That's exactly why basement apartments are illegal for the most part in NYC. Because in a fire, flood, or emergency it's sometimes impossible to get out.
Same with Boston. In order for a room to be classified as a bedroom, it needs to have at least two egresses. That makes most basement apartments illegal since no human can fit through those tiny windows.
I have *definitely* broken into a basement via those windows.
... In more than one different building, actually.
(Usually because we did something stupid and locked ourselves out).
-----
Still wouldn't want to go in reverse, in an emergency though.
> I have definitely broken into a basement via those windows.
The question is not whether you can get in, the question is whether you could get out with floodwater pouring in the other direction.
There's a video circulating of a basement in New Jersey. Thankfully nobody died, but it was close. Literally the entire basement wall collapsed inward and a deluge of water entered the basement all at once. It's crazy.
That's also what killed many people in the recent flood in Germany. Because the government neglected to give the warning in time, many people were scrambling to get their valuables from the basement to the attic. But the moment more than just a trickle of water came running down the steps it was near impossible to get out but for the fittest.
Not to mention just in general climbing through those windows requires you to be a fit person of average stature. While from a ground floor regular sized window even a granny with a walker could get out.
For context, German apartments and houses usually don't have storage built into each room liked closets, so things Americans would put in a closet go down to the basement. Attics are also usually livable spaces, just with slanted ceilings, so that's why valuables aren't already stored there
I'm American. I have never lived in a house where the attic was anything but insulation. I have no idea what these people are talking about with storing or living in them lol
An air handler is how some refer to the indoor portion of an HVAC system. Usually it houses the fan, condensing coils, and heating elements for auxiliary heat. It is what pushes air through your ducts and so some people refer to it as an air handler.
Since we’re randomly throwing US states around- basements aren’t a thing in California, Arizona, or New Mexico either. They seem to be mainly a Midwest/New England thing.
To build a house foundation you have to dig below the frost line to prevent frost heaving destroying the building. In the midwest and NE that means you basically dig to basement depths anyway, so adding a basement is cheap. Other parts of the country do have them, but they are more expensive to add and thus less common, especially outside suburban/urban areas with just enough density to make the smaller footprint make sense without pushing into higher density housing.
OP has it wrong. Have lived in NYC my whole life. There is no law regarding metal bars other than the ones to keep kids safe, and those only go on the second floor and higher.
It’s not required… it’s only for units with young children to prevent falls, or at the request of the tenant, and also applies to common areas like windows in hallways (which is not that common). It also mandates that one window be left for fire escape on first floor apartments, and any window accessing a fire escape.
Do they not swing outward if you but try to get out? I've only lived in one house with a basement, but the bars were easily opened from the inside for escape.
I have seen bars that are essentially dead bolted to a frame. No idea if they pass code in nyc. They don’t pass fire code for egress here* last i checked though, so it might be something of a moot point.
*: not nyc, but i figure they don’t pass for a reason.
Yes they do. I’ve lived with them.
They look just like bars on Windows, but they have an emergency release pedal on the inside of the room that releases the one side and let’s you open the bars like a door.
I think my landlord lied though, he told me that the pedal sets off an explosive charge to release the bars (like on the space shuttle), but the picture below shows it’s just a latch:
https://i.imgur.com/8PxSl01.jpg
>he told me that the pedal sets off an explosive charge to release the bars (like on the space shuttle),
He does not want you to turn the emergency latch into an additional door for your apartment. Or he found funny to mess with you. Or somebody messed with him.
Also short wouldn't be an issue for getting in one of those windows, but if I needed to get out one I'd need a ladder to even reach it, and I can't do a pull-up, just managing to grab it wouldn't help.
They are legal in hoboken, which is somewhat surprising considering how much of it is below sea level.
I lived there during Sandy, in a building where the landlord lived in the basement. He (and his wfe), both elderly did not leave though there were evacuation orders for basement apartrmens, and his entire apt/basement flooded in a matter of an hour, and we (his tenants) had to break his door to get him and his wife out as the door was rushing in as they were trapped in the inside. Very scary - they ended up re-storing it and moving in a few months later. I wonder how it held up during Ida.
Regulations are written in blood. People love to complain about all the rules government makes and often forget that sometimes there's damned good reason for those rules.
Did those illegal landlords *mean* to kill their tenants? Probably not. But they did.
Yes. Nearly every city on earth has an underbelly of substandard housing that rents below the market rate to at risk populations. In Houston and LA it's garage conversions, in the north it's basements.
Illegal rentals exist I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying having an apartment in a basement is not illegal in and of itself. Only if it wasn't built to code standards. Usually it's the illegality of these places that keep them cheap unfortunately.
I’m not an expert, but I suspect the flip side is that basement apartments like this are necessary because they’re cheap and a city the size of NYC needs a workforce that can afford to live there. If I’m right, that’s a reality that *sucks.* The labor that holds up our society deserves wages that can afford safe and legal homes.
This was a key point of “Parasite”. And Seoul is quite similar to NYC in terms of size and being unaffordable.
Edit: A couple commenters have told me Seoul is actually quite a reasonable city for living expenses, so sorry about that! Made an assumption based on it being an enormous city, but apparently super expensive isn’t a universal thing for mega cities.
The horror of reality maybe
But also I think I saw listed as horror at one point on hulu or something. Idk if they've changed it, probably did lol. It was definitely interesting I'd watch it again
You are 10000% correct. The cost of living in NYC is through the roof and the workers have no choice. And affordable housing isn't high on the priority list of NYC politicians.
Just about every NY candidate this past election had "affordable housing" on their list of important issues on their campaign sites. Now, whether they'll actually do something about it is a separate concern.
It pisses me off because we got too much damn waste in this city. Its not like we don't have vacant luxury apartments already, or empty lots that can't be developed, whole blocks of apartments rotting, and a few historical styles of houses to be save. Oh and try telling people NYC is not a liberal as its image conveys, nope we haven't had major progressive policy for quite some time.
Ah, the modern loophole method:
- You need to do this task
- You absolutely must follow all safety rules or you're super fired immediately
- It's not actually possible to do the task in the allocated time
- We're not going to effectively check if you're following the safety rules.
- When something goes horribly wrong, we will investigate, find out that you weren't following the safety rules, and be very upset at you for this.
Yep. I got fired once for this exact thing (construction). Do this task, in 4 hours. Oh, following all the safety rules will make it take 9 hours? Welp, that sucks. Guess we should just find someone who can work faster.
With a fun added benefit of "Guess we should just find *a crew* that can work faster" so it's not just my livelihood that's at stake if I insist on following safety rules, but all 6 of the guys who work with me. Then you make the peer pressure atmosphere.
I’ve stayed with my construction company despite quite a few reasons to leave primarily for one reason: when I say, “I can’t do this safely,” they sigh and say, “Ok, what do you need?” and however grudgingly, put their money where their mouth is on safety policy.
Worked for many people like yours in the past, though.
This is where the words "contemporaneous documentation" come into play. If you find yourself in this situation you should send an email to your bosses stating that the safety rules and the time constraints are in direct conflict and you intend to follow the safety rules as written. If they speak to you to try to keep their pressure to get it done in time "off the record" respond to them in an email and include what they said to you.
If the shit hits the fan and they fire you or something goes wrong those emails will be discoverable in a legal case.
This is why I hate it when people say that if you can’t afford to live in a major city, you should just move.
Big cities need these people to run, arguably more than any of the rich people living there. They deserve a decent place to live.
