WPCNR NORTH END NEWS. By John F. Bailey. October 8, 2003: Jeffrey Binder and Tim Sheehan, official Republican Candidates for Common Council announced that the Building Department of White Plains has identified a turn for the worse in the city’s hot illegal housing market yesterday: Owners are purchasing homes in neighborhoods and turning them into illegal rooming houses they operate in a manner that makes it very hard for the Safe Housing Task Force to find grounds to close them down.
SHEEHAN & BINDER IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS ON PRIMARY DAY. Photo by WPCNR News.
The two Council Candidates have drafted legislation with teeth to combat what they describe as “a quality of life assault on our residential neighborhoods.” Calling their legislation, “The White Plains Neighborhood Protection Act 2003,” they introduced the legislation to media Wednesday and hope the Common Council will adapt it within six months. “Whether we’re elected or not, this must be done,” Binder said.
The pair interviewed at Republican Headquarters said they had long been aware of the problem, but were galvanized into action to draft this legislation by a North Broadway Civic Association meeting last week. At that meeting, they said, a representative of the White Plains Building Department identified a new trend among owners seeking to exploit persons in need of housing.
The New Tenements: Block by Block
Here’s how the landlord scheme works according to Sheehan: An owner purchases a home in a neighborhood, fixes it up (divides it by rooms) and rents it out to persons unrelated, charging up to a dozen or more individuals $500 or more each to live in the home. This house-stuffing creates a lucrative handle of $6,000 or more a month revenue, more than enough to pay mortgages and clear a profit. At the present fine level, Sheehan says, the revenues cover any fines easily.
Sheehan said, these housing exploiters next step is to “cherry pick” homes in the same neighborhood, striking deals with homeowners next door to their purchase, and populating those homes with as many as a dozen residents or more. Sheehan and Binder said two such homes were pointed out by the Building Department on Holland Avenue, and another on Benedict Avenue as two examples of this trend.
Such Good Neighbors
Landlords purchase a home, fix it up, keep the lawn cut, and charge persons $500 a month for a room in this house, Sheehan explained. “They can’t be touched by safety issues because they keep the home neat on the exterior, keep the garbage unobtrusive, don’t have a lot of cars parked in the driveways, not a lot of coming and goings, eliminating the common tip-offs to illegal housing. The owners even run vans to pick up and drop off their illegal tenants.”
“If White Plains is ever to shed its reputation as being a haven for unscrupulous landlords that prey on hard working people by offering substandard and overcrowded living accommodations within single family homes, it will enact this reform immediately. We are confident that our superb Buildings Department and Office of Corporation Counsel can work together, finalize this proposal forthwith and present it to the Common Council for approval,” Binder and Sheehan said in a written statement.
Neighborhood Protection Act: Tool to Shut Them Down Based on Numbers
Hike Fines to $1,000 a Day.
Sheehan and Binder said their Act gives the city a tool to crack down on filled-to-the-brim single family homes by redefining the definition of what constitutes a family based on recent court decisions and the approach that has worked for the City of Poughkeepsie.
It also will raise the minimum fine for homeowners in violation to $1,000 a day up to $3,000 a day for landlords. Sheehan and Binder pointed out fines now at $500 have not been raised by the Common Council since 1989.
Not aimed at Group Homes. Aimed at groups of Unrelated Individuals Who Do Not Pool Resources.
Asked if this legislation would be used to keep such operations as Group Homes for the handicapped, (a technique used by White Plains own Zoning Board of Appeals to overturn a Building Department permit issued to the Jewish Board of Childrens and Family Services to renovate a home for parentless teens last spring on Walworth Avenue), Sheehan and Binder said that it would not, saying the legislation in the City of Poughkeepsie follows the definition of recent court decisions defining a family as:
- A single housekeeping unit.
- More or less permanent living arrangement.
- Stable, rather than transient living arrangements (except where the handicapped are affected)
- A group headed by a householder caring for a reasonable number of children as one would be likely to find in a biologically unitary family.
Landlord must prove his or her residents are a family.
Sheehan said most groups homes pool the income resources of residents. All live together and eat commonly and the meals are prepared from a single kitchen.
Sheehan explained the owner of an illegal rooming house would have “the burden” of proving to the Building Department that they meet the standards set by zoning regulations to show they are a “functionally equivalent family.”
Rooming Houses Must Meet The Family Test.
Sheehan said the White Plains Neighborhood Protection Act is based on the recently upheld Poughkeepsie ordinance.
According to their news release, Poughkeepsie “in its definition of family, contains a rebuttable presumption that 4 or more unrelated persons living in a single dwelling do not constitute the functional equivalent of a traditional family. The ordinance provides an opportunity for applicants to convince the Zoning Administrator that the group is the functional equivalent of a traditional family.
Family Factors
The factors that the rooming house owner would have to prove in order to have their tenants qualify as family are the following:
- Tenants share the entire house.
- Tenants live and cook together as a single housekeeping unit.
- Tenants share expenses for food, rent, utilities or other household expenses.
- Tenants are permanent and stable.
Sheehan and Binder said the legislation would be enforced through Due Process at a Hearing, and there would be no action on residents of such homes without notice. Targeted rooming houses would be issued a “Show Cause” order as the first step.
Poughkeepsie Law On Books Since 1994. Council Could Have Acted.
Their news release on the legislation claims that “if introduced, and enacted by the Common Council, this legislation will have a direct, immediate, and beneficial impact on White Plains neighborhoods like Fischer Hill, Battle Hill, and the North Broadway area – all besieged by unscrupulous landlords who overcrowd single family homes in residential areas with tenancies of unrelated people.”
Binder said, “This legislation is symbolic of what our candidacy is attempting to do with the Commoun Council, wake up the Common Council. The Poughkeepsie ordinance has been on the books since 1994, (when it was upheld by the Appellate Court) and the Council could have moved any time (to revise the White Plains Zoning Ordinance) in the last 9 years.”
Binder and Sheehan said their White Plains Neighborhood Protection Act of 2003 has been endorsed by Mayor Joseph Delfino and deemed feasible by the City Corporation Counsel, Edward Dunphy. Sheehan called WPCNR to clarify that Mayor Delfino “supported” the idea of the legislation, saying “endorse” was too strong a word, and that though Mr. Dunphy thought the concept of the legislation was workable, Dunphy had not seen the draft of the legislation
