Many co-op and condo boards are wrestling with the best way to protect their buildings and neighbors from the recent rash of fires caused by improperly charged lithium-ion batteries on e-bikes and other mobility devices. The advice they get is often confusing.

Some lawyers are urging boards to pass a house rule banning any device powered by a lithium-ion battery — a change that requires a simple majority vote of the board rather than approval by a super-majority of residents that’s required when altering a co-op’s proprietary lease or a condo’s bylaws. Some lawyers advise holding violators responsible for any ensuing fire, while others advise exempting owners of motorized wheelchairs from the ban.

The city council has also gotten into the act. Using the reasoning that the fires are caused by the improper charging of shoddy batteries, one bill before the council would ban the sale of lithium-ion batteries that aren’t certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory, such as Underwriters Laboratories or Environmental Testing Laboratories. Another bill would ban second-hand lithium-ion batteries that have been reconstructed or rebuilt using cells recovered from used batteries. Those cheaper batteries are favored by the city’s army of delivery riders. Some form of new law is expected to pass in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the Fire Department of New York has responded to the spike in battery-related fires — which rose from 44 in 2020 to nearly 200 last year, resulting in six deaths. The FDNY has posted advisories in apartment buildings, urging people not to charge lithium-ion batteries inside apartments and to be sure to plug chargers directly into wall outlets, not extension cords or power strips.

And now the firm of Aufgang Architects has come up with yet another solution: built a better bike-storage room.

“We asked ourselves how we can improve existing designs to mitigate the threat of fire to residents of these buildings,” says Sam LaMontanaro, the director of engineering at Aufgang. So the firm’s engineering team set about designing a bike-storage room that could be incorporated into new construction or retrofitted into an existing building.

“We designed a bike storage room for apartment buildings that is fully encapsulated within cinderblock to contain and limit the potential for fire and heat spread,” LaMontanaro says. “As the first line of defense, sprinklers will slow the spread of fire allowing time for firefighters to get to the site. To maximize sprinkler speed and effectiveness, our design increases their density within the bike room.”

The design also specifies smoke and heat detectors, including infrared sensors, that trigger fire alarms and alert building staff in the event of a fire in the bike room. The doors are fire-rated. To ensure proper recharging of batteries, the room is fitted with electrical outlets fed by dedicated circuits so there is no need for power strips or extension cords and no additional strain on the feeds to residential and common areas. Incorporating such a bike-storage room into a new building would add minimal cost, LaMontanaro says, while retrofitting one into a 60-unit building would cost about $25,000.

The board’s work does not stop with installing such a storage room. “Part of this is a behavioral issue, and education is paramount,” LaMontanaro says. “E-bikes are expensive, and some people are a bit nervous about storing them in a public area. So there has to be good security — locks, maybe cameras. And people have to be made to realize that storing and charging bikes inside apartments can be dangerous. If there has to be some type of penalty for violators, maybe that has to be part of it. Co-op and condo boards can exert pressure on residents — and they have to make people realize that this is serious.”

Just before midnight on a Fri day in January, a fire tore through a three-story house in East Elmhurst, Queens, injuring 10 people inside and killing a 63-year-old man who was trapped on the second  floor. Five days later, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, another fire broke out in the basement of a house in Forest Hills, Queens, where an unauthorized day care center was housed. Eighteen children were injured, one seriously.

The cause of both fires was rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which power the e-bikes and e-scooters that have become ubiquitous on city streets, according to the New York Fire Department.

Jose Corona, whose e-scooter sparked the deadly fire in East Elmhurst, told reporters that he heard an explosion shortly after parking the scooter on the first floor of the house. “Once I opened the door, on the second floor the stairs was already on fire in seconds,” he said.

The use of micro-mobility vehicles surged during the pandemic as New Yorkers shunned public transportation and ordered food from delivery apps rather than crowd into restaurants.

Delivery workers are increasingly reliant on e-bikes, which allow them to go farther and faster to meet the demand.