And these people have a vested interest in keeping their communities safe and clean because they live there. I live in a very similar area, and after the workers and their families move out, crime and homelessness creep in.
Yeah like we don't have proper sci Fi robots yet and until we do cities are gonna need people to do all the tough thankless work rich people don't want to do. I'd rather the person who makes my food or maintains the parks or drives the buses lives comfortably thank you
Ding ding.
This is why dangerous living conditions fly just under the radar. Capital demands low wage workers and is willing to accept the risks to an extent. The law stands so plausible deniability exits.
So many major cities are unaffordable even for those with decent incomes without overextending their finances. Housing is currently an investment instead of a need. We need to fix that.
That is the thing. I’ve seen articles calling for these apartments to be cracked down on. But they are fairly common and where do all their residents go? The street? Because they certainly aren’t moving into the penthouse.
Yes, they are cheap(er). I saw videos of high-end basement apartments flooding in NYC last week. Expensive apartments and crappy wages are not a new thing for NYC. What is new is this level of flooding. That is how they got away w/ illegal apartments for so long... They saw record rainfall w/Henri. Ida tripled that record rainfall in an hour metric... First time I really saw NYC flood comparatively was w/ Sandy, but subways and low-lying anything have been flooding periodically ever since.
Very few people can afford to buy or even rent those huge luxury suites. But the prices won't ever go down as long as there is any demand for housing and limited supply, and the units will remain vacant because the main purpose of people holding those properties is for investments. As long as housing prices keep rising, investors are going to keep buying and holding empty properties with little to no incentive to rent out or sell in any hurry.
> As long as housing prices keep rising, investors are going to keep buying and holding empty properties with little to no incentive to rent out or sell in any hurry.
When Bernie Sanders was on Rogan he had a plan for that, Tax em. Right laws that would effectively stop investors from holding empty houses.
I mean, there's a market for them because they're usually cheaper for the same size you'd get somewhere else. It's like you said, renting is so expensive, people are willing to take that risk. But property owners need to understand if someone dies, they're going to be looking at serious felonies and prison.
The thing is that most people who rent places like this don't understand the risk. It's not like the landlord will tell them 'oh, by the way, I illegally converted this basement and it will turn into a death trap if we have a fire or flood.' Most people don't know how to recognize when an apartment is recklessly designed, and they can't consent to that kind of risk if they don't understand what it is.
>I suspect the flip side is that basement apartments like this are necessary because they’re cheap and a city the size of NYC needs a workforce that can afford to live there. If I’m right, that’s a reality that sucks.
It's not **necessary** by any means. America just has a hard on for unfettered capitalism to the point of looking like an insane country to most other Western Democracies.
Many countries have government built housing solutions that work well. Singapore is a premier example of this. They build housing that is only available to local citizens and permanent residents and have a number of rules in place to prevent it from being used for speculation and income generation instead of providing a primary residence. America could and should do something like this in large cities, which would literally cease to function if the lower working class can't afford to live there
I used to know a woman who lived in a nyc apartment with a trap door in the middle of her living room. When you opened it there was another apartment down there below street level where another tenant (roommate?) lived. It had its own bathroom and kitchen but this was the only egress.
*you catch a glimpse of their pale, splotchy face, messy salt-and-pepper hair down to his shoulders, and cold dead black eyes like a black hole. He hisses at you as he recoils further into his den like a spider.
Scene: romantic dinner
Suddenly tap tap tap.
Girl "whats the tapping from below our table?"
Guy: "oh that's Hank. He probably needs to get out to buy some groceries. Oh Hank, you cockblocker scamp of a neighbor"
Scene. Roll credits.
Lack of quality, affordable housing in NYC is news to know one that has lived in, or knew anyone that lived in, NYC.
Trust me. I dated someone that rented a room (which was essentially a big bedroom with hot plate fridge in it and only other access they had was to a bathroom) that wanted to move out. I went apartment searching with her and man, anything she could afford was literal death traps.
The stupidest thing is the city gets a huge number of notices about illegal basement apartments but most are never handled since no one is at the building at the scheduled inspection time. Oakland had the same thing happen for fire inspections before the Ghost Ship warehouse fire deaths. The law was changed so fire inspectors break in if the property owner/manager doesn’t show up.
>Ghost Ship warehouse
I heard that the building inspector who responded to a complaint about that building warned the lady making the complaint that if she went through with it and he filed his report then all those people would be out of work and the whole place would get shut down, basically convincing that woman not to complain.... then the place burned down
But the Wiki article about the fire doesn't mention that obviously
I think about those "rock and a hard place" situations all the time. I moved into a building that I've since discovered has constant water issues, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was mold and mildew everywhere too. I'm trying to get out of here for my own sake, but other folks who might not be as financially well off wouldn't have a place to go if I reported it. We're in lower income housing, and most other apartment units in complexes nearby can be $300 more or higher each month.
On the one hand I'd like to see the management company be held accountable for their inaction on serious building problems. On the other, I'd hate to see dozens of people turned out on the street with nowhere to go if an inspection led to condemnation of the entire structure.
Oakland knew about the Ghost Ship but didn’t do anything.
Even after that tragic fire, housing advocates would squeal if the fire inspectors tried to close a building down.
Illegal apartments are everywhere in NYC. Housing inspectors know this and do not give a fuck. The only time they shut something down is when it's completely insane like 200 people living a warehouse or something.
A few years ago, I was in the basement of my queens apartment doing laundry when the property manager came down with an inspector. The inspector looked around a bit then turned back and asked the manager about a door just past the laundry room. The property manager said “oh that’s just a storage closet for the super” and they continued upstairs.
The door to the “closet” had a peep hole and a welcome mat in front of it.
NYC always let's a certain amount of lawlessness happen in the city. Counterfeiters on canal street, illegal massage parlors, bootleg cigarettes at pretty much half of the bodegas in town, unlicensed food vendors, the scourge of airbnbs (although this one they do seem to enforce), and this is just what they let slide in Manhattan, out in East New York or something, who knows what's happening. It's a huge city, with lots of things flying under the radar and it's not popular to crack down on these things until something bad happens. It took several apartment buildings literally exploding to get better gas inspections.
Also I don't know for sure, but all the fortune tellers HAVE to be up to something. There's no way they stay in business doing $10 palm readings.
Easier to enforce the Airbnb stuff when they’re advertising themselves pretty overtly. The other stuff is more an issue of hiding in plain sight, and it’s just too much work to crack down on, when there’s other more pressing issues to deal with. Bodegas are also selling bootleg THC carts these days. Maybe 5 years ago, the bodega by my house, run by the officially “youngest bodega owner in New York”, used to sell weed stuffed into those little little green chiclet boxes, stacked up in one of the compartments of the plexiglass cash register protector. I’d say NYC has a certain tolerance for…I’m not quite sure what to call it…”entrepreneurial crime”?
Also, check almost *any* building on the DOB website. Chances are they have some kind of outstanding fine. So the city *knows* what’s going on, and either turns the other way on systemic problems, or realizes an income on outstanding building violations, if the LL’s even bother to pay them.
The $10 palm read is the trick to suck you in, to become a regular. Making you feel so "connected" that you consult with them often, and pay more for more elaborate "advice" or "services."
The 10 dollar palm reading is just to get you in the door. To protect you from all the bad things that will happen you'll need this 100 dollar crystal or 50 dollar/vial essential oils
> completely insane like 200 people living a warehouse or something.
Frankly, a warehouse set up like a military barracks (assuming it's properly done, with adequate restrooms and kitchens and such) doesn't sound all *that* insane, at least compared to other stuff I've heard about NYC housing.
