Illegal Housing Crackdown Continues

Town of Huntington code enforcement officers executed search warrants at four Huntington Station locations Thursday, July 1 and found illegal apartments at all of the locations.

The Town placed notices of hazardous conditions at three locations and issued a total of 14 summonses and 12 notices of violation to the owners of the houses. 

At 216 Fifth Avenue the code enforcement officers found that a garage had illegally been converted to an apartment. Summonses were issued for illegal conversion and for failure to register the garage as a rental unit as required by the Huntington town code. Three notices of violation were issued for missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. The officers placed a hazardous conditions notice on the garage apartment.

At 18 Eleventh Avenue code enforcement officers found an illegal first-level apartment and the illegal conversion of a garage into an apartment, as well as interior alterations that had created hazardous conditions in a bedroom, as well as a failure to register the rental units with the Town.  A total of four summonses were issued, as well as three notices of violation for missing carbon monoxide and smoke detectors and interior dead bolting of doors. A notice of hazardous conditions was placed on the first-level bedroom. 

At 201 Fourth Avenue, code enforcement officers found an illegal first-level apartment and issued summonses for the illegal apartment and failure to register. The notices of violation were issued for missing carbon monoxide and smoke detectors and interior dead bolting of doors.

The owner of record for all three houses is David Ney of Bayville.

The fourth location was 82 Columbia Street.  Code-enforcement officers found two illegal apartments – in the basement and in the garage – and issued six summonses for an illegal basement apartment, an illegal finished basement, an illegal garage conversion, hazardous electrical wiring, litter and debris and a dwelling structure not weather/water tight.

The officers also issued three notices of violation for a missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and interior dead bolting of doors and placed a notice of hazardous conditions on the basement and garage.

The house is in foreclosure and is currently owned by a mortgage company. The former owner still lives in the house.

The execution of these search warrants follow a similar effort in May at two locations, also in Huntington Station, that found a total of eight dwelling units at what were supposed to be single family homes and resulted in the issuance of 11 summonses.

These efforts are an outgrowth of the code enforcement task force Supervisor Frank Petrone formed last Fall as an outgrowth of the Huntington Station Action Coalition. The task force, which uses 40 percent of the Town's code enforcement officers, has conducted 878 investigations since Oct. 1, issued 1,122 notices of violation and 276 summonses, not counting the ones stemming from the most recent search warrant executions. Of those investigations, 310 have been for illegal apartments, rooming houses and overcrowding.

In measures sponsored by Councilman Cuthbertson, the Town also recently strengthened Town Code to require landlords of Section 8 housing to register with the Town and submit to inspections. The Town also is in the process of increasing penalties for illegal or substandard apartments. Other revisions stemming from the July 1 warrants are pending.