But a deadly, unintended consequence has emerged: Storing and charging such bikes and scooters indoors can create a tinderbox. Last year, the batteries caused 216 fires, with 147 injuries and six deaths. As of Feb. 27 this year, they were responsible for 30 fires, 40 injuries and two deaths, according to the Fire Department.

Nearly three years after New York City legalized the use of micro-mobility vehicles, building managers and lawmakers are grappling with how to prevent battery fires, with some calling for prohibitions on e-bikes and e-scooters, at least until ways to minimize the risks have been established.

Last week, the City Council took what it called “a first step in mitigating the fire risk posed by lithium-ion batteries,” approving a spate of bills that would include new safety and certification standards, education campaigns on how to prevent fires, and restrictions on the use and sale of used or reassembled batteries.

That, experts say, is where much of the danger lies — from off-market, refurbished, damaged or improperly charged batteries. A chemical reaction inside the self-fueling battery can spark a “thermal runaway,” which occurs when the lithium-ion cell enters a volatile, self-heating state. The fires are also difficult to extinguish (the Fire Department warns against using fire extinguishers or water), often spreading to nearby batteries, and can even reignite hours later.

“All it takes is for one small battery cell to be defective, overcharged or damaged, and a tremendous amount of energy is released in the form of heat and toxic flammable gases all at once,” said Daniel Murray, the Fire Department’s chief of hazmat operations.

The Fire Department started tracking fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in 2019, “when we recognized we had a problem,” Mr. Murray said. That year, the department recorded 28 fires resulting in 16 injuries — a number that has skyrocketed with the proliferation of the bikes and scooters.

Lithium-ion batteries can be found in computers, cellphones and some household devices, but micro-mobility vehicle batteries are bigger and “are subject to a lot of wear and tear and weather, which tends to damage them,” Mr. Murray said. “So that’s why we are seeing a lot of fires specifically in the bikes and scooters.”

Battery fires have broken out in a range of buildings around New York, from public housing complexes to luxury towers.

“I didn’t even know I was supposed to be afraid of the e-bike battery-charging station on the ground floor,” said Gail Ingram, who until last June lived above a pedicab and bike-rental business in a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. One morning, she “heard a woman screaming” outside. Then she saw smoke rising from the floorboards.

The stairwell was quickly consumed by smoke that scorched her eyeballs. “I’ve never felt such a terrifying feeling, not being able to breathe,” said Ms. Ingram, 51, a nurse practitioner.

No one was seriously injured, though Ms. Ingram lost almost everything. Unlike most of her neighbors, she had renter’s insurance, which is now paying for her to live in a tiny hotel room with her two cats. “I’m still going through boxes of non-salvageable keepsakes and water-soaked paperwork,” she said.

Ms. Ingram’s upstairs neighbor, Madison Coller, 26, who works in risk management for a payment-processing company, was on the third floor when the fire broke out. She recalled a harrowing day, awakening from a nap and fleeing after she smelled smoke and heard a voice yelling, “Fire!” Displaced by the fire and having no insurance, she stayed with her brother in Bushwick and moved back to Rochester for a short while. Battery-powered vehicles “should be banned until there is a safer solution in place, because too many people have lost their lives,” said Ms. Coller, who now lives in Bushwick.

Some buildings have already taken that action. Last November, dozens of people were injured in a luxury high-rise rental building on East 52nd Street when a battery exploded in an apartment doubling as an unauthorized bike-repair shop. The incident spurred Glenwood Management, which operates more than two dozen luxury rental buildings in the city (though not that one), to ban e-bikes and e-scooters in all its buildings. “If you have one,” the company wrote in a notice to tenants, “we ask that you remove it at once from your apartment.”

A few months earlier, the New York City Housing Authority had proposed a ban on storing and charging e-vehicles in all 335 of its building developments, to prevent fires and preserve the health and safety of residents.” After an outcry by residents opposing the ban, the agency decided to pause and revisit the issue.

