Reply to RENTERS: No license, no rent

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm no proponent of illegal rentals, but I also think we also have to acknowledge that there's a wide latitude between units that lack a BBL because they have serious safety issues and units that lack a BBL because of issues that are not unsafe but are difficult to correct. A center beam in a rowhouse basement that's a few inches lower than the limit for rentals is not a fire hazard; virtually everyone who has such a beam and doesn't rent their basement uses it as finished space without issue. Utilities that are not separated by unit are not a fire hazard. On the other hand, overcrowding, insufficient egress, those are very serious issues.

What we should really have are a set of more limited restrictions for getting a BBL that are solely focused on fire safety, coupled with more stringent enforcement of those limited restrictions. Maybe some of the eliminated requirements could be replaced by disclosure requirements to tenants. The current regulations end up pulling a lot of units out of the rental market that might otherwise be available, and that tenants would be happy (and safe) to live in. This exacerbates our issues with affordable housing, and it probably actually makes much of the remaining housing less safe by ensuring that many rented units go uninspected to avoid the more onerous restrictions that have little to do with safety.[/quote]

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