The city is investigating a Queens business believed to have made over 1,000 bogus calls to a city complaint hotline since September, claiming that homeowners were illegally converting their basements into apartments. The claims, called in from three different phones to the 311 hotline, incited a wave of inspections across Flushing, Whitestone and other northeast Queens neighborhoods that resulted in few substantive violations and many angry residents. The city is required to send inspectors after any “illegal conversion” complaint, according to Department of Buildings spokesperson Tony Sclafani, and the department is being particularly proactive after a fire in illegally-subdivided Woodside, Queens apartments last month turned deadly. However, local homeowners suspect a building industry firm has been filing the false complaints in an attempt to create clients, especially after they received letters from firms offering basement-legalization services within days of being hit with violations. [Post]
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