Rezoning And Overdevelopment Aren’t Always Good For A Community

I don’t take the same route to work every day. However, when I pass the same block a few days in a row, I see the same empty lot where a one-family house once stood and a boarded-up vacant property screams: “Here comes a four-family home!”
Thanks to City Councilman Lew Fidler, Canarsie is presently undergoing the city’s largest rezoning project to preserve the character of our community. Huge, multiple family dwellings cannot be built on property previously zoned for one- and two-family houses. Rezoning will hopefully deter developers from turning our “small-town” into an overcrowded place where everyone is literally on top of each other.

However, when you look in the classified sections of local newspapers, hundreds of residents are trying to rent rooms and illegal basement apartments. This is normally a positive thing for most neighborhoods, but not when zoning laws are overlooked.
If you recently purchased a two-family house in Canarsie and the basement was never renovated or furnished, the house was most likely always occupied by just two families. But when you decide to turn that basement into a habitable, though illegal, apartment and you rent it, it’s then occupied by three families! And if one of those three families rents a room or two in a new apartment — the residence becomes a four family home.
You can rezone, reconstruct and reorganize Canarsie however you’d like — but those who already live here in one- and two-family homes are bringing more people into the community and into their homes — illegally — and we don’t even suspect it’s taking place.


I agree that some of those gigantic condominiums look obtrusive and out of place in the middle of a block lined with the cute bungalows that have existed in our community for over a century.
My question to those objecting to more housing in Canarsie is: Would you rather the bungalow be bought by an absentee landlord, who illegally rents the rooms and a basement to a “family?” If each of the illegal occupants in that bungalow has a car, they are, in turn, crowding our streets, producing additional garbage and possibly endangering their neighbors with fire hazards.
There was a legal six-story house in The Bronx that caught fire on July 17, 2008, in which three children were injured. The incident left more than 200 people homeless and officials claimed the house was apparently not suited for so many residents.

Who’s to say that this can’t happen in a small twofamily home in Canarsie where all the rooms are unknowingly occupied/rented by people using portable heaters, air conditioners and other potentially hazardous devices? Will those landlords and homeowners ever obtain a Certificate of Occupancy from the Fire Department?

Yes, we’ve successfully fought for rezoning while many empty pits of land remain surrounded by planks of wood. But the next time you walk down a street in Canarsie — ask yourself how many people really live in that century-old single-family home.
Who knows, one day you might pass by a house and see an excessive number of people exiting like clowns emerging from a tiny car in a circus.
Those are the people who are a potential danger to you, your neighbors and our community.

http://www.canarsiecourier.com/news/2011-01-13/Letters|Opinion/OpEd.html