city commitment to new housing in 15 years.
Housing advocates say the effort will put only a dent in a problem that will inevitably get worse as the population grows.
"It's a shame that New York City has always relied on immigrants and the working class to keep the economy going, but it has never provided these people with a decent place to live," said Awilda Cordero, president of Emergency Rights Inc., a Bronx-based housing advocacy group.
To meet the demand, landlords are furiously subdividing apartments and houses and turning basements, attics and even garages into living areas.
But the wiring in illegal units is often unable to support overcrowded apartments — a fire hazard made worse by the fact that most of these homes do not have adequate sprinkler systems and only one way in and out, city officials said.
Fires are the most serious problem, but not the only one, caused by illegal conversions. Every extra family that moves into an already-crowded neighborhood burdens schools and parks, increases traffic and parking congestion and strains sanitation, fire and police services, community leaders said.
The problem is most prevalent in Queens, which accounts for half of New York's illegal units. Housing experts estimate there are 4,100 illegal homes in Jackson Heights and Corona, and 5,200 more in Howard Beach and Ozone Park — the two city neighborhoods that experienced the largest population increase in the past decade, census data show.
"We haven't had affordable housing built in this city for over 15 years — nothing — and we don't get the extra services we need to accommodate the extra people," said Rudy Greco, president of the Jackson Heights Beautification Group, a community organization.
"The overcrowding is so bad here that the garbage is always piling up on the street."
Complaints against illegal units in Queens have decreased since 2001, though, after peaking at 10,685 in 2000, city records show. That year, Buildings Department inspectors issued 7,164 violations against Queens homeowners renting illegal apartments. This year, inspectors had issued 2,307 violations as of Sept. 20, according to city statistics.
"The problem is that when somebody is reported, the inspectors go there and give out a fine, but they don't follow up, so people don't see the point in complaining," said Darryl Hoss, a member of Queens Community Board 3, which covers Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and North Corona.
"The homeowner is collecting rent in these illegal units, so they'll pay the fine and keep the tenants there," Hoss added. "If the city doesn't do something about increasing enforcement personnel, there will never be a solution to the overcrowding."
Buildings Department inspectors only investigate complaints. They do not hunt for illegal units. Investigators are not allowed to enter an apartment unless they have a court order or they are invited in.
"Our primary concern is safety, and we try to work with the landlords if there's a possible way for them to convert an illegal unit into a legal one," Buildings Department Assistant Commissioner Robert Iulo said.
"We're not in the business of putting tenants out in the street, so we do try to help the both sides, because we realize the difficulties of the housing market in New York."
They do this on purpose so they can pay the rent and still be able to send money back home. I have no sympathy for them.
Thank you, NYC "rent control" which insures both scarce, and run down, housing.
(By the by, what on earth is an "illegal" apartment? One that's cause in the city w/o a visa?"
You would think that it would cost no more than $65 million to create 65,000 affordable homes, and even that's a stretch. I wonder if the $3 billion is a typo.
"But if they simply decide to crack down on illegal units now, where will all the people who are living in these apartments go?"
Back to #$%&ing Mexico, if I had my way, and the city were concerned more with the law than with revenue enhancement...
Unfortunately it is not.
The city will probaby have to hire 65,000 bureacrats in order to make sure that the program to build 65,000 affordable homes runs as inefficiently as possible.
I don't feel too bad about any of this. If it wasn't better than where they came from, they wouldn't have come here (probably illegally).
You're still not getting it. The program will exist, and will certainly swallow up a minimum of 3 billion dollars, but 65,000 units will never be built. Ever.
If they manage to build 650 units over the next decade, I will eat my hat!
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