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With fatal fires at a 2-decade high, NYC Council eyes ways to help victims
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Matt Katz
Published Apr 27, 2024
Modified Apr 29, 2024
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Courtesy of Anna Bessendorf
By
Matt Katz
Published Apr 27, 2024
Modified Apr 29, 2024
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The New York City Council is considering ways to help fire survivors in the days and months after a blaze, as the city grapples with the deadly threat of combustible e-bike batteries and its highest number of fire fatalities in decades.
The bipartisan package of eight bills and resolutions called “Back Home” is intended to help New Yorkers navigate what supporters and fire survivors say can be an opaque city bureaucracy that makes it hard to understand when, how and if renters can return to their homes. City records show that there were more civilian fire fatalities from all causes in the fiscal year that ran from July 2022 to June 2023 than in any year since 2003 to 2004.
The bills would, in part, create a city office to help displaced tenants and an online portal for fire victims to communicate with government agencies about fire inspections and moving back into their homes.
“The process after is really confusing for tenants about what their rights are and how quickly they can get back into their homes,” said Whitney Hu, director of civic engagement and policy at the nonprofit Churches United for Fair Housing. “We see them on TikTok, [asking], ‘What do I do?’”
Hu said some renters in lower-income communities who have limited alternate housing options have complained that their landlords don’t make post-fire repairs quickly enough. Hus also said that landlords and fire remediation companies sometimes throw out renters’ possessions without their knowledge after fires.
The bills come amid the emerging fire threat from lithium-ion batteries used in delivery workers’ e-bikes. The batteries can malfunction while charging and trigger fires that are difficult to extinguish. Last year, 18 people in New York died from such fires, according to the city fire department.
Democratic Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, one of the bills' sponsors, said her district in Brooklyn and Queens is among the districts that experience the most fires in the city, particularly during the winter, which is considered the city's "fire season." The Red Cross helps temporarily with immediate shelter, Gutiérrez said, but families often end up in shelters or on couches that are sometimes an hour or more away from their children's schools.
“It’s bad for the kids, It’s bad for the communities,” she said.
The parents often have trouble figuring out how they can return to their apartments, Gutiérrez said. While waiting for the churn of the bureaucracy and the repairs by landlords some families just give up and move to new neighborhoods.
“No one is really prepared for a fire. It’s traumatic. And the city should be moving things along,” she said.
Part of the impetus for the legislation comes from the experience of Gutiérrez’s chief of staff, Anna Bessendorf, whose Brooklyn apartment was heavily damaged in a fire in 2022.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of New Yorkers killed in e-bike battery fires in 2023.
Anna Bessendorf's Brooklyn apartment was heavily damaged in a fire in 2022.
Courtest of Anna Bessendorf
“I was awoken by firefighters banging down my door,” she said. The flames started between the roof and the ceiling in the apartment next door, and quickly spread. Bessendorf escaped her apartment, and then stood on the sidewalk with her neighbors “watching the firefighters destroying our apartments from all sides.”
“Our lives had changed forever,” she said.
Her furniture was destroyed and her clothing was covered in water and smoke. She said a fire remediation service charged her most of her renter’s insurance payout to clean her belongings, which she called exploitative.
Since Bessendorf had worked for the city for years, she figured she would understand the process for returning home.
“But even I was really thrown for a loop with this,” she said. “I didn’t have any understanding of what happens next when you’re displaced from a fire.”
Bessendorf used her experience to develop a residential fire emergency response guide, which is now available on the City Council’s website.
It explains what happens after the fire is extinguished: Fire marshals inspect the scene, the Department of Buildings determines whether the property should be vacated, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development inspects units for habitability.
The guide also lays out renters’ legal rights after fires, and lists resources for shelter.
Under one of the bills, the FDNY would distribute a version of that guide at fire scenes.
Other legislation in the package proposed by Gutiérrez and fellow Democrat Shekar Krishnan, which is also supported by Republican Joann Ariola, would:
- Open a city Office of Residential Displacement Remediation to centralize support for city residents who lose their homes following fires or natural disasters.
- Create an online portal for displaced residents and building owners. The portal would help tenants and landlords get answers from city officials to questions like: What’s the status of the post-fire inspection? Can I access my apartment and get my stuff? When can I move back in?
- Dispatch tenant relocation specialists to assist residents after vacate orders are issued due to fire-related damage.
- Require landlords submit documentation about efforts to make repairs when applying to demolish buildings after fires.
- Ask the state to prevent landlords from collecting rent indefinitely from insurance companies while delaying fire-damage repairs. That regulation would require separate state legislation to take effect.
- Study the possibility of creating a city-run renters’ insurance program.
There are about 25,000 structural fires every year in New York City, according to data from the mayor’s office.
Three of the bills had a hearing on Thursday. The others are expected to be reviewed by Council committees in the coming weeks.
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new york city
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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