A city pilot program to legalize and regulate basement apartments that could have been up and running by mid-June has not yet gotten off the ground.
Though the law regulating basement apartments went into effect June 16, city agencies have not finalized related rules. There is no way for interested homeowners to apply to the pilot program, and an online portal the Adams administration announced nearly a year ago has not yet materialized. Key questions about how the program will work remain unanswered.
The pilot program is only authorized until April 2029, which means that even if it began today, the program wouldnt run the full five years it was intended to.
“We’re now 15 months into the five-year window and that’s becoming increasingly a short window for homeowners to be able to act,” said Howard Slatkin, Executive Director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. “They have lots of information to process and decisions to make and finances to review in order to understand if this is something they can start. We need to give them as soon as possible all the information they need.”
He added that the neighborhoods covered by the pilot program – which do not contain most of the city’s basement apartments – represent a limited scope of where basement legalization can happen: “We have to make the most of what we’ve got.”
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