Common Sense: Illegal conversions
Make no mistake about it, illegal conversions of one, two and three family homes in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, as well as many other neighborhoods, into essentially multi-family Single Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings is a major threat to the quality of life as well as the health and safety of our communities.
It also is raising your property taxes by causing the overall market value of nearby homes to be propelled by developers paying disproportionately large amounts for properties that they illegally convert.
The problems caused by illegal conversions should be obvious. In addition to raising your property taxes, they are a strain on services, often unsafe from a fire and buildings perspective and slummy in nature. They even cause noticeable overcrowding in our local schools that are planned based on data that assumes a two or three-family house as reflected by certificates of occupancy do not have a dozen families living at the address.