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[T] People v. Ventura5/6/2004
reading of illegal housing to accommodate them. This County and others as well as the State of New York need to work with private industry to end the housing shortage by building more affordable housing. The number of illegal migrant workers coming across our borders started with a small trickle and now it is a tidal wave effecting the economy of the United States, Latin America and South America. If elected officials continue to duck this issue, then it will eventually engulf all of us. While our borders are allegedly closed to terrorists they are more open to others.
The phrase "Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY), was coined by public officials to express the sentiments of their constituents as far as low and moderate income housing are concerned. Well, the suburbs cannot have it both ways. Residents cannot close their eyes to the need for more affordable housing and at the same time allow lax immigration policies and the need for cheap, undocumented day laborers to come into our communities with no place to live except in illegal housing. In order to solve the illegal multiple dwelling crisis you must have alternatives, low and moderate legal housing available with strict code enforcement. Otherwise, all you are doing as a municipality is either making the poor homeless or shifting the problem elsewhere. Strict code enforcement alone then becomes an unacceptable, one-dimensional solution to the problem of illegal multiple dwellings creating a brutal mandate that ultimately violates the civil rights of those who are simply looking for a place to live. While we seek to preserve the residential character of our neighborhoods, do we wish to push the poor out into the cold? If they cannot live here, then where can they live? Food, clothing and shelter are basic human needs. In taking away shelter we are in some cases invidiously violating the civil rights of those who are in the worst position to fight back. They may be a part of the underground economy, undocumented and unwanted in our residential communities, they move from place to place, from one temporary residence to the next. Our need to enforce the Building Code cannot at the same time countenance the systematic violation of civil rights. This Court will not give its approval or imprimatur, even indirectly, to such action.
There are somewhat differing legal rights and issues that apply in the case of an owner occupied dwelling and one that is not owner occupied. An owner may be presumed to know the law and must comply with our Zoning and Building Code or be subject to the penalties of law. Owners and tenants are both entitled to the protections to be afforded to all local residents by the Fourth Amendment. The owners of the subject property are the defendants in this action yet they do not appear to have been involved in the search of the subject premises when it was conducted. When this search was conducted, it was the tenants whose privacy was invaded not that of absentee landlords. The landlords may have had an alleged illegal business interest to protect, namely the rental of an illegal multiple dwelling but in the absence of proof that they occupied the dwelling, it is difficult for them to satisfy the legal standing requirement to raise a Fourth Amendment and First Amendment violation. However, the Court concerns itself here primarily with rights of tenants to be free from illegal searches. Contrary perhaps to the Village's position, it is not the number of people occupying a dwelling or the fact that they may be unrelated by blood that, per se, gives rise to the notion of probable cause to inspect a dwelling. The reason for this is that the New York Court of Appeals has told us in McMinn v. Town of Oyster Bay, 66 N.Y.2d 544, 498 N.Y.S.2d 128, 4
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