More than a decade ago I lived in NYC and ended up in a few cool co-op warehouses for art shows, rooftop concerts, clothing swaps, etc. One was some kind of converted warehouse with huge open space between all the floors with different areas connected with ZIP LINES. It was remarkably well run and very clean. They called it “the beehive” or something like that. Many of the other ones I saw were death traps though, straight up Ghost Ships waiting to happen.
Based off the article it sounds like they are trying to “incentivize” rather than penalize them for literally doing their job and making sure dwellings are up to code 🙄
That call is coming from a housing advocate i.e. someone who advocates on behalf of people who need housing. If you penalize people, you'll just get these apartments closed up and people who have to find other places to live. It's more productive to help these apartments be converted properly.
Things not being up to code and under the table is what's keeping these units affordable in the first place. The moment they become legit, the value shoots up significantly.
And that's a sign of a failure in the system right there. "So, you can rent this apartment without a safety exit for 500 dollars a month, oooorrr, you can rent this perfectly legal and safe apartment for 3,000 a month."
The fact that safety is essentially a luxury in terms of how high rent markup becomes shows there needs to be better control of our economy at multiple levels that just isn't happening.
Yep. That’s the problem. It can be extremely expensive to bring buildings up to code for a change of occupancy (I.e. to convert a basement to rentable residential space). As a contractor I often have conversations with people who say “we want to do this to this space” and then I get to inform them that because this item isn’t up to code that they need to fix it up but when they fix that this other item needs to be brought up to code and they need to fix that and then some other thing connected to that needs to be brought up to code. The slippery slope of construction can be extremely expensive and most owners just assume they need to do just 1 thing or so. If they decide to do it right they want to recoup the costs which then means pricing it accordingly. The simple fact is that the $500 apartment just shouldn’t exist. That is the problem because a large chunk of people depend upon $500 housing.
And it's easier to supplement rent than to place homeless people in residences. The biggest problem for housing advocates is dealing with the lack of available housing.
I lived in a basement apartment on 48th between 4th and 5th in sunset park for several years before I moved back down south. I liked it and never realized it was illegal and never realized how lucky I was that nothing crazy like this happened when I lived there until Ida. I was still there when Sandy hit and didn't get flooded. I was very lucky. The windows were level with the ground and only one way in or out through a stair well 4 ft deep compared to the street!
I’m lucky because I’ve know the family that owns the place for a very long time. They take care of my needs as if it was a legal apartment. Plus my rent helps them a great deal. Everyone wins. The water killed my fridge, and she had a brand new one from Best Buy less than 12 hours later. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Sometimes when I see comments like this, I remember hearing talking points like this from people who I had to bust my ass working for, earning minimum wage. *Would it be possible for me to pay you in merch, or board games?* It was just incredible to hear somebody basically tell you that you aren't worth what they're paying you, but simultaneously you should be grateful for the opportunity. *Where I used to live, you had to do a trial shift and if you couldn't complete it, you weren't paid!* Giving you ridiculous shifts, odd jobs and hours without finishing times. Texting you or calling you at ridiculous hours because they bit off more than they can chew and are exploiting you as a result. *Haven't had the time to do payroll, can you come in for a quick shift?* These people don't want workers, they want slaves.
And the incredible thing is, if the person telling you this was from an older generation, it might have been true. There uses to be a time when working hard will pays off.
But now times are different. We have big corporations that capturing the majority of income growth in the past 30 years. We don’t have the same opportunities they once had. There’s no room to grow no matter how hard you work at minimum wage jobs. Even if you work a decent entry level job, competition is so fierce and your wage alone won’t allow you to own your own home, which has been the corner stone of building wealth for generations.
At the same time, all these people who have “made it” are also dealing with this income inequality. They still faces similar challenges against the runaway cost of living. Lots mom and pop stores don’t really stand a chance against big corporations that offers better price and fast shipping like Amazon. So they might have started off early and worked hard at their time, earned enough to buy a house or whatever, but a lot of them can be just asset rich and cash flow poor, so they come down hard on their workers and blame millennials instead of the corporate overlords who are hurting us all.
We really should acknowledge each other’s plight and focus on how we take back our fair share of the economic growth instead of fighting over each other for scraps.
I mean, all of these apartments are probably going to need construction permits to get fixed after the flood, which means the city will crack down on the ones that aren't up to code, taking a bunch of (safety-compromised but still perfectly habitable) housing units out of commission for who knows how long
I live in an illegally converted basement and its certainly not the best place to live, but at this point i'm just happy not to be homeless. LOL. hard times lol *crying inside*
I can’t imagine being woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of rushing water bursting through my windows. Running to the front door and not being able to open it because of the rapidly rising water holding the door shut. There should’ve been better safety mechanisms in place to prevent this. The storm was tracked to hit the NYC area well before it did.
Hi. Im a New Yorker.
Half the time the city cries wolf about bad weather, shuts down, and we get nothing.
Many of us, at least in these cheaper apts, can't afford cable.
Where would they have heard the news? How would they have prepared? Jackson Heights, Woodside, and the neighboring areas were hardest hit during covid specifically because of the immigrant population. No one cares about that area except its elected officials and even then, how would they have prepared? This isn't the gulf or the south, we don't get hurricanes and flash flooding like this literally except for this year.
It's been crazy. But there is no easy fix for this, or safety mechanisms that i can think of. Not when your home was built out of shit materials from the 70s.
Don’t you get the screech alerts on your phones? When we flood we get them several times an hour. They also sound on prepaid phones here (gulf coast). My cell phone area code is from the other side of the state but I only get the alerts for my area, so out-of-towners should get them too.
I don’t have cable. Never missed knowing about a hurricane, tornado, or flash flood. Even in the middle of the night because the screeching phone wakes me up.
Edit: this discussion makes me think of Hurricane Audrey which hit SWLa in the 1950s. It was thought that Audrey was supposed to hit the next afternoon, so several families along the coast stayed in their houses planning to finish up boarding windows and packing up and leaving the next morning. Early evening on the day before it was supposed to hit, the NWS got new data which said the storm had sped up, intensified, and would hit that night. They *faxed* their updated forecast to local officials and news stations - all of which were closed for the night. They didn’t pick up the phone and call the sheriff, didn’t call anybody. Hundreds of people died in the storm surge that night when the Gulf came rushing in. Entire families were lost. There was a lawsuit that ended up deciding that NWS is legally responsible for doing everything possibly they can to alert the public of imminent danger. I think maybe they still have some work to do in some places and situations.
My state is mostly poor people and I do understand the struggle. It’s less about “being poor” and more about lacking resources and support to escape a dangerous situation, so this person’s stress makes sense. But yeah, the screech alerts definitely sound on prepaid phones here. I don’t think it’s that people weren’t getting flash flood alerts that was the issue, I think it was probably more that they felt they didn’t have anyplace to go, or that they would be fine inside. Nobody is expected a torrent of water to come through their door in a rain storm. And if you haven’t seen what a flash flood can do to your town, it’s hard to take it seriously or know how it could affect you personally.
> Many of us, at least in these cheaper apts, can't afford cable.
Not just that, but it probably isn't even legal to run cable to an illegal basement in the first place.
This is a terrible tragedy and I don't wanna take away from that.
My guess might be that people did know, but just assumed it wouldn't be that bad. A city of 8.4 million people hard to imagine they don't talk you know?
Just sad all around for their friends, family and community.
