Pols demand action from city to stop illegal home conversions
Bay Ridge’s elected officials have stepped up their efforts to fight the troubling trend of illegal home conversions in their community and in other southwest Brooklyn neighborhoods, charging that the practice is endangering lives.
State Sen. Marty Golden and Councilmember Vincent Gentile have both spoken out in recent days about their concerns over illegal home conversions – the practice in which property developers snatch up one and two-family homes on quiet residential streets and subdivide the houses to create multiple unit dwellings, often in violation of the city’s building codes.
The developers then rent the small apartments to families. As a result, as many as 25 people are living in a building that was originally a private home meant for one or, at most, two families.