|
RCBJ-Audible (Listen For Free)
 |
Note: Welcome To RCBJ’s “Your Voices” Column, an occasional column prompted by readers’ commentary. If you have something to say, in a well-reasoned essay of 500 to 700 words, email the editor at ttraster@rcbizjournal.com
Rockland Needs Aggressive, Uniform and Politically Blind Housing Enforcement Now!
By Moish Milestein
The fire at 1 West Burda Place in New City should frighten every Rockland County resident.
A single-family home burned early Saturday morning. A dog died. Approximately 10 to 12 people were displaced. Police later reported that one family lived downstairs while three additional adults apparently rented individual rooms upstairs. Neighbors told Rockland County Business Journal that they had already suspected the house was being operated as an illegal rental.
Thankfully, no person died.
That should be treated as a warning, not a happy ending.
Rockland has developed a dangerous housing model: investors or absentee owners acquire ordinary single-family houses, maximize the number of people living inside them, and leave municipalities chasing violations after neighbors have already been complaining for months or years.
This problem crosses ethnic, religious and municipal lines.
An advocacy group called Within the Mile has documented similar conditions in houses it says are connected to New Square’s organized property-acquisition campaign. At a property on Sunny Ridge in New Hempstead, municipal records cited by the group show overcrowding, fire and safety violations, unauthorized construction and additional bedrooms inside what was supposed to be a single-family, owner-occupied home. The group has separately identified a property on Westview and Tioken as single-room occupancy properties.
Whether the tenants are legal immigrants or not is irrelevant.
The larger problem is enforcement.
At West Burda, neighbors say officials had already been alerted before the fire. RCBJ reported that after the blaze, police completed a building-code violation referral. Clarkstown has strengthened its enforcement laws and hired additional inspectors, but residents throughout Rockland continue describing a system that too often acts after conditions become intolerable rather than before someone gets hurt.
And politics cannot enter into this equation.
No landlord, developer, religious institution, political constituency or voting bloc should receive softer treatment because elected officials are afraid of political consequences.
The standard should be simple: if a house is legally approved for one family, it cannot quietly become an unregulated boarding house.
This weekend, the casualty was a dog.
We should not wait until the next headline says it was a child, a tenant or a firefighter.
Rockland needs aggressive, uniform and politically blind housing enforcement now!
Moish Milestein is a resident of Rockland County
