http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/nyregion/21house.html

L.I. Home Held Up to 64 Men, Authorities Say

June 21, 2005
By BRUCE LAMBERT
FARMINGVILLE, N.Y., June 20 - Long Island law enforcement agents raided and closed a small one-family home here that they said had been converted into an illegal rooming house jammed with 44 beds and up to 64 male occupants.

Officials said they are investigating an additional 117 houses for illegal overcrowding in this blue-collar suburb, which has been polarized in recent years over an influx of thousands of Mexican laborers, many of them illegal immigrants who work in the contracting, landscaping and service industries.

The crackdown is the latest front in the battle over immigration here that has prompted homeowner protests and even violence. Last year Farmingville became the title of an award-winning documentary on the struggle.

Shortly after dawn on Sunday, a team of Brookhaven building inspectors and fire marshals joined county police in raiding the dilapidated, 900-square-foot home at 33 Woodmont Place and found 28 men there. But inspectors said they had counted as many as 64 men emerging from the house on other mornings in recent weeks.

The tenants paid $225 to $250 a month each for a bunk in the house, the police said. Suffolk's district attorney, Thomas J. Spota, estimated the gross monthly rent at $9,000.

The site is just a block away from Granny Road, where in July 2003, local teenagers set fire to a house with a Mexican family sleeping inside. The family barely escaped. Three years before that, two out-of-towners pretending to be contractors lured two Mexican tenants from the house next door and savagely beat them. In both cases the assailants were arrested and convicted.

"It's ground zero," said Rev. Allan B. Ramirez, an advocate for immigrants who was familiar with the house on Woodmont and returned there Monday as some occupants removed their belongings.

At a news conference on Monday, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy called the house "a hellhole" that disrupted the entire neighborhood and endangered the tenants, who paid exorbitant rents. Such conditions "will not be tolerated," he said.

The authorities identified Rosalina Dias, 31, of Selden, as the owner and arrested her on criminal contempt and criminal nuisance charges, saying she had ignored State Supreme Court orders to comply with building codes. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment in Suffolk's First District Court in Central Islip. She was held in $20,000 bail, according to the sheriff's department.

Though the tenants were not formally evicted, many left, and on Monday town inspectors effectively closed the building by posting warning notices that the building was unsafe and putting yellow tape across the doors.

Longtime Farmingville residents complain that many immigrants cluster menacingly on corners waiting for work and that overcrowded houses generate noise, traffic and garbage and burden local services.

"The conditions were disgusting" in the house, said Councilman James Tullo of Brookhaven. Officials said the inside was a filthy jumble of mattresses, clothing and food. Photographs and videotape showed a collapsing ceiling, overloaded electrical wiring and blocked basement windows.

The main floor had a kitchen and two bathrooms. That floor and the basement were crammed with beds and belongings. Outside were two bicycles, a grill and cases of empty beer bottles in two shopping carts.

Conditions are as bad or even worse at some of the 117 other houses that the authorities are investigating, Mr. Tullo said.

Defenders of the immigrant workers say they provide low-cost menial labor but are often exploited by contractors who pay illegally low wages with no benefits.

Mr. Ramirez accused Mr. Levy of "racism" and "ethnic cleansing." While conceding "horrible conditions" in the house, the minister said the abrupt enforcement means "basically there will be 25 or 30 men sleeping out on the street."

"There are hundreds and hundreds of mother-daughter apartments and dozens and dozens of group cottages on Fire Island that are just as illegal," Mr. Ramirez said, "so why does Levy continue to target just the Latino community?"

A mother-daughter apartment refers to a separate apartment within a single-family home, which often violate local codes.

Mr. Levy said that social service and charitable agencies would house anyone who was homeless. "This was a concentration camp setting," he said. "How do you compare a mother-daughter house with a deathtrap like this? Reverend Ramirez would be the first extremist holding a press conference if a fire killed 40 people there."

In the neighborhood, Dianne Aragones, a child care worker, welcomed the enforcement after years of disruptions, including contractors honking their truck horns for workers before 6 a.m.

"With us it's definitely not a racial issue, because I'm Irish and my husband is Puerto Rican," she said. "My heart aches for these men. They're used and abused. They came for a better life. You can sympathize - all our ancestors did. But having 50, 60 people in one house is not good for them or anyone."

But across the street from the closed house, Jaime Aqueron, an art teacher, said he had no objections "They never bothered me, and I never bothered them," he said. "We're fine with them. They're trying to make a living, like everyone else."