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The deaths of 11 people who lived in basement apartments during catastrophic New York City flooding this week have renewed attention to the often illegal homes as city officials seek to step up efforts to evacuate residents vulnerable in extreme weather conditions.
A record 3.15 inches of rain fell in the city in one hour on Wednesday, blocking the city’s subway system and prompting dozens of water rescues. At least 13 people have been declared dead in New York City after the remains of Hurricane Ida swept through the area.
The rapid rains inundated homes far from the city’s coastline that were less prone to flooding, damaging dozens of homes and turning at least six basement apartments into death traps.
“The danger came from above,” as opposed to a storm surge, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press briefing on Friday, while calling for more effective early warnings ahead of time. ” bad “which she says will undoubtedly become more common due to climate change.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday the city would be working on a “tougher type of warning and a tougher set of actions that will be a shock to the people.”
“What we saw in some of these basement apartments on Wednesday is that people have to be evacuated who are far from the coast, due to the intensity and speed, the amount of rain that has fallen. in such a short time, ”he said. said, calling the extreme weather “a whole new ball game.”
“We can now say that extreme weather has become the norm. We have to respond to it differently,” de Blasio told reporters.
The mayor said the city should impose more frequent travel bans, ordering people to get off the streets and out of the subway, and evacuate more New Yorkers before future storms.
To target those living in basement apartments, the changes could include cell phone alerts or door-to-door evacuations, the mayor said. But first, the city should create a database of what is conservatively estimated to be over 50,000 basement apartments, affecting at least 100,000 people, de Blasio said.
“We have to have absolute accounting of everyone and then we can apply these door-to-door techniques if we need to,” he said. “We need to have a clear database to work from and certainly start with knowing the areas, which we know, where they are prevalent.”
With many illegally converted basement apartments across the city, often providing affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers and undocumented immigrants, the city is said to be working with community organizations and other trusted messengers to reach residents. , said the mayor.
“We have an illegal basement problem and then we have a problem that so many people end up in illegal basements are afraid to communicate for fear of being evicted or, worse in their minds, evicted,” said by Blasio. “It’s just an extraordinarily difficult set of circumstances.”
Five of the six apartments where 11 people died during the storm were illegally converted cellars and basements, according to the city’s building department. Four of them were in Queens and one in Brooklyn. The only legal basement apartment was in Queens, where a 48-year-old woman was found unconscious and unconscious in a house near Corona.
Those who died in the illegal conversions included a 43-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man in a basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens; a 50-year-old man, a 48-year-old woman and a 2-year-old boy in a ground floor apartment in Flushing, Queens; and a 66-year-old man in a cellar in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, based on statements from the City Buildings Department and the New York Police Department.
City officials have encouraged residents of basement apartments to call 311 or 911 to report problems without fear of being released, unless they are in danger of death.
The risks posed to people living in basement apartments were mentioned in the city’s “storm water resilience plan”, published in May. It included an initiative to develop notifications for basement dwellings “to keep residents out of danger” during extreme rain events, but the completion date was only in 2023.
Asked about that timeline on Friday, de Blasio said: “We clearly need to change that.”
“This is a new deal that we are facing now, a new reality,” said the mayor. “We need to take the very tough approaches that we have, the very forceful approaches like mandatory evacuation, like the mandatory travel ban, and use them in a way we’ve never had before, because events don’t. are constantly changing the paradigm. “
New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday called on the city to provide emergency housing vouchers to all New Yorkers living in unregulated basement apartments as extreme weather events have become ” the rule, not the exception “because of climate change.
“We know New York’s housing crisis has gone too far when tenants have to risk their lives just to have a roof over their heads,” James said in a statement. “To prevent these problems in the future, we also need to make sure that the basement units are safe for human occupancy and regularly inspected. Overcoming the dual threat of climate change and a housing crisis will not be easy, but we must ensure that measures are in place to protect our neighbors and prevent a future disaster. “
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards also highlighted the affordable housing crisis in the city following the deadly floods while pushing for more infrastructure investment in neighborhoods that have been “historically left behind. account”.
“The reason people are in basement apartments is because New York City hasn’t really built affordable housing,” he told Pix11 on Friday morning. “I was a basement baby myself.… We lived in basements because it provided an affordable opportunity. So it was a failure on many levels, and we have to make sure we never come back again. here.”
ABC News’ Mark Crudele contributed to this report.
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