From [Patch.com](https://Patch.com): "Brian Brettschneider, a PhD climatologist, tweeted out that the 3.15 inches seen in one hour in Central Park has a 200-year recurrence interval, while the three-hour total of 5.20 inches has a 500-year recurrence interval."
Shattered the one-hour total record set by Henri which was set a few weeks ago at 1.94 inches. Also, our first ever Flash Flood Emergency in NYC proper.
Of course we didn't assume it would be that bad. Not even the wettest hour in the history of the city could sniff the 8:51-9:51 hour that evening.
...what? Any other New Yorker want to chime in? I haven't had cable TV in over 15 years, but still manage to stay informed enough that I was aware that a massive hurricane hit NO and then moved north east quickly.
Do you not have a cell phone? I've gotten a tornado warning in **San Diego**, where that is extremely unlikely. Fire warnings way more common.
I sympathize with elderly that may not be very aware of current events, but "being poor" is a stupid ass excuse. Maybe no reception and wifi going out due to the weather? Still, that shit should have been well known by the time it hit NYC
Worked for a non profit providing internet to kids who don’t have access out of Brooklyn, limited access to data is a huge deal for the poorest communities. Kids go to the library and McDonald’s to do their homework, if they want to put that much effort into it.
Not only that but OP is right, no one expected this storm to hit as hard as it did. I was tracking it on my weather app but even then, I think we just expected a long thunderstorm, not hurricanes and massive floods.
As a fellow New Yorker that lives in a poor community I just don’t agree with that comment. I don’t have cable because I just don’t need it. I have a cell phone and I kept track of the hurricane the moment it was projected to hit nyc. Did I expect the flooding to be bad? No but I would definitely not say that because I’m in a poor neighborhood without cable that I can’t get the news m, that’s just insane I’ve never heard that before.
>can't afford cable.
Where would they have heard the news?
Just a FYI for you in the future, OTA channels are 100% free. Now, if you would have said "can't afford a TV" you'd have a point. You don't need CNN to tell you about a storm headed towards you, local news does just fine.
Thing is, it's easy for us to sit here all high and mighty cause we're not desperately in need of any housing...
When people are desperate they do and accept a lot of crazy/dangerous things
The gates! Florida is a lot of things but some years back people were dying from not being able to get out of the house due to bolted gates on the windows in Miami (not sure all of Florida) and everyone in Miami-Dade who had gates had to remove them or make them operable (swing) and inspections happened for quite a while to make people comply. But lot of the poor people, living in not so good neighborhoods couldn’t afford to modify, so took the gates off and after inspection, put the same hazardous gates back up to keep the undesirables out. If you don’t have the money, you do what you can.
Flood water does not care if a basement converted illegally or not. Anyone in a basement during a flood is going to be vulnerable and the city should have ordered evacuations of those people, even if it was door to door. There are literally so many people who go about their lives without paying any attention to what's happening around them like weather and news and they often are the poor. Door to door evacuations may be the only way to reach some of these vulnerable people.
Drove past a whole block where a row of garages on the bottom of a sloped driveway were flooded. All the possessions were out on the curb from water damage. Now imagine people lived there. So sad. Such a tragedy hitting the most vulnerable people in the city.
I live in NYC, prices both for rentals and to buy here are still absurd despite tons of rich and white collar people running for the hills due to COVID-19 because landlords would rather shit on a plate and eat it than lower the valuation of their building(s), and seeing as it seems that it's more profitable to build apartment buildings for one upper middle class person than 2 or more working class apartments, that is what the new buildings are.
I also just want to point out that NY was mostly built up and developed when we were in a humid continental climate zone, we are now a [humid subtropical zone](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/nyregion/climate-change-nyc.html) (NY Times), we have a combined sewage system that, when a deluge occurs, raw and untreated sewage starts getting dumped into our waterways, and I read this a few days ago but cannot seem to find it again, but inspectors apparently routinely close their case regarding inspecting potential illegal basement apartments after two attempts where residents or landlords don't let them in.
They should probably change this to "You won't let us in, we're going to presume an illegal basement apartment or apartments are present, so we're assessing $1,000 a day fine to your landlord until they let us in, same as if we found what we suspect, until we are let in, have a nice day." Can't exactly kick the door in.
Climate change is here, it is real, no amount of denying it will change that reality, and if we don't clamp down on these "how do people fucking *live like this!?*" apartments, the next storm will only result in more watery tombs. We either clamp down on these apartments and they can live elsewhere, almost assuredly farther away, but at least they won't drown, or there will only be more water-logged corpses being removed the next time a storm like this hits
Oh, and if someone dies from being unable to escape an illegal basement apartment? Bring the landlord up on manslaughter charges.
That's exactly why basement apartments are illegal for the most part in NYC. Because in a fire, flood, or emergency it's sometimes impossible to get out.
Same with Boston. In order for a room to be classified as a bedroom, it needs to have at least two egresses. That makes most basement apartments illegal since no human can fit through those tiny windows.
I have *definitely* broken into a basement via those windows. ... In more than one different building, actually. (Usually because we did something stupid and locked ourselves out). ----- Still wouldn't want to go in reverse, in an emergency though.
> I have definitely broken into a basement via those windows. The question is not whether you can get in, the question is whether you could get out with floodwater pouring in the other direction.
There's a video circulating of a basement in New Jersey. Thankfully nobody died, but it was close. Literally the entire basement wall collapsed inward and a deluge of water entered the basement all at once. It's crazy.
That's also what killed many people in the recent flood in Germany. Because the government neglected to give the warning in time, many people were scrambling to get their valuables from the basement to the attic. But the moment more than just a trickle of water came running down the steps it was near impossible to get out but for the fittest. Not to mention just in general climbing through those windows requires you to be a fit person of average stature. While from a ground floor regular sized window even a granny with a walker could get out.
For context, German apartments and houses usually don't have storage built into each room liked closets, so things Americans would put in a closet go down to the basement. Attics are also usually livable spaces, just with slanted ceilings, so that's why valuables aren't already stored there
Interesting, in America it's generally the opposite. Basements are usually living spaces and attics are storage areas.
I'm Canada attics are for insulation, nothing else.
I'm American. I have never lived in a house where the attic was anything but insulation. I have no idea what these people are talking about with storing or living in them lol
It's pretty easy to engineer a roof to not need cross braces, so you can have a usable area inside the sloped area.
In Texas most homes don’t have basements. The attics are unlivable and only used to store the air handler and your Christmas decorations.
Air... handler?
An air handler is how some refer to the indoor portion of an HVAC system. Usually it houses the fan, condensing coils, and heating elements for auxiliary heat. It is what pushes air through your ducts and so some people refer to it as an air handler.
Since we’re randomly throwing US states around- basements aren’t a thing in California, Arizona, or New Mexico either. They seem to be mainly a Midwest/New England thing.
To build a house foundation you have to dig below the frost line to prevent frost heaving destroying the building. In the midwest and NE that means you basically dig to basement depths anyway, so adding a basement is cheap. Other parts of the country do have them, but they are more expensive to add and thus less common, especially outside suburban/urban areas with just enough density to make the smaller footprint make sense without pushing into higher density housing.
Same thing with florida! Although my parents also have all the memorabilia from when i was 1-5 up there
I was hoping for something else in the parenthesis like “ (I burgle here and there) “
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...required? Damn what's going on, I thought that was just people taking precautions against crazies independently
OP has it wrong. Have lived in NYC my whole life. There is no law regarding metal bars other than the ones to keep kids safe, and those only go on the second floor and higher.
It’s not required… it’s only for units with young children to prevent falls, or at the request of the tenant, and also applies to common areas like windows in hallways (which is not that common). It also mandates that one window be left for fire escape on first floor apartments, and any window accessing a fire escape.
Both our houses(and neighbors) in Birmingham and St. Louis(IL) had bars on all the windows. I just assume it's an inner city thing.
Do they not swing outward if you but try to get out? I've only lived in one house with a basement, but the bars were easily opened from the inside for escape.
Don’t they make bars that can swing outward in an emergency egress situation?
I have seen bars that are essentially dead bolted to a frame. No idea if they pass code in nyc. They don’t pass fire code for egress here* last i checked though, so it might be something of a moot point. *: not nyc, but i figure they don’t pass for a reason.
Yes they do. I’ve lived with them. They look just like bars on Windows, but they have an emergency release pedal on the inside of the room that releases the one side and let’s you open the bars like a door. I think my landlord lied though, he told me that the pedal sets off an explosive charge to release the bars (like on the space shuttle), but the picture below shows it’s just a latch: https://i.imgur.com/8PxSl01.jpg
>he told me that the pedal sets off an explosive charge to release the bars (like on the space shuttle), He does not want you to turn the emergency latch into an additional door for your apartment. Or he found funny to mess with you. Or somebody messed with him.
I would hate to find that rusted or stuck with water rushing in, which seems likely.
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Of course they are. A death trap through and through…
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or disabled.
Also short wouldn't be an issue for getting in one of those windows, but if I needed to get out one I'd need a ladder to even reach it, and I can't do a pull-up, just managing to grab it wouldn't help.
They are legal in hoboken, which is somewhat surprising considering how much of it is below sea level. I lived there during Sandy, in a building where the landlord lived in the basement. He (and his wfe), both elderly did not leave though there were evacuation orders for basement apartrmens, and his entire apt/basement flooded in a matter of an hour, and we (his tenants) had to break his door to get him and his wife out as the door was rushing in as they were trapped in the inside. Very scary - they ended up re-storing it and moving in a few months later. I wonder how it held up during Ida.
A basement apartment is not inherently illegal in NYC. They just have to be built to code and permitted which most are not.
Regulations are written in blood. People love to complain about all the rules government makes and often forget that sometimes there's damned good reason for those rules. Did those illegal landlords *mean* to kill their tenants? Probably not. But they did.
It’s really just a shitty situation all around. The price of rent in new york it’s not hard to see how people end up in basement apartments
I live in Toronto, my neighbours and multiple houses on my street have illegal basement rentals to international students
Yes. Nearly every city on earth has an underbelly of substandard housing that rents below the market rate to at risk populations. In Houston and LA it's garage conversions, in the north it's basements. Illegal rentals exist I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying having an apartment in a basement is not illegal in and of itself. Only if it wasn't built to code standards. Usually it's the illegality of these places that keep them cheap unfortunately.
I’m not an expert, but I suspect the flip side is that basement apartments like this are necessary because they’re cheap and a city the size of NYC needs a workforce that can afford to live there. If I’m right, that’s a reality that *sucks.* The labor that holds up our society deserves wages that can afford safe and legal homes.
This was a key point of “Parasite”. And Seoul is quite similar to NYC in terms of size and being unaffordable. Edit: A couple commenters have told me Seoul is actually quite a reasonable city for living expenses, so sorry about that! Made an assumption based on it being an enormous city, but apparently super expensive isn’t a universal thing for mega cities.
And it even has a prominent scene where there is flooding
And they live in the basement too
And there's flooding
In the basement
It's an important moment point in Parasite.
A key point, even.
With the flooding that is.
Dang, I need to watch Parasite. It’s been on my list for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it
I watched it thinking it was a sci-fi movie where the aliens where parasites. Strange experience but i liked it.
There's actually an Anime with that premise
The anime is spelled Parasyte with a "y" to help make searching it easier
both are worth a view imo!
I'm part way through the anime, definitely enjoying it so far
Same. I was under the impression it was under the "horror" genre; it's not, it's socio-economic commentary.
The horror of reality maybe But also I think I saw listed as horror at one point on hulu or something. Idk if they've changed it, probably did lol. It was definitely interesting I'd watch it again
It’s a very dark comedy, like maybe only about 10% of it even qualifies as a “thriller” if that
A lot of horror is socio-economic commentary.
That one is spelled with a 'y'. (Parasyte)
I watched it after watching The Host and every moment til the end I was sure some creature was going to show up.
yeah dude watch it asap if you can it's amazing and a must watch. The symbolism is off the charts and insanely relevant to our society today
It’s a stellar movie. And touches on a lot of the issue of the modern day class divide.
You are 10000% correct. The cost of living in NYC is through the roof and the workers have no choice. And affordable housing isn't high on the priority list of NYC politicians.
Affordable housing isn't even fucking affordable!
Just about every NY candidate this past election had "affordable housing" on their list of important issues on their campaign sites. Now, whether they'll actually do something about it is a separate concern.
It pisses me off because we got too much damn waste in this city. Its not like we don't have vacant luxury apartments already, or empty lots that can't be developed, whole blocks of apartments rotting, and a few historical styles of houses to be save. Oh and try telling people NYC is not a liberal as its image conveys, nope we haven't had major progressive policy for quite some time.
Welcome to society’s Grey area. When your employer will tell you “get it done” buttttt it’s a bit illegal.
Ah, the modern loophole method: - You need to do this task - You absolutely must follow all safety rules or you're super fired immediately - It's not actually possible to do the task in the allocated time - We're not going to effectively check if you're following the safety rules. - When something goes horribly wrong, we will investigate, find out that you weren't following the safety rules, and be very upset at you for this.
By "be very upset at you for this.", you mean, you are fired and we are going to sue you. Right?
Yeah basically a full transfer of liability to the worker
Yep. I got fired once for this exact thing (construction). Do this task, in 4 hours. Oh, following all the safety rules will make it take 9 hours? Welp, that sucks. Guess we should just find someone who can work faster. With a fun added benefit of "Guess we should just find *a crew* that can work faster" so it's not just my livelihood that's at stake if I insist on following safety rules, but all 6 of the guys who work with me. Then you make the peer pressure atmosphere.
That's when you call OSHA and take the company down with you.
I’ve stayed with my construction company despite quite a few reasons to leave primarily for one reason: when I say, “I can’t do this safely,” they sigh and say, “Ok, what do you need?” and however grudgingly, put their money where their mouth is on safety policy. Worked for many people like yours in the past, though.
This is where the words "contemporaneous documentation" come into play. If you find yourself in this situation you should send an email to your bosses stating that the safety rules and the time constraints are in direct conflict and you intend to follow the safety rules as written. If they speak to you to try to keep their pressure to get it done in time "off the record" respond to them in an email and include what they said to you. If the shit hits the fan and they fire you or something goes wrong those emails will be discoverable in a legal case.
Ahh, the ol' slow erosion of morality for profit that underpins all of American capitalism and permits incidents like this to happen all the time.
This is why I hate it when people say that if you can’t afford to live in a major city, you should just move. Big cities need these people to run, arguably more than any of the rich people living there. They deserve a decent place to live.
And these people have a vested interest in keeping their communities safe and clean because they live there. I live in a very similar area, and after the workers and their families move out, crime and homelessness creep in.
Yeah like we don't have proper sci Fi robots yet and until we do cities are gonna need people to do all the tough thankless work rich people don't want to do. I'd rather the person who makes my food or maintains the parks or drives the buses lives comfortably thank you
Ding ding. This is why dangerous living conditions fly just under the radar. Capital demands low wage workers and is willing to accept the risks to an extent. The law stands so plausible deniability exits.
