{"id":254400,"date":"2026-06-03T22:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254400\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:40:08","slug":"fdny-fires-spreading-across-new-yorks-rent-stabilized-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/254400\/","title":{"rendered":"FDNY: Fires Spreading Across New York’s Rent-Stabilized Buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bronx<\/a>\u00a0has ignited again, and the New York Fire Department\u2019s leadership says the borough\u2019s aging housing stock is to blame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a city council hearing this week,\u00a0FDNY<\/a>\u00a0officials testified that there were 27 multi-alarm fires in Bronx properties through May 13, roughly double the number of incidents in prior years.<\/p>\n

\u201cElectrical fires have been consistently the leading cause of fire within the city,\u201d FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Flynn said. \u201cOur buildings continue to get older and older, and we continue to see these electrical fires.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n 464 Clinton Ave., a rent-stabilized building in Brooklyn, caught fire in February, affecting 24 apartments.\n <\/p>\n

There were 16 multi-alarm fires within the same time period in 2025 and 12 in 2024. Multi-alarm fires are considered severe and difficult to contain and often occur in violation-ridden buildings.<\/p>\n

Just days before the hearing, a man died after a fire broke out in a Morris Heights apartment<\/a>\u00a0building. Last year, the building had 13 violations for defective and missing smoke alarms, Council Member Pierina Sanchez, who represents the area, said during the hearing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese tragedies are the result of decades of deferred maintenance, disinvestment, and systems that too often respond after the harm has already happened,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cThe preservation work ahead of us must be sharper, more targeted, and more accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez, who also serves as chair of the Committee on Housing and Buildings, brought up the spike in incidents with both FDNY and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development<\/a> officials during their testimony on the Mamdani administration\u2019s proposed executive budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrograms like Article 11s, J-51s, every single preservation tool that we have in the city of New York must be evaluated through the simple lens of whether they are stabilizing buildings, protecting tenants, improving conditions and saving lives,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n

After an apartment fire killed four people in Inwood<\/a> last month, it was discovered that the landlords had racked up 1,300 housing code violations across their portfolio. The rent-stabilized building at 207 Dyckman St.<\/a>\u00a0had 117 open violations at the time, and was later hit with additional citations<\/a>, including for padlocks on doors leading to fire escape exits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

FDNY officials said the agency is working with the Department of Buildings to find ways to speed up response times as well as to ensure that violations are issued to property owners both before and after a fire occurs. It has also organized educational campaigns to alert tenants to potential issues, such as missing smoke alarms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Tuesday\u2019s hearing, HPD Commissioner Dina Levy<\/a> said the city is further analyzing incident data to \u201cbetter understand what is driving this pattern to determine whether landlord non-compliance is a contributing factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the hearings, New York Apartment Association<\/a> CEO Kenny Burgos<\/a> said the spike is because \u201cthousands of buildings in the Bronx are currently bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFire is a building owner\u2019s worst fear. They do whatever they can to prevent it from happening,\u201d Burgos said in a statement. \u201cSo, we are alarmed by the growing number of fires in the Bronx. But we are not surprised. When a building is more than 100 years old and rents don\u2019t cover operating expenses, it becomes nearly impossible to run it properly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n Fires destroyed 80% of the South Bronx’s housing stock in the 1970s and 1980s.\n <\/p>\n

The Bronx has the largest concentration of rent-stabilized housing due to the age of its building stock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, which implemented rent control on multifamily properties built before its passage, alongside redlining practices and economic divestment, contributed to the infamous Bronx fires. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s,\u00a080% of housing in the South Bronx<\/a>\u00a0was lost to arson committed by landlords seeking insurance payouts.<\/p>\n

Property owner groups attribute current neglect in rent-stabilized properties to the\u00a0Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019<\/a>, which limited the ways that landlords could raise rents. Property values have plummeted as a result, while inflation has risen, causing owners to struggle with\u00a0mortgage payments and maintenance costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While net operating income has continued to rise in other boroughs, where there are more market-rate units to subsidize regulated units within the same building, it has already dropped into the negatives in the Bronx,\u00a0according to the Rent Guidelines Board<\/a>. NOI does not include debt payments.<\/p>\n

Buildings in which 75% or more units are stabilized account for 57% of the most severe violations, with at least 10 Class C violations,\u00a0according to a report<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Real Estate Board of New York<\/a>. Just 1% of buildings not subject to any rent control have such violations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does feel like the Bronx is burning again,\u201d Sanchez said on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sanchez additionally questioned how building inspections impact tax abatements, grants and other city-backed funding for landlords.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not feel like what we’re getting on the council, the scopes of work that we’re approving for tax incentives, are not covering these electrical causes of fires,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n

In his budget and\u00a0recently released housing plan<\/a>, Mayor\u00a0Zohran Mamdani<\/a>\u00a0has proposed increasing enforcement, including launching criminal investigations and exploring more pathways to seize problem buildings from their owners.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0rent freeze<\/a>\u00a0was also a central pillar of his campaign and has become\u00a0a growing possibility<\/a>\u00a0in recent months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A\u00a0Moody\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0report released on Wednesday found that a five-year stabilized rent freeze would push only 6% of\u00a0CMBS<\/a>\u00a0multifamily loans toward potential defaults, largely because market-rate units would make up for weakened cash flow in many buildings.<\/p>\n

Market\u00a0rents are at record highs and expected to continue growing, as it will take time for new construction to be delivered in a way that would substantially impact the market, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n

However, the Moody\u2019s report added that enhanced enforcement could result in landlords relinquishing management of properties and increasing loan losses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want to reduce the risk of fires, the government needs to work with property owners to find solutions,\u201d Burgos said. \u201cMore inspections, more fines, and threats of criminal charges to the owners of these buildings are not going to fix the severe fiscal distress in these buildings. And it’s not going to help renters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bronx\u00a0has ignited again, and the New York Fire Department\u2019s leadership says the borough\u2019s aging housing stock is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,99140,25779,42598,194,25782,25790,7830,39591,2988,9,45672,24,63,14733,22437,2393,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-254400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-daniel-flynn","tag-department-of-housing-preservation-and-development","tag-dina-levy","tag-fdny","tag-housing-stability-and-tenant-protection-act-of-2019","tag-inwood","tag-kenny-burgos","tag-moodys","tag-morris-heights","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-apartment-association","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pierina-sanchez","tag-real-estate-board-of-new-york","tag-south-bronx","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}