With a growing number of overcrowded housing reports in Riverhead neighborhoods, town officials are considering dramatically increasing fines to help pay for the lengthy investigations needed to issue violations to an offending landlord.
The town has received 41 overcrowded housing complaints since the beginning of the year, and so far the town’s code enforcement officers have been able to resolve 16 of them.
Right now, overcrowded housing violations can result in a fine of no more than $250. That’s not enough to deter many landlords, who make much higher profits by renting out single-family homes to multiple renters, according to town officials.
The current fine also does not pay for the lengthy investigations that go into overcrowded housing cases, which can often take up more than 20 hours of a code enforcement officer’s time.
“It’s difficult to establish overcrowding,” explained Eric Howard, Riverhead’s deputy town attorney, at a town board work session last week. “You need to get a feel for the square footage of the inside of the house, how many people are in the house, if they’re using the basement for living space.”
That also requires gaining access to the house. And unless the tenants give voluntary access to a code enforcement officer – which they are not legally obligated to give – the officer will need to apply for a court warrant, which is difficult to obtain and requires substantial documentation and other evidence to justify.
“It’s a lot of surveillance,” said Tim Hubbard, Riverhead Town Councilman and a retired town police officer. “If you don’t get access, you need to document cars that are there at different times. It makes it a very lengthy investigation.”
With only two code enforcement officers in Riverhead Town, that can be a difficult task. Officers need to conduct surveillance over a period of time to establish that multiple people are living in the house – documenting who is going in and out of the house, how often cars are coming and going and if they are the same license plates.
To gather a more complete picture of overcrowded housing situations, Riverhead’s two code enforcement officers have been trading shifts with hours outside the typical work week.
“One of our officers works Fridays from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., for example, so he can see which cars are parked there overnight,” Councilwoman Jodi Giglio said.
Such an investigation can take weeks to undertake and consume dozens of hours of a code enforcement officer’s time. And with a growing number of overcrowded housing complaints this year, town officials are considering dramatically raising the fines to support the amount of hours that goes into these cases.
“The fines should really mirror the work and time that went into creating the case,” said Councilman Jim Wooten, who is also a retired town police officer.
Fines for overcrowded housing may be increased to a sliding scale, town board members concluded, with a maximum of $5,000 for the third and subsequent offense. Each week’s continued violation would incur another fine of $5,000.
“The civil penalties are substantial once they add up,” Supervisor Sean Walter said.
Overcrowded housing can be more than just a neighborhood nuisance – it can also turn into a serious safety issue.
“A lot of the emergency responders are concerned going into some of these overcrowded houses,” Giglio said. “Our fire marshalls get called when responders see there could be a situation with extension cords or people living in the basement.”
Riverhead Town will set a public hearing to discuss the proposed increase in fines at a future date.
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