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Lynwood Avenue and Berkshire Drive

January 29, 2006

It begins at 6 a.m. As the sky brightens, the pickup trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles rattle down the street and come to a stop, as windows are rolled down and horns honked.

The sound reverberates all around the Fazziolas' home on the corner of Lynwood Avenue and Berkshire Drive, an assault of beeps, shouts and blaring music that has become an increasingly regular part of morning in Farmingville.

The din eventually subsides, but by dusk the contractors are back, dropping off the day laborers they had picked up in the morning, throwing their trash out the window, then peeling off down the street.

As the night takes over, workers stroll the streets or gather on corners.

The crumpled fast-food wrappers, empty bottles and tire marks left behind from the day creep onto the edge of the Fazziolas' front yard.

"When we moved in 20 years ago, it was a nice neighborhood full of families," Lisa Fazziola says as she looks around. "Now we're surrounded by rentals. It's like the whole neighborhood has gone downhill."

Neighboring homes hold several dozen men each, clumps of bicycles outside their doors. In recent months, Lisa and her husband Danny, both 43, have been talking with Brookhaven Town inspectors to document problems and alert officials to houses that may be illegally occupied. Their complaints are similar to those of other families in Farmingville who live near boarding houses.

Danny fumes as he watches a green minivan pull up across the street. A woman steps out holding plastic bags filled with plastic foam containers of home-made food, ready to make a delivery to a house of day laborers.

"There's a whole economy occurring that legitimate people have nothing to do with," he says.

The immigration debate always gets boiled down to racism, the couple says. But it's not the new arrivals' ethnicity that is the problem.

"This has nothing to do with race, it's about a way of life," Lisa says.

"I don't care who you are as long as you're a good neighbor and you don't keep me up and you keep your property clean," adds Danny.

The couple say their biggest problem neighbors were a white family of about 30 people that lived across the street. The family earned a nickname: The Clampetts, after the family from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

"They were out of control," she says. "It was a complete nightmare."

Once, Danny awoke at 2 a.m. to find two members of the house in the middle of the street, shouting and throwing refrigerator doors at each other.

"Their language was so foul, it would embarrass you," he says. "I work in a lumber yard, I know coarse language, but this was something else."

The Fazziolas pestered the town to take action and when it did, the owner of the house finally showed up.

"The owner said he hadn't been here in 15 years," she says, her face contorting with anger. "He was getting checks, so he didn't care. He didn't live in the community."

The problem with rentals and absentee landlords, the Fazziolas say, is that there's no sense of belonging to the community.

"I don't know who owns that house," Lisa says, pointing to a neighbor. "It's unsettling. Who do you call if something happens?"

The son of Irish and Italian immigrants, Danny says he empathizes with this new wave of arrivals. But, he says, they are not working to fit into the neighborhoods where they are now residents.

"You have to assimilate and become part of the community and they don't do that," he says.

The couple, who have five children, acknowledge that they do not know their neighbors very well. He said the day laborers usually don't pay taxes, while he and his wife struggle to make ends meet.

"To them it's just a place to live, this is not their home," Danny says. "They don't care about the property. They're here to live and work and send money home to their families."

Since last summer, when the town started cracking down on illegal houses, things have improved "immensely" they say, with fewer men walking the streets and fewer problems. But still, Danny says, "I'm at the point where I'm starting to think maybe it's time to move."