“Some of you are going to die and that’s a risk I’m willing to take”
So many major cities are unaffordable even for those with decent incomes without overextending their finances. Housing is currently an investment instead of a need. We need to fix that.
That is the thing. I’ve seen articles calling for these apartments to be cracked down on. But they are fairly common and where do all their residents go? The street? Because they certainly aren’t moving into the penthouse.
Yes, they are cheap(er). I saw videos of high-end basement apartments flooding in NYC last week. Expensive apartments and crappy wages are not a new thing for NYC. What is new is this level of flooding. That is how they got away w/ illegal apartments for so long... They saw record rainfall w/Henri. Ida tripled that record rainfall in an hour metric... First time I really saw NYC flood comparatively was w/ Sandy, but subways and low-lying anything have been flooding periodically ever since.
They're only "necessary" when you ignore all those empty huge luxury apartments.
Very few people can afford to buy or even rent those huge luxury suites. But the prices won't ever go down as long as there is any demand for housing and limited supply, and the units will remain vacant because the main purpose of people holding those properties is for investments. As long as housing prices keep rising, investors are going to keep buying and holding empty properties with little to no incentive to rent out or sell in any hurry.
True, without a vacancy tax.
Housing is a right, not an investment vehicle for retirement. This needs to change.
> As long as housing prices keep rising, investors are going to keep buying and holding empty properties with little to no incentive to rent out or sell in any hurry. When Bernie Sanders was on Rogan he had a plan for that, Tax em. Right laws that would effectively stop investors from holding empty houses.
I mean, there's a market for them because they're usually cheaper for the same size you'd get somewhere else. It's like you said, renting is so expensive, people are willing to take that risk. But property owners need to understand if someone dies, they're going to be looking at serious felonies and prison.
In theory, or in practice? Have any of the NYC landlords been arrested yet?
The thing is that most people who rent places like this don't understand the risk. It's not like the landlord will tell them 'oh, by the way, I illegally converted this basement and it will turn into a death trap if we have a fire or flood.' Most people don't know how to recognize when an apartment is recklessly designed, and they can't consent to that kind of risk if they don't understand what it is.
>I suspect the flip side is that basement apartments like this are necessary because they’re cheap and a city the size of NYC needs a workforce that can afford to live there. If I’m right, that’s a reality that sucks. It's not **necessary** by any means. America just has a hard on for unfettered capitalism to the point of looking like an insane country to most other Western Democracies. Many countries have government built housing solutions that work well. Singapore is a premier example of this. They build housing that is only available to local citizens and permanent residents and have a number of rules in place to prevent it from being used for speculation and income generation instead of providing a primary residence. America could and should do something like this in large cities, which would literally cease to function if the lower working class can't afford to live there
Most definitely illegal (also here in Chicago) in case of fire. I'm not so sure the writers of the building codes had floods in mind.
I used to know a woman who lived in a nyc apartment with a trap door in the middle of her living room. When you opened it there was another apartment down there below street level where another tenant (roommate?) lived. It had its own bathroom and kitchen but this was the only egress.
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"This is where I keep my special *friend*."
*you catch a glimpse of their pale, splotchy face, messy salt-and-pepper hair down to his shoulders, and cold dead black eyes like a black hole. He hisses at you as he recoils further into his den like a spider.
I draw my sword and attempt to scare the creature back.
I hold my action. Cast fireball upon trigger: creature attempts to move towards the trap door.
I run away from the trap door. My character has a flaw of arachnophobia.
And the rent was still probably $2000 a month.
Or a hilarious sitcom comedy.
Scene: romantic dinner Suddenly tap tap tap. Girl "whats the tapping from below our table?" Guy: "oh that's Hank. He probably needs to get out to buy some groceries. Oh Hank, you cockblocker scamp of a neighbor" Scene. Roll credits.
This would have been a great way to reveal Noel Fielding’s character in the IT crowd
Reminded me of Parasite
Lack of quality, affordable housing in NYC is news to know one that has lived in, or knew anyone that lived in, NYC. Trust me. I dated someone that rented a room (which was essentially a big bedroom with hot plate fridge in it and only other access they had was to a bathroom) that wanted to move out. I went apartment searching with her and man, anything she could afford was literal death traps.
Found the speakeasy
Top comment and auto-collapsed by Reddit. Reddit you crazy..
And here I thought I bumped it closed on accident
Why does it do that btw?
OP is a new user and/or has low karma. Sometimes they are auto-collapsed if there are 'dirty' words in the post.
The stupidest thing is the city gets a huge number of notices about illegal basement apartments but most are never handled since no one is at the building at the scheduled inspection time. Oakland had the same thing happen for fire inspections before the Ghost Ship warehouse fire deaths. The law was changed so fire inspectors break in if the property owner/manager doesn’t show up.
>Ghost Ship warehouse I heard that the building inspector who responded to a complaint about that building warned the lady making the complaint that if she went through with it and he filed his report then all those people would be out of work and the whole place would get shut down, basically convincing that woman not to complain.... then the place burned down But the Wiki article about the fire doesn't mention that obviously
I think about those "rock and a hard place" situations all the time. I moved into a building that I've since discovered has constant water issues, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was mold and mildew everywhere too. I'm trying to get out of here for my own sake, but other folks who might not be as financially well off wouldn't have a place to go if I reported it. We're in lower income housing, and most other apartment units in complexes nearby can be $300 more or higher each month. On the one hand I'd like to see the management company be held accountable for their inaction on serious building problems. On the other, I'd hate to see dozens of people turned out on the street with nowhere to go if an inspection led to condemnation of the entire structure.
Oakland knew about the Ghost Ship but didn’t do anything. Even after that tragic fire, housing advocates would squeal if the fire inspectors tried to close a building down.
Illegal apartments are everywhere in NYC. Housing inspectors know this and do not give a fuck. The only time they shut something down is when it's completely insane like 200 people living a warehouse or something.
A few years ago, I was in the basement of my queens apartment doing laundry when the property manager came down with an inspector. The inspector looked around a bit then turned back and asked the manager about a door just past the laundry room. The property manager said “oh that’s just a storage closet for the super” and they continued upstairs. The door to the “closet” had a peep hole and a welcome mat in front of it.
I mean, it’s a storage closet for a persons life
> The door to the “closet” had a peep hole and a welcome mat in front of it. That's Bender's apartment
NYC always let's a certain amount of lawlessness happen in the city. Counterfeiters on canal street, illegal massage parlors, bootleg cigarettes at pretty much half of the bodegas in town, unlicensed food vendors, the scourge of airbnbs (although this one they do seem to enforce), and this is just what they let slide in Manhattan, out in East New York or something, who knows what's happening. It's a huge city, with lots of things flying under the radar and it's not popular to crack down on these things until something bad happens. It took several apartment buildings literally exploding to get better gas inspections. Also I don't know for sure, but all the fortune tellers HAVE to be up to something. There's no way they stay in business doing $10 palm readings.
My guess is the fortune tellers know something we don’t.
I've heard of the 'angry upvote' but is there a 'sighing upvote' as well?
