Thread: Illegal Immigrants Crammed into Houses

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First of two parts
Crowds of illegal homes
All across the Island, immigrants are being crammed into houses, many living in squalor, dangerous conditions


BY SANDRA PEDDIE AND EDEN LAIKIN
STAFF WRITERS
July 15, 2005

On a street in Syosset, in a single-family house currently listed for sale at $710,000, live at least 16 South African workers employed by the exclusive Glen Oaks Country Club in Old Westbury.

At the other end of Long Island, a few doors down from a new multimillion-dollar waterfront home in East Hampton, neighbors have complained about a rented house so crowded that its septic tank overflowed onto the street.

Illegal rooming houses such as those are cropping up all over Long Island, as landlords rent every square inch of space to exploit the demand for affordable rentals. Like turn-of-the-century tenements, these houses are often overcrowded and filthy, but are the only available shelter for many new immigrants.

Last month, officials shuttered a house in Farmingville after finding as many as 64 men living there. Although officials said that was extreme, they've found illegal rooming houses as far flung as Roslyn Heights and Montauk.

"It's definitely spreading," said Brookhaven Councilman James Tullo, who heads a town task force investigating 300 illegal rentals in the town. "It's popping up in areas where you wouldn't expect them to be."

The conditions, in many cases, are shocking. In Westbury, inspectors found 12 men living in a basement flooded with sewage. In Southampton Village, officials found men renting sheds with no plumbing or heat. In Huntington Station, men had to climb through a hole in the wall to reach their cubbyholes to sleep.

Residents say they have seen their suburban neighborhoods transformed, and officials say they fear repeats of disastrous fires that have occurred in such houses.

"They're changing the face of the neighborhood," said Farmingville resident Lisa Marino. "There's this flophouse atmosphere."

"I've never seen it this bad," said Islip Town Councilman Christopher Bodkin, "and it's getting worse all the time."

An influx of legal and illegal immigrants, combined with soaring rents, is driving the phenomenon, demographers and immigrant advocates say. From 1990 to 2000, the amount of overcrowded housing units in Nassau and Suffolk counties increased by 41 percent -- from 23,014 to 32,493, according to the U.S. Census.

Demographers consider a housing unit overcrowded if there is more than one person per room. But on Long Island, records show that it's not unusual to find 15 or more people living in a single-family home.

"There's a larger story there," said North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman. "There's a whole world that people are living in, this life that no one knows about and no one wants to know about."

After closing down the overcrowded Farmingville house last month, police charged owner Rosalina Dias, of Selden, with criminal contempt and criminal nuisance for allegedly violating a court order barring her from renting the house. Dias, 31, has pleaded not guilty.

A week later, North Hempstead officials told 30 residents of a Westbury house they had a week to move out because it wasn't safe. The five-bedroom house had been converted into nine bedrooms, with each tenant paying around $250 a month. Spliced and makeshift wiring criss-crossed the rooms.

Both cases were unusual in that they became public. Most cases do not even come to the attention of authorities, officials say, and the conditions in which tenants live are largely invisible to the public. But court records, fire reports and town inspections document a range of problems.

In East Hampton, neighbors complained a year ago to town officials that residents of 1 Will Curl Highway were urinating in the bushes and sleeping in their cars, records show.

Inspectors visited the house several times and once found the septic tank overflowing onto the street, said town attorney Tiffany Scarlato. Inspectors have counted 12 vehicles overnight, and a neighbor said he has counted as many as 25 cars parked on the lawn.

The owner, Carlos Idrovo, of East Hampton, missed several court appearances, according to records, and was fined $3,000 in March for various code violations. Idrovo could not be reached for comment.

In Patchogue, inspectors found people living in locked rooms in an illegal rooming house on Bay Avenue, a tree-lined street that extends to the waterfront.

In one room, where two people lived, space was so tight that the bed couldn't fit and "was lifted on end and leaning against the wall," according to records.

In a small Tudor-style house on Fulton Street in Long Beach, inspectors in April found an illegal rooming house with a broken toilet, missing kitchen counter tops and a refrigerator that didn't work. There were large holes in the interior walls, and old plumbing parts, empty cartons and paper were strewn about the yard, according to the inspection report.

"How can this be?" Kathryn Hartnett, former director of an East End outreach agency called SOLA, said of such conditions. "In this place of such ostentatious wealth, how can people live as if they're in a Third World country?"

Among the worst places are so-called shift-bed houses, in which tenants rent a mattress for a certain period of time. According to Nassau County Assessor Harvey Levinson, there are typically two shifts a day. He estimated there are a couple dozen such houses in New Cassel.

"Sleeping in closets, sleeping in basements, sleeping in shifts," said former Nassau County Assistant Fire Marshal Steve Wenk. "We've seen it all."

Advocates say there are few options for the people who live in such illegal rentals. If they complain, they risk eviction with no place else to go.

"It's better than being in somebody's back yard or under the train trestle," said Ruth Negron Gaines, director of Pronto, a nonprofit outreach center in Brentwood.

Aldo Canales, a worker from Honduras who said he lives with 20 other men in a house in Huntington Station, pays $350 a month for a room and considers himself lucky. Asked if the house was clean, he said in Spanish in an interview several months ago, "How can the house be clean with so many people? It's impossible."

