Q&A
Composition and history of the interagency working group for ADU legislation
0:40:43
·
4 min
Council Member Pierina Sanchez inquires about the interagency working group that helped draft the ADU legislation. Kim Darga provides a history of working groups related to basement and cellar apartments, while Constadino Sirakis adds information about external stakeholder involvement.
- The first working group emerged after the East New York rezoning to address basement and cellar apartment legalization
- Subsequent groups focused on flood risks following Hurricane Ida
- The most recent interagency working group included various city departments aiming to create clear, feasible, and safe codes for ADUs and basements
- External stakeholders were involved in earlier discussions, but not in the latest interagency group
- The Department of Buildings did not specifically consult external committees for the current provisions
Pierina Sanchez
0:40:43
Thank you.
0:40:47
K.
0:40:49
Moving moving to the working group that you described that, the interagency working group that helped to draft these these pieces of legislation.
0:41:00
Can you tell us when the working group was established?
0:41:03
Who was a part of the working group?
0:41:05
Specifically, did the city consult with external external folks, external staff, to the city, members of the industry, plumbers, different trades?
Kim Darga
0:41:17
So this is I'm gonna go back a little bit further.
0:41:22
This is definitely not the first working group we've had around basements and sellers.
0:41:29
In fact, the first one that I was part of, emerged, after the East New York rezoning when the community there said we want an option to be able to legalize basement and solar apartments in our neighborhood.
0:41:45
And so we worked with many agencies, with many external stakeholders, to, assess what was necessary in order, to do that.
0:41:55
To, assess what was necessary in order, to do that.
0:41:58
And we as part of that, city council passed legislation creating a code essentially, for basement and seller conversions.
0:42:10
That code is very similar to the one that we are looking at today with some modifications.
0:42:14
We're happy to talk about that more later.
0:42:17
But that was really kind of the the basis for looking a starting point for looking at what made sense here from a building code perspective.
0:42:29
So and then subsequently, unfortunately, Ida occurred and we had a lot of deaths in, some great units And so we have looked more closely at flood risk particularly, you know, a fire risk was early on part of our conversations, flood risk.
0:42:49
I think we put we realized we can't just think about coastal flood risk that we really do need to think about inland flood risk as well.
0:42:58
And then most recently, we met across all the agencies that I mentioned earlier, to look at how to create a clear, feasible, and safe code, both for ADUs and basements.
0:43:19
And so the goal here is having clarity to create a cost effective way to actually, do this work but not sacrifice safety in the process.
0:43:35
And so that is, that interagency working group, including the Department of Buildings, the Fire Department, the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, office of emergency management, and many others were part ultimately of how we got to where we got today.
0:43:55
Got it.
0:43:55
Thank you.
0:43:56
And and so were there external stakeholders to city agencies?
0:44:00
In this latest interagency group, there were not.
0:44:04
There were earlier external stakeholder discussions, but certainly, I will defer to my department from the Department of Buildings about whether or not any of the specific modifications at any point, came from external engagement.
Constadino (Gus) Sirakis
0:44:24
I, I don't believe any of these provisions were run by any of our, building committees, or from external stakeholders in particular, but just overall feedback that we've had as Kim described though on what goes into putting together an ADU in a basement or cellar or detached unit.