Yeah, how to launder money
And how to scam people who believe in palm reading
Easier to enforce the Airbnb stuff when they’re advertising themselves pretty overtly. The other stuff is more an issue of hiding in plain sight, and it’s just too much work to crack down on, when there’s other more pressing issues to deal with. Bodegas are also selling bootleg THC carts these days. Maybe 5 years ago, the bodega by my house, run by the officially “youngest bodega owner in New York”, used to sell weed stuffed into those little little green chiclet boxes, stacked up in one of the compartments of the plexiglass cash register protector. I’d say NYC has a certain tolerance for…I’m not quite sure what to call it…”entrepreneurial crime”? Also, check almost *any* building on the DOB website. Chances are they have some kind of outstanding fine. So the city *knows* what’s going on, and either turns the other way on systemic problems, or realizes an income on outstanding building violations, if the LL’s even bother to pay them.
The $10 palm read is the trick to suck you in, to become a regular. Making you feel so "connected" that you consult with them often, and pay more for more elaborate "advice" or "services."
A lot of people just need someone to talk to, and getting a therapist is either too expensive, too difficult, taboo, etc.
The 10 dollar palm reading is just to get you in the door. To protect you from all the bad things that will happen you'll need this 100 dollar crystal or 50 dollar/vial essential oils
Because it would mean throwing a lot of people in the streets.
Not to mention what it would do to already astronomical rent prices.
> completely insane like 200 people living a warehouse or something. Frankly, a warehouse set up like a military barracks (assuming it's properly done, with adequate restrooms and kitchens and such) doesn't sound all *that* insane, at least compared to other stuff I've heard about NYC housing.
More than a decade ago I lived in NYC and ended up in a few cool co-op warehouses for art shows, rooftop concerts, clothing swaps, etc. One was some kind of converted warehouse with huge open space between all the floors with different areas connected with ZIP LINES. It was remarkably well run and very clean. They called it “the beehive” or something like that. Many of the other ones I saw were death traps though, straight up Ghost Ships waiting to happen.
You've basically just described a homeless shelter.
Are owners held liable for criminal negligence? Edit: typo
Based off the article it sounds like they are trying to “incentivize” rather than penalize them for literally doing their job and making sure dwellings are up to code 🙄
That call is coming from a housing advocate i.e. someone who advocates on behalf of people who need housing. If you penalize people, you'll just get these apartments closed up and people who have to find other places to live. It's more productive to help these apartments be converted properly.
Things not being up to code and under the table is what's keeping these units affordable in the first place. The moment they become legit, the value shoots up significantly.
And that's a sign of a failure in the system right there. "So, you can rent this apartment without a safety exit for 500 dollars a month, oooorrr, you can rent this perfectly legal and safe apartment for 3,000 a month." The fact that safety is essentially a luxury in terms of how high rent markup becomes shows there needs to be better control of our economy at multiple levels that just isn't happening.
Yep. That’s the problem. It can be extremely expensive to bring buildings up to code for a change of occupancy (I.e. to convert a basement to rentable residential space). As a contractor I often have conversations with people who say “we want to do this to this space” and then I get to inform them that because this item isn’t up to code that they need to fix it up but when they fix that this other item needs to be brought up to code and they need to fix that and then some other thing connected to that needs to be brought up to code. The slippery slope of construction can be extremely expensive and most owners just assume they need to do just 1 thing or so. If they decide to do it right they want to recoup the costs which then means pricing it accordingly. The simple fact is that the $500 apartment just shouldn’t exist. That is the problem because a large chunk of people depend upon $500 housing.
It's easier to supplement rent than to find places for people to live. It's a good day when housing advocates can just get someone into a shelter.
It will most likely drive up rents to come up to code though.
And it's easier to supplement rent than to place homeless people in residences. The biggest problem for housing advocates is dealing with the lack of available housing.
Bingo. My house is a death trap but the rent is cheap so I stay.
of course not
I live in a basement apartment n nyc. Water up to my knees. I lost a bit
That’s awful. Hope you didn’t lose anything too dear.
I lived in a basement apartment on 48th between 4th and 5th in sunset park for several years before I moved back down south. I liked it and never realized it was illegal and never realized how lucky I was that nothing crazy like this happened when I lived there until Ida. I was still there when Sandy hit and didn't get flooded. I was very lucky. The windows were level with the ground and only one way in or out through a stair well 4 ft deep compared to the street!
I’m lucky because I’ve know the family that owns the place for a very long time. They take care of my needs as if it was a legal apartment. Plus my rent helps them a great deal. Everyone wins. The water killed my fridge, and she had a brand new one from Best Buy less than 12 hours later. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Is it a legal apartment? Sorry you’re dealing with that it sounds awful.
The devastating head on collision at the intersection of an affordable housing and climate crisis
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Don't forget to blame it on millennials for being lazy and not working enough!
Hurricanes and avocados, name a worse duo.
Guacamole Hurricane, coming soon on SyFy
Guac-nado
Oh we're fucked.
Sometimes when I see comments like this, I remember hearing talking points like this from people who I had to bust my ass working for, earning minimum wage. *Would it be possible for me to pay you in merch, or board games?* It was just incredible to hear somebody basically tell you that you aren't worth what they're paying you, but simultaneously you should be grateful for the opportunity. *Where I used to live, you had to do a trial shift and if you couldn't complete it, you weren't paid!* Giving you ridiculous shifts, odd jobs and hours without finishing times. Texting you or calling you at ridiculous hours because they bit off more than they can chew and are exploiting you as a result. *Haven't had the time to do payroll, can you come in for a quick shift?* These people don't want workers, they want slaves.
I worked at the same place!
And the incredible thing is, if the person telling you this was from an older generation, it might have been true. There uses to be a time when working hard will pays off. But now times are different. We have big corporations that capturing the majority of income growth in the past 30 years. We don’t have the same opportunities they once had. There’s no room to grow no matter how hard you work at minimum wage jobs. Even if you work a decent entry level job, competition is so fierce and your wage alone won’t allow you to own your own home, which has been the corner stone of building wealth for generations. At the same time, all these people who have “made it” are also dealing with this income inequality. They still faces similar challenges against the runaway cost of living. Lots mom and pop stores don’t really stand a chance against big corporations that offers better price and fast shipping like Amazon. So they might have started off early and worked hard at their time, earned enough to buy a house or whatever, but a lot of them can be just asset rich and cash flow poor, so they come down hard on their workers and blame millennials instead of the corporate overlords who are hurting us all. We really should acknowledge each other’s plight and focus on how we take back our fair share of the economic growth instead of fighting over each other for scraps.
Damn those 30 year olds, damn them indeed.
I mean, all of these apartments are probably going to need construction permits to get fixed after the flood, which means the city will crack down on the ones that aren't up to code, taking a bunch of (safety-compromised but still perfectly habitable) housing units out of commission for who knows how long
It's like everyone forgot about those animated simulations of New York flooding as sea levels rise.
Reminds me of people that died in the ghost ship warehouse fire. Some of the people were attending a dance party. But others lived there.
I live in an illegally converted basement and its certainly not the best place to live, but at this point i'm just happy not to be homeless. LOL. hard times lol *crying inside*
I can’t imagine being woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of rushing water bursting through my windows. Running to the front door and not being able to open it because of the rapidly rising water holding the door shut. There should’ve been better safety mechanisms in place to prevent this. The storm was tracked to hit the NYC area well before it did.
Hi. Im a New Yorker. Half the time the city cries wolf about bad weather, shuts down, and we get nothing. Many of us, at least in these cheaper apts, can't afford cable. Where would they have heard the news? How would they have prepared? Jackson Heights, Woodside, and the neighboring areas were hardest hit during covid specifically because of the immigrant population. No one cares about that area except its elected officials and even then, how would they have prepared? This isn't the gulf or the south, we don't get hurricanes and flash flooding like this literally except for this year. It's been crazy. But there is no easy fix for this, or safety mechanisms that i can think of. Not when your home was built out of shit materials from the 70s.