Workers say rents typically are $250 a month per person, with at least two people sharing a bedroom. When five or six people share a bedroom, it's possible to pay a little less, "but then you don't live like a person," said Francisco Bacila, a worker from Honduras.

Freddy, a worker from Ecuador who declined to give his last name, said he pays $320 to share a house in Roslyn Heights with seven other people. Two tenants sleep in the attic.

Asked how they would escape if there were a fire, Freddy pointed to a hallway window, smiled and indicated he would jump.

Despite the sardonic humor, the fire risk is real.

Although state officials do not keep statistics on the number of fires caused by overcrowding, local firefighters say electrical fires have increased dramatically in the past 10 years, because of increased electrical loads caused by overcrowding.

"The houses were built as one-family homes, and they were only designed to handle that load," said Babylon Fire Marshal Gil Hanse.

In February 2003, a 4-year-old girl and her 80-year-old grandmother were killed in Bay Shore when blankets atop a space heater in their basement apartment ignited. A total of 14 people lived in the single-family house, records showed.

Another fire, cited by firefighters throughout Long Island, occurred in May 1999. Three people died after flames consumed a commercial building in Huntington Station that had been converted illegally into apartments for 33 Salvadorans. Records showed that inspectors had cited the building for various violations over several years, but never shut it down.

While deadly rooming-house fires are rare, the problems of excessive traffic, garbage and noise are not.

Country club workers

Neighbors around Jackson Avenue in Syosset say late-night noise from the 16 tenants living in a single-family house nearby can sometimes be heard far down the block. Garbage bags sit outside the house for days, they say.

Some also say they've been awakened by the horn of the Glen Oaks Country Club van when it drives onto the blacktopped front yard to pick up employees early Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Crowds of illegal homes
All across the Island, immigrants are being crammed into houses, many living in squalor, dangerous conditions

"We're paying our full load for taxes to live here and the person behind me is running a rooming house," said neighbor Carol Voelger.

The seasonal workers from South Africa each pay the Old Westbury country club $75 a week in rent, according to town records.

They live two or three to a room; the nine bedrooms are numbered sequentially and each has its own key lock, according to town inspection records. Two of the bedrooms, and a partial kitchen, are in the basement, where tenants also do laundry in a coin-operated washer and dryer.

The country club rents the house from Queens businessman Xiao Shu, who has owned it since 1999. Peter Dunk Jr., who described himself as Shu's business representative, said Shu wasn't aware of the number of tenants.

"He didn't know about it," Dunk said. "There was a certain number of people on the lease. He told them they couldn't go over that amount of people."

Officials from Glen Oaks did not respond to several phone calls or a visit to the club for comment.

Last month, Dunk told Oyster Bay Town officials that he had sent an eviction notice to the country club. On July 7, however, there were 11 tenants there when town inspectors showed up. The inspectors issued them all summons to appear in court on Aug. 1 for violating town codes.

Even though many neighbors of such boarding houses share frustration at conditions at the houses, some express sympathy for the tenants.

Lisa Marino lives in Farmingville with her two sons, on a block with at least six illegal rooming houses. But she is adamant in her belief that immigrants have a place in America.

"This country was built on immigrants," she said. "I believe people have a right to be here, legally or illegally."

Nonetheless, Marino admits to having mixed emotions.

Contractors honking their horns to pick up workers wake her as early as 5 a.m., and Saturday night parties with crowds of men unnerve her.

"I was the voice of moderation until I moved here," Marino said. "Now I know what people are talking about."

Vanessa Tallerico, who lives a block away on the same street, said the neighborhood once had "a mixture of people. When you have 300 to 400 men move in, that's no longer diverse."

She added, "I don't really know anyone who really isn't going to be affected by this sooner or later."

Ooooh, trouble in Syosset...Long Island....New York.

A ritzy sounding place, eh? Country Clubs and $710,000 homes?

Meet Syosset, New York....the place where our Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, a Chinese immigrant, whom many claim "pulled herself up by her bootstraps".... from Syosset where her wealthy Shanghainese Businessman Father landed them when Chao was 8.



Oh yeeeeah, she graduated from Syosset High School!!

Funny....now that the Third World is invading Syosset, the Long Islanders are all in a 'tiz".

Call Elaine....this disaster is her doing as much as anyone's.

Remember, zoning laws are racist and anti-multicultural.

Expect to see this in your neighborhood soon.

"How can this be?" Kathryn Hartnett, former director of an East End outreach agency called SOLA, said of such conditions. "In this place of such ostentatious wealth, how can people live as if they're in a Third World country?"

Duh! This should be a no-brainer for you, lady! They're coming from Third World countries so they're going to live what they know.

You sound as clueless about these "good-hearted folks" as Dubya is or at least tries to dupe the American citizenry into thinking he is.

All our zoning regulations have been thrown out the door to accomodate this massivie illegal migration.

A couple years ago when I became too ill to work, I had to sell my home because I was not allowed to live in my shop or a travel trailer on my own property of 2 acres and rent out the house. BUT they moved in 12 to 20 illegals across the street, built plywood and metal scrap shacks to house them. The county refused to even look at what was going on.

Hey Judy,
These rich folks will wake up and demand that laws are passed. Not passed to remove the illegals out of the country, only ones that will ove them from their plush neighborhoods.