Plans Take Shape For Apartment Building To Replace Complaint-Riddled East 21st Street Home

A four-story apartment building may be rising soon in Flatbush, replacing a century-old single family home with a more recent history of illegal home conversion complaints.

Applications were filed today to build a 10-unit apartment building on the 3,200-square-foot lot at 481 East 21st Street, between Cortelyou and Dorchester Roads, where a two-and-a-half story house sits, reports YIMBY.

The apartments could average 933 square feet apiece, which means either condominiums or rentals, writes YIMBY.

The property owner Shaya Labin, acting under an anonymous Brooklyn-based LLC, bought the home in 2015 for $940,000, according to PropertyShark. Demolition permits haven’t been filed for the house, which sits in an R6A development zone.

Despite the addition of new apartment units, this development may not dramatically increase the block’s population density — at least not as much as it would seem. Since 2002, three illegal home conversion complaints were filed with the Department of Buildings, alleging that four families were living in the single-family home with illegal rooms spilling into the basement. The complaints, from 2002, 2004 and again in 2010, are all marked closed.

This apartment complex is one of a series of similar developments nearby, including another filing for a seven-story apartment building on East 21st Street near Caton Avenue; apartments rising on East 19th Street, East 18th Street, and Coney Island Avenue; a seven-story, 29-unit building at 1127 Flatbush Avenue, and another filing for a 21-unit building at 2527 Church Avenue; a three-story, eight-unit residential building at 2 Stratford Road near Caton Avenue; and a smaller, 3-story unit planned for 190 East 7th Street near Caton Avenue.