Sanctuary Town: Illegal Housing Costs Us All

Look The Other Way
ABG’s previously posted about the Town employees being told to look the other way when it comes to illegal aliens, illegal housing, and other related illegal activities. It bears further comment in terms of what it costs us, the legal and abused taxpayers of Greenburgh. When we discuss illegal housing, we are not targeting illegal aliens. While there is less of an issue from the standpoint of their being here, how they reside still contributes to the illegal housing and should not be ignored. But it also costs us in many other ways.

Every Service Is Estimated
There are several categories that bear examination, including, but not limited to, water usage, trash removal, garbage removal, recycling, fire, police, and schools. Every service in our Town is either estimated or sometimes “guesstimated” on past usage, square footage of residential and commercial buildings. Most of it is pretty routine. But this affects our infrastructure as well as aging it prematurely, overburdening it, and increasing the costs to it.

Water Usage
No one at the Town seemed able to tell us the yearly water rate or garbage fee per ton for the Town of Greenburgh. No matter, we’ll make up numbers for our example. Let’s say the Town pays $1,000 per day to use one million gallons of water. That translates to $365,000 for 365 million gallons of water. We understand that usage fluctuates and there will be days where more and/or less is rightfully used. But what happens if we use more at the end of a billing period and we go over our one million gallons? If we wind up using 1 million and 1 gallons, the price the Town pays goes up exponentially, roughly by (i.e.) four times the amount. So instead of paying $365,000, we now have to pay $1,460,000! Granted these numbers are examples but the exponential increases are very real.

Why is our water usage important? Because when the Town estimates the budgets and projected usage for the year, it is based on existing housing and the housing’s designation as single family, two family, six family, apartment buildings and so on. If you have a family of four (again an average estimate) in a single family home, you can approximate water usage by their actual address, house size and/or square footage, based on four people and then estimate water usage for a neighborhood. It’s the same for businesses as well. In fact, the Coca Cola bottling plant in the northern unincorporated area of Greenburgh (9A-north Elmsford) used so much water when they opened that they created a vacuum of water in the surrounding area, activating area business’ fire alarm systems with false water-flow alarms. It took some time but was corrected. Once the issue for that business is fixed, normal usage is again planned for.

When a single family home of four is estimated to use a certain amount of water per year, the Town budgets for just that. If say three families are now living in that same single-family home, they are effectively using three times the amount of water. Getting the water is not the issue, nor would the increase in people and usage in one home be a problem. It would be the same as say a young adult losing their job or home and moving back in with their parents or the parents moving in with their son or daughter. It’s not a problem nor would we seek to force them out. But when there are numerous single-family homes occupied by multiple families, it begins to shift the water costs upward to the Town significantly. We all pay more for water with increased fees while the single family with multiple families effectively pays less. It’s a large part of why our Water Department operated at a $4M deficit for the past few years.

Garbage Removal
Similar to water usage costs are garbage removal fees. The Town picks up garbage throughout the Town twice a week except during holiday weeks, when residents continue to generate garbage but Town workers receive the holiday off and our pickup is reduced to once a week. The Town plans on a certain tonnage of garbage to be generated by it’s residents and budgets personnel, vehicles and fees for that quantity to be picked up, carted to The Charles Point Resource Recovery Facility, located in Peekskill. What the Town picks up and delivers to them is paid for by most of us by the pound. We all pay more for it while the single family with multiple families effectively pays less for extra trips back and forth to Peekskill, additional garbage tonnage, personnel, etc.

The garbage removal is paid for by most of us and not all of us based on the illegal housing that the through the Town’s condoning of illegal housing. Our example of a single family home of four, it is estimated to generate a certain amount of garbage and the Town budgets for just that based on housing zoning and a generically acceptable amount of occupants per square footage. If say three families are now living in that same single-family home, they are effectively generating three times the amount of garbage. Since they are paying a rate for one family, the rest of us must make up the difference with increased garbage removal costs to the Town.

Looking The Other Way
The over-occupancy of single and two family homes is a safety issue that seems to be brought into the open any time there is an injury or death and requires police or fire department intervention. Interestingly, The Paul has mandated to the police and fire departments that they are not to go to a home and “find” other violations beyond what they were called there for. An example is a domestic fight that took place in a single family home that our offices overlook. If they notice rooms with locks or subdivisions, multiple mattresses on the floors throughout the house, they cannot report it.

From our hilltop location, we actually have a view of many rooftops but only two or three homes. They are over-occupied based on what we witness 24/7. When the police responded for a domestic disturbance between the apparent landlord and tenant, our own Christina, went to an officer she knows and asked what happened. He told her the landlord wanted the renter evicted and when he tried to put the renters belongings outside, things got violent. The officer told her he went in after the tenant and got “turned around” momentarily when he went in because the basement, through the boarded up garage area, had been subdivided numerous times. Eventually, with assistance from the other officers, he and the renter were brought outside.

The officer explained he used to be a city firefighter and wonders what might have happened if it were a couple of firefighters who went in there in a smoky condition, saying they would have been killed or called a ‘mayday’! A ‘Mayday’ call from a firefighter is when they are disoriented, trapped or hurt in a fire and need assistance to get out. When pushed if he would report this to the Building Department, he stated he cannot and will not put it in his report. His orders are to respond to the call and look the other way toward other violations! A check with our firefighters confirmed this policy.

Schools and More
There are other costs to the Town’s residents that the rest of us pay to absorb, beyond the increased staffing for Police, Fire and Sanitation personnel. We pay more for our schools taxes because we have to accommodate teaching the additional kids that overburden an already saturated system. So if the schools planned on an estimated two children from a single-family home, which is now receiving four kids, and they can’t turn them away, nor would we, they are absorbed into the system. However the same system for good instruction for the legal residents suffers from being overburdened. It’s costing us all more.

There other examples of how this affects us from overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, ambulance calls, closing of hospitals, increased costs for state, county local benefits, etc. The final concern here is resident’s personal safety at home. By allowing multiple families to illegally occupy a single family home, we condone them to live in a dangerous environment unnecessarily. This goes beyond not paying their fair share. We put them and our first responders in added danger when they must respond to aided calls, fire calls or domestic disturbance calls at these locations. Our first responders, whether paid or volunteer, never signed up for the additional hazards of responding to single family homes with multiple families. Nor did we as residents.

Indicators
What are the signs of multiple occupancy? There are typically more than two or three cars in the driveway, different cars coming and going at all hours of the day and night, cars parked on the lawn because the driveway is full. Watch for the amount of garbage that is put out. We’re not talking about the occasional time there is a holiday or birthday party when additional garbage is generated. But, when you see more than one or two bags of garbage per pickup, you might have multiple tenants. Watch on trash pickup days for the same thing. Many homes that have multiple tenants or families don’t have a storm door - something which is baffling to us and we cannot explain. Look on the side of the house for a cable splitter with wires going into the house at different locations or through windows. Take a look for multiple satellite dishes mounted to the house. Finally, ask a neighbor and they will easily be able to point out multiple tenant single-family homes.

It Must Stop
The Paul has decided to make the Town a sanctuary Town. His motivation is unknown to us but we’d like to see the laws we have enforced. When you complain about your taxes going up, illegal housing is a large contributing reason for it. It must stop and the Town needs to address the multi-families in a single family home problem that is pervasive throughout our Town. It’s not safe and adds unnecessarily costs to our residents and businesses. It must stop! We can only hope.