FDNY: Fires Spreading Across New York's Rent-Stabilized Buildings

The Bronx has ignited again, and the New York Fire Department’s leadership says the borough’s aging housing stock is to blame. 

During a city council hearing this week, FDNY officials testified that there were 27 multi-alarm fires in Bronx properties through May 13, roughly double the number of incidents in prior years.

“Electrical fires have been consistently the leading cause of fire within the city,” FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Daniel Flynn said. “Our buildings continue to get older and older, and we continue to see these electrical fires.”

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.

Just days before the hearing, a man died after a fire broke out in a Morris Heights apartment building. 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. 

“These tragedies are the result of decades of deferred maintenance, disinvestment, and systems that too often respond after the harm has already happened,” Sanchez said. “The preservation work ahead of us must be sharper, more targeted, and more accountable.”

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 officials during their testimony on the Mamdani administration’s proposed executive budget.

“Programs 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,” Sanchez said.

After an apartment fire killed four people in Inwood 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. had 117 open violations at the time, and was later hit with additional citations, including for padlocks on doors leading to fire escape exits. 

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. 

During Tuesday’s hearing, HPD Commissioner Dina Levy said the city is further analyzing incident data to “better understand what is driving this pattern to determine whether landlord non-compliance is a contributing factor.”

Following the hearings, New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos said the spike is because “thousands of buildings in the Bronx are currently bankrupt.”

“Fire is a building owner’s worst fear. They do whatever they can to prevent it from happening,” Burgos said in a statement. “So, 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’t cover operating expenses, it becomes nearly impossible to run it properly.”

The Bronx has the largest concentration of rent-stabilized housing due to the age of its building stock. 

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, 80% of housing in the South Bronx was lost to arson committed by landlords seeking insurance payouts.

Property owner groups attribute current neglect in rent-stabilized properties to the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, 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 mortgage payments and maintenance costs.

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, according to the Rent Guidelines Board. NOI does not include debt payments.

Buildings in which 75% or more units are stabilized account for 57% of the most severe violations, with at least 10 Class C violations, according to a report by the Real Estate Board of New York. Just 1% of buildings not subject to any rent control have such violations.

“It does feel like the Bronx is burning again,” Sanchez said on Monday. 

Sanchez additionally questioned how building inspections impact tax abatements, grants and other city-backed funding for landlords. 

“It 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,” Sanchez said.

In his budget and recently released housing plan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed increasing enforcement, including launching criminal investigations and exploring more pathways to seize problem buildings from their owners.

A rent freeze was also a central pillar of his campaign and has become a growing possibility in recent months. 

A Moody’s report released on Wednesday found that a five-year stabilized rent freeze would push only 6% of CMBS multifamily loans toward potential defaults, largely because market-rate units would make up for weakened cash flow in many buildings.

Market rents 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.

However, the Moody’s report added that enhanced enforcement could result in landlords relinquishing management of properties and increasing loan losses.

“If we want to reduce the risk of fires, the government needs to work with property owners to find solutions,” Burgos said. “More 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.”