“Some buildings are taking the approach of a complete ban on e-bikes, and other buildings aren’t doing anything, and then there are those buildings in the middle that are trying to regulate and pass rules that kind of split the baby,” said Leni Morrison Cummings, a lawyer at the firm of Cozen O’Connor, who represents condominium and co-op boards. “At first we saw all the buildings that jumped on the bandwagon with the ban. Now I am seeing buildings trying compromise positions.”

Proposals include requiring residents to register their e-bikes. Others call for fire-safe bike rooms in apartment buildings and more education about battery safety.

“It’s a conversation buildings need to have: How do we limit the risk?” said Eric Wohl, a lawyer representing condo and co-op boards at the firm Armstrong Teasdale. “Unit owners are allowed to have candles, and that’s a fire risk, too.”

Drake Chan initially used a kick scooter to commute from his condo on the Upper East Side, cutting his long walk to and from the subway. He bought an e-scooter last year.

“You get places faster, and it saved me in terms of sweating it out during the summer,” said Mr. Chan, 37, who works as a project engineer in the field of transportation. “It can also carry quite a bit. I can put two bags of groceries on each handlebar.”

So when his condo board recently considered banning e-bikes and e-scooters in his building, he persuaded the board members to reconsider, emphasizing that most lithium-ion fires are caused by low-quality or misused batteries. “I encouraged them to look into registering all e-bikes and e-scooters, so we know what we have on our hands,” Mr. Chan said.

He also urged the board to educate residents on safe battery use, including charging the batteries only while attended (never overnight), keeping flammable materials away, and using the manufacturer’s original cords and chargers.

Another potential solution is safer bike rooms. Ariel Aufgang, a New York-based architect and the principal at Aufgang Architects, has designed one using cinder blocks, upgraded electrical outlets and additional sprinkler heads. “Government moves too slowly,” he said. “These safety measures are a no-brainer.”

But some building managers question why the burden of safeguarding against battery fires should fall on them. “To me, the issue is product safety,” said Michael Rothschild, the president of the residential management firm AJ Clarke.

Someone shopping for a bike or battery “isn’t going to know if the battery is poorly made,” he said. “There should be an oversight agency to make sure what’s being sold is safe. That’s the way we handle most things.”

Last month, Laura Kavanagh, New York’s fire commissioner, sent a letter to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, saying the department was “on the front lines of this fight against deadly fires involving batteries in e-micromobility devices,” and urging the government to promote more safety regulations, including seizing imported batteries that fall short of industry standards, penalizing manufacturers who fail to inform authorities about product hazards, and recalling unsafe devices. She also recommended a ban on sales of “universal” battery chargers.

City lawmakers are just beginning to catch up. As part of the legislative package the City Council approved last week, Gale Brewer, a council member who represents the Upper West Side, has sponsored a bill that would require the fire department, in consultation with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, to develop an information campaign about the fire risks. Ms. Brewer proposed a bill in November that would “ban the sale of second-use batteries, those which are reconditioned or manipulated and sold on the secondary market,” according to her office.

“Older residents call me all the time. ‘There’s a bike in my building.’ They are very nervous,” Ms. Brewer said. “We have to do something about this issue because more people will die.”

Oswald Feliz, a council member who represents some neighborhoods in Bronx, has also introduced a bill that would impose “recognized safety standard certification” and require an micro-mobility vehicle to be certified in order to be sold in New York City. Another member of the council, Robert F. Holden of Queens, recently introduced a bill that would temporarily ban certain e-bikes and e-scooters throughout New York City.

“Right now, these batteries are killing people, and that’s why we have to do something drastic, or it’s going to continue,” Mr. Holden said. “I don’t want to not allow them forever. It’s only a pause until we get back to the drawing board and get the proper safeguards on them.”

Some of the proposed legislation focuses on the thousands of delivery workers who have come to rely on e-bikes to make a living. One bill would require the consumer and worker protection agency to distribute educational materials on e-bike safety for delivery workers in their language.

