This is a Hass avocado my mom got me as a present three years ago (I had asked for a lemon). It is now flowering in my basement. It did this last year and I tried to self pollinate with a small paintbrush but got nothing. Any ideas?
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hopefully your avocado won’t turn out to be a ‘lemon’ 
kidding aside, it may just be too young, and/or not getting enough sunlight, and/or not getting pollinated. Self-pollination is a challenge with avocados since there seems to be no or negligible overlap of male and female functional periods.
below is a nice link from an aussie *.gov site which enjoy sifting through
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/spring/challenges-growing-hass-avocado-cool-regions
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Hass when young is a type A flowering avocado which means that in the morning, its pistil are receptive but the pollens are not dehiscing. In the afternoon, when the stamens are shedding pollens, the pistils aren’t receptive. So no matter how you hand pollinate it, nothing really happens as the sexes are separated by time.
The trick is to collect pollens in the afternoon and store in the fridge so it doesn’t degrade its viability very quickly. Then in the morning use the stored pollens to pollinate the receptive flowers.
Or you can buy a type B avocado that have bloom time overlap with Hass and place them side by side.
No problem when the tree is very big and have different microclimates which makes some flowers type B and so can bear fruits.
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