Deborah Torres, right, talks to police officers in Queens, where three people died after their basement apartment flooded. Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP/Shutterstock Eight ...

For New York City Council Member Darma Diaz, like so many others, an unsafe basement apartment once served as the only attainable option for housing. After many families living in illegal basement ...

“Instead of turning a blind eye to the suffering of basement and cellar apartment dwellers, disproportionately low-income and from immigrant communities, we must find the political courage to face ...

A reader asks: I am living in a basement at [address withheld] and just wanted to know if it is legal. It is a walk-in basement and the situation I am facing living in the basement is unbearable. City ...

In an office building in downtown Manhattan, an 8-foot-long banner stretched across the length of a fluorescent-lit hallway. Five-inch-tall red letters indicated the location of an entrance to a ...

The horrific deaths of New Yorkers whose basement apartments flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida has shocked and surprised the nation and may well lead to pressure on building officials to crack ...

More than a dozen people were killed in storm-related incidents in New York City after the remnants of Hurricane Ida slammed the region. Many of the victims were killed in basement apartments. Now, ...

When Hurricane Ida blew through New York City in September 2021, it dumped more than half a foot of rain on Central Park in ...

The state Senate and the Assembly are close to passing legislation that would legalize the underground market of unregulated basement apartments in New York City. Legislators say these apartments ...

Marlene Hernandez moved from her two-bedroom apartment in Bushwick to an illegal basement apartment in East New York two years ago out of necessity. “I simply couldn’t afford Bushwick anymore, I had ...

Getting illegal basement apartments up to code is going to run up more than the Big Apple a large chunk of change. City Hall estimated it would take $13.7 billion to get the roughly 50,000 units up to ...