“I worry about the delivery people,” Ms. Brewer said. “They need support. They go through a lot of batteries because they are working on the street.”

New lithium-ion bike batteries typically cost at least $300 (and often much more), forcing many riders to turn to lower-quality products. “There is definitely a market where people don’t want to spend that,” said Mr. Wohl of Armstrong Teasdale. “Delivery guys don’t have a lot of money and they want to go as fast as they can because the more trips, the more tips.”

Los Deliveristas Unidos, a guild representing 65,000 app-based food delivery workers, is pressing the city to boost the e-bike infrastructure to include charging and parking stations, along with bathrooms, something that Mayor Eric Adams and Senator Chuck Schumer have pledged to do.

Ligia Guallpa, director of the Worker’s Justice Project, which oversees Los Deliveristas Unidos, said that e-bikes are invaluable in low-income communities that lack accessible transportation, and that without sufficient charging stations, many have no better option than to charge their e-bikes at home.

“Banning e-bikes from buildings without offering an alternative is not the right solution,” she said. “Low-income New Yorkers don’t ride a bike as a fun activity. These e-bikes are legal and people are using them as a way of survival.”

Despite universal recognition of an intractable affordable housing crisis, public officials and government agencies are doing little to find and implement effective solutions.

The New York state Legislature adjourned without approving policies, programs or funding aimed at increasing the supply of new and preserved affordable housing and without acting on the governor’s plan to create 800,000 new housing units over five years.

But several states and other jurisdictions have begun using innovative initiatives to encourage and incentivize affordable housing development and preservation.

In Florida, for example, new regulations aim at clearing away impediments to the creation of much-needed workforce and affordable housing. New state laws there are specifically designed to reduce the zoning and density requirements and overcome political resistance that sustain NIMBYism, while at the same time providing financial incentives to encourage communities to develop affordable housing.

Florida’s Live Local Act, designed to address the state’s entrenched affordable housing crisis, went into effect July 1. It facilitates denser housing development on cheaper land, chiefly by limiting the authority of local governments to block affordable housing with zoning and density regulations.

The Live Local Act permits construction of multifamily housing on any commercial parcel if enough of the units are dedicated to affordable or workforce housing. Developers in Florida are now able to use the maximum zoning allowed within a one-mile radius of the site without having to contend with protracted and costly rezoning applications.

Such innovative regulations expand affordable housing by boosting funding for housing and rental programs, adding incentives for housing investment and encouraging mixed-use developments in financially distressed commercial areas.

The Live Local Act requires that local governments in Florida must approve— without public hearings, a rezoning process or land-use change requirements— housing development on sites zoned commercial, industrial or mixed-use if at least 40 percent of the residential units are affordable for at least 30 years to households making a maximum of 120% of the area median income. The law also reduces local authority to impose density and height limits. There are few other restrictions. The market-rate units can be rental or condo, and they may be separated from affordable units.

Unsustainable situation

This innovative approach by the state is encouraging counties and municipalities to also act on their own to revise zoning regulations in harmony with new statewide programs, amplifying the impact of affordable housing development programs.

In New York City, rents continue to reach new historic highs in several boroughs. The gap continues to widen between housing costs and income. NYC households need at least $100,000 a year for food, housing and transportation. Families of four need 50% more. The median income is $55,000.

To keep housing costs below the recommended 30% of income, the average New York City renter must earn about $134,000 per year. Yet about a third of New York renters spend more than half of their income on rent. This situation is unsustainable and jeopardizes the economic and social fabric of our communities.

Florida is not alone in coming up with creative approaches to increase the supply of affordable and workforce housing. Successful programs are underway in the Los Angeles and Bay areas of California and in Westchester County, N.Y.

We need to harness New York’s awesome collective talent and resources in finance, architecture and urban planning, commercial real estate development and public and social policy to help solve the problem. That requires clarity of vision and the political will on the part of our elected officials to quickly address our affordable housing crisis through new policies and programs.

Ariel Aufgang is principal of Aufgang Architects