Gentile ties school overcrowding to illegal home conversions
What does home construction have to do with overcrowded classrooms in schools? A lot, if you ask Councilmember Vincent Gentile.
“School overcrowding can be a direct effect of illegal home conversion,” Gentile said. Here’s the logic behind his argument: A property owner who subdivides a two-family house into six-unit apartment house without city permits turns around and rents those units to families with children. The families more into a building that is listed in city records as being a two-family house when in reality it has become a six-unit dwelling. The children in those families attend the local public school.
The result is near catastrophic, according to Gentile.”We have more families that we otherwise would flooding our schools,” he said.
The problem of illegal home conversions has been a hot topic of conversation in Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and other southwest Brooklyn neighborhoods for several months. “It continues to be a major problem in our district,” said Ann Falutico, chairman of the Zoning and Land Use Committee of Community Board 10 (Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights).