But after a November fire in Woodside, Queens killed three men in an illegal basement dwelling and a January fire killed five others living in illegally subdivided apartments in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the city embarked upon an unprecedented educational campaign, with the Department of Buildings handing out more than 65,000 pamphlets in communities near the deadly fires and in other neighborhoods notorious for receiving a high number of illegal conversion complaints.
Meanwhile, the state legislature began pushing new legislation to increase fines for property owners who knowingly violate the city's occupancy limits.
Housing advocates have praised the city for taking crucial steps toward fixing its illegal housing problem, but they caution that illegal housing units will continue to exist so long as city building codes and zoning regulations prevent the construction of affordable housing.
"If the housing stock doesn't meet the needs of people, they end up living in conditions that are unsafe," said Harold Shultz, a senior fellow at the Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC), which works to improve housing conditions. "It's important that we recognize who's living in our housing and then configure it for them, instead of changing housing to serve purposes they were not meant to."
New people, old homes
Housing experts estimate there are about 100,000 illegal units throughout the city, housing as many as 500,000 New Yorkers. Historically, the highest concentration of these units has been located in Queens, followed by Brooklyn and the Bronx, usually in middle-class neighborhoods with large immigrant populations.
Illegal dwellings come in many forms, ranging from single immigrants living in subdivided apartments, to owners who rent out a basement or attic as an apartment in one- and two-family homes, to young professionals who install partitions to create extra bedrooms.
As the city's population grows, rents rise and affordable housing remains scarce, people are more willing to share residential space, even if that means creating it illegally. And as the recession carries on, cash-strapped property owners increasingly resort to renting out spaces to tenants to make ends meet.
The problem is, says Peter Salins, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who writes on immigration and housing issues, existing occupancy laws do not encourage shared living styles and "the composition of the city's housing stock bears very little relation to the city's population."
For example, the existing housing stock in boroughs like Queens – mostly one- and two-family row houses – was originally built as an alternative for upper-middle class families to the heavily populated, tenement-filled Manhattan. Now the once-suburban borough is home to a bustling immigrant population, but there is not enough residential space to accommodate it.
Barriers to enforcement
According to Department of Buildings spokesman Tony Sclafani, the city now receives about 20,000 complaints related to illegal conversions each year, up from 8,000 in 1997. Neighbors, tenants, community boards and businesses can file an anonymous complaint through 311, which the department is legally required to respond to with an inspection.