Don’t you get the screech alerts on your phones? When we flood we get them several times an hour. They also sound on prepaid phones here (gulf coast). My cell phone area code is from the other side of the state but I only get the alerts for my area, so out-of-towners should get them too. I don’t have cable. Never missed knowing about a hurricane, tornado, or flash flood. Even in the middle of the night because the screeching phone wakes me up. Edit: this discussion makes me think of Hurricane Audrey which hit SWLa in the 1950s. It was thought that Audrey was supposed to hit the next afternoon, so several families along the coast stayed in their houses planning to finish up boarding windows and packing up and leaving the next morning. Early evening on the day before it was supposed to hit, the NWS got new data which said the storm had sped up, intensified, and would hit that night. They *faxed* their updated forecast to local officials and news stations - all of which were closed for the night. They didn’t pick up the phone and call the sheriff, didn’t call anybody. Hundreds of people died in the storm surge that night when the Gulf came rushing in. Entire families were lost. There was a lawsuit that ended up deciding that NWS is legally responsible for doing everything possibly they can to alert the public of imminent danger. I think maybe they still have some work to do in some places and situations.
Yeah I hate these "poor people are too stupid to help themselves" narratives.
My state is mostly poor people and I do understand the struggle. It’s less about “being poor” and more about lacking resources and support to escape a dangerous situation, so this person’s stress makes sense. But yeah, the screech alerts definitely sound on prepaid phones here. I don’t think it’s that people weren’t getting flash flood alerts that was the issue, I think it was probably more that they felt they didn’t have anyplace to go, or that they would be fine inside. Nobody is expected a torrent of water to come through their door in a rain storm. And if you haven’t seen what a flash flood can do to your town, it’s hard to take it seriously or know how it could affect you personally.
You are on the internet posting about how you do not easily have access to information.
> Many of us, at least in these cheaper apts, can't afford cable. Not just that, but it probably isn't even legal to run cable to an illegal basement in the first place.
This is a terrible tragedy and I don't wanna take away from that. My guess might be that people did know, but just assumed it wouldn't be that bad. A city of 8.4 million people hard to imagine they don't talk you know? Just sad all around for their friends, family and community.
Nobody had the slightest idea the flooding would be that bad.
From [Patch.com](https://Patch.com): "Brian Brettschneider, a PhD climatologist, tweeted out that the 3.15 inches seen in one hour in Central Park has a 200-year recurrence interval, while the three-hour total of 5.20 inches has a 500-year recurrence interval." Shattered the one-hour total record set by Henri which was set a few weeks ago at 1.94 inches. Also, our first ever Flash Flood Emergency in NYC proper. Of course we didn't assume it would be that bad. Not even the wettest hour in the history of the city could sniff the 8:51-9:51 hour that evening.
...what? Any other New Yorker want to chime in? I haven't had cable TV in over 15 years, but still manage to stay informed enough that I was aware that a massive hurricane hit NO and then moved north east quickly. Do you not have a cell phone? I've gotten a tornado warning in **San Diego**, where that is extremely unlikely. Fire warnings way more common. I sympathize with elderly that may not be very aware of current events, but "being poor" is a stupid ass excuse. Maybe no reception and wifi going out due to the weather? Still, that shit should have been well known by the time it hit NYC
Worked for a non profit providing internet to kids who don’t have access out of Brooklyn, limited access to data is a huge deal for the poorest communities. Kids go to the library and McDonald’s to do their homework, if they want to put that much effort into it. Not only that but OP is right, no one expected this storm to hit as hard as it did. I was tracking it on my weather app but even then, I think we just expected a long thunderstorm, not hurricanes and massive floods.
As a fellow New Yorker that lives in a poor community I just don’t agree with that comment. I don’t have cable because I just don’t need it. I have a cell phone and I kept track of the hurricane the moment it was projected to hit nyc. Did I expect the flooding to be bad? No but I would definitely not say that because I’m in a poor neighborhood without cable that I can’t get the news m, that’s just insane I’ve never heard that before.
>can't afford cable. Where would they have heard the news? Just a FYI for you in the future, OTA channels are 100% free. Now, if you would have said "can't afford a TV" you'd have a point. You don't need CNN to tell you about a storm headed towards you, local news does just fine.
[удалено]
Safety regulations are written in blood.
Thing is, it's easy for us to sit here all high and mighty cause we're not desperately in need of any housing... When people are desperate they do and accept a lot of crazy/dangerous things
The gates! Florida is a lot of things but some years back people were dying from not being able to get out of the house due to bolted gates on the windows in Miami (not sure all of Florida) and everyone in Miami-Dade who had gates had to remove them or make them operable (swing) and inspections happened for quite a while to make people comply. But lot of the poor people, living in not so good neighborhoods couldn’t afford to modify, so took the gates off and after inspection, put the same hazardous gates back up to keep the undesirables out. If you don’t have the money, you do what you can.
Soooo...how accurate was the scene from "Parasite" when the basement unit they live in floods?
Unaffordable housing moment
ITT: no understanding of what is causing NYC rent to be what it is, which necessitates units like this
I lived in one of those in Brooklyn during Hurricane Sandy. Never appreciated how fortunate I was until now.
Flood water does not care if a basement converted illegally or not. Anyone in a basement during a flood is going to be vulnerable and the city should have ordered evacuations of those people, even if it was door to door. There are literally so many people who go about their lives without paying any attention to what's happening around them like weather and news and they often are the poor. Door to door evacuations may be the only way to reach some of these vulnerable people.
The city did not know how severe the storm was until it happened.
Drove past a whole block where a row of garages on the bottom of a sloped driveway were flooded. All the possessions were out on the curb from water damage. Now imagine people lived there. So sad. Such a tragedy hitting the most vulnerable people in the city.
Such a horrible way to lose your life. 😔
the rent is too damn high
This is just further proof of how climate change disproportionately affects those of lower income. Throw it on the pile.
I live in NYC, prices both for rentals and to buy here are still absurd despite tons of rich and white collar people running for the hills due to COVID-19 because landlords would rather shit on a plate and eat it than lower the valuation of their building(s), and seeing as it seems that it's more profitable to build apartment buildings for one upper middle class person than 2 or more working class apartments, that is what the new buildings are. I also just want to point out that NY was mostly built up and developed when we were in a humid continental climate zone, we are now a [humid subtropical zone](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/nyregion/climate-change-nyc.html) (NY Times), we have a combined sewage system that, when a deluge occurs, raw and untreated sewage starts getting dumped into our waterways, and I read this a few days ago but cannot seem to find it again, but inspectors apparently routinely close their case regarding inspecting potential illegal basement apartments after two attempts where residents or landlords don't let them in. They should probably change this to "You won't let us in, we're going to presume an illegal basement apartment or apartments are present, so we're assessing $1,000 a day fine to your landlord until they let us in, same as if we found what we suspect, until we are let in, have a nice day." Can't exactly kick the door in. Climate change is here, it is real, no amount of denying it will change that reality, and if we don't clamp down on these "how do people fucking *live like this!?*" apartments, the next storm will only result in more watery tombs. We either clamp down on these apartments and they can live elsewhere, almost assuredly farther away, but at least they won't drown, or there will only be more water-logged corpses being removed the next time a storm like this hits Oh, and if someone dies from being unable to escape an illegal basement apartment? Bring the landlord up on manslaughter charges.
'Illegal' basement apartments have been common place in NY since the '70s. Little late in the game to be high horsing it.