A Filipina landlord is facing a $30,000 increase in her property tax bill after city officials accused her of operating an illegal rooming house, where 29 tenants were crammed into 16 units in a two-family house, in Long Beach, New York.
Long Beach Zoning Inspector Richard Schuh called the house at 265 E. Chester Street as “one of the worst rooming-house situations this city has seen in quite some time,” Newsday reported.
Nassau County Assessor Harvey Levinson said it was one of the worst illegal conversions of a private home into a rooming house in county history, and he said he would move to change its tax status from residential to commercial.
Landlord Mona Liza Daos is now paying $7,905.25 in combined city and school taxes on the $786,000 property, a spokesman for Levinson said Friday. That will increase to $37,975.43 if the assessor’s office can make the switch for next year’s tax rolls, the spokesman said.
Authorities discovered the rooming house on February 2 as Schuh and an inspection team were wrapping up a night shift, and decided to make one last stop at 265 E. Chester Street, to follow up on an anonymous complaint.
Inside the two-story home, just a couple of blocks east of City Hall, the team found 29 people crammed into 16 separate rooms, sharing two bathrooms and two kitchens, according to a complaint filed Friday in City Court in Long Beach.
Daos’ lawyer, Maria Aramanda, said in a statement released later that Daos came from a Filipino community, “where family and friends take care of each other, especially those in need. She is not a profiteer who capitalized on providing housing.”
“I got on the phone at about 11 p.m. and said: ‘Boss. You’d better get down here,’” Schuh said he told Buildings Commissioner Scott Kemins.
On the second floor, they found a fairly typical tenant: Bruno, a Russian immigrant who told them he paid $800 a month for the 10-foot by 15-foot room he shared with his wife and two children.
They said the man told them that his family shared a kitchen and bathroom with tenants in the other six rooms on that floor.
Rents apparently ran from a low of $275 a month to a high of $800, and Daos took in an estimated $100,000 annually, in cash, according to Levinson.
Levinson appeared in court on February 9, and told Judge Stanley Smolkin that the case was being referred to state and federal tax authorities.
Daos stood silently next to Aramanda, who said her client was trying to fix the 16 code violations lodged by the city and relocate the tenants.
Schuh and Kemins said outside the courtroom that the illegal rooming house might have escaped notice for more than a year, in part because most of the occupants were immigrants who did not own cars.
The initial complaints about illegal conversions of homes to rooming houses often come from neighbors when parking spaces become difficult to find, they said.
They said it would be up to the landlord, who faces fines up to $2,500 for each violation, to deal with any tenants who might have to be moved out.
They also found something unusual in two of the rooms – Webcams. Tenants told them they were hooked to satellite dishes on the roof, and connected them to family in